Rep Ranges

By Raquel "Rocky" Herron, BS, NASM-CPT

"Ok, but how many?" I hear this question quite often, and it's a legitimate question. The issue of how many repetitions you should do with a particular exercise can be frustrating, especially for new exercisers. The very first thing to establish is your goal: do you want stronger, more powerful muscles, bigger muscles, increased muscular endurance, or all of it (I hope you said all of it!)?  Let's look at what each of these goals are all about and how you can get there. For this article, I not only used my brain power, but I have also incorporated some information from trainer/author David Dellavane, who owns The Movement Minneapolis in the Twin Cities. Got to give credit where credit is due!

What does it mean to be strong and powerful? Basically being strong is all about muscle fiber recruitment. The more muscles fibers you can recruit, let's say in your legs, the more you should be able to squat. When you increase your muscle fiber recruitment, you increase your strength. Power is basically being able to move something fast with force, which can be seen in Olympic lifts like power cleans. To be stronger and more powerful requires a low rep range, anywhere from 1-5 reps, which means heavy loads are being moved, often very close to the maximum amount of weight you can lift for a particular exercise, think 85-100% of 1RM (one-rep max).  While this rep range may not appeal to many of you, it does have it's place in strength training, especially with athletes and the occasional Pearce Stronger!

Hypertrophy is just a fancy way of saying increase in muscle size. When your goal is to increase the size of your muscles, there's a rep range for that! Generally, we see the hypertrophy range being anywhere from 6-12 reps, usually closer to the 10-12 than the 6-rep range. For those of you who want to know the percentages, this means anywhere from 70-85% of 1RM. More muscle is a good thing! It's metabolically active, burns more calories when you're at rest, and it takes up less space! It gives great shape to your body and helps you complete tasks with greater ease. 

The last component to discuss is muscular endurance. Endurance is the ability to do something over and over again without fatigue. We all know that individual who can do box jumps or push-ups or lunges in group exercise over and over again. This is due to muscular endurance. It's also easy to spot when someone lacks endurance as they fatigue very quickly. If endurance is your goal, then the intensity, i.e. the load or weight that you're using, has to decrease to about 60-70% of 1RM. This rep range is anywhere from 13-20+. 

So what do you do with all of this information? Your desired goal will dictate which rep range you will work in, but I encourage you to engage in all of them. For me personally, I work in all of these rep ranges in any given week. I may pick a big exercise like squats and never go over 5 repetitions, but I'll do 10-15 repetitions with lunges or box jumps and this can easily change based on what I need to work on. I believe this has helped with my overall fitness and I believe it can help you as well. When you're ready to tackle some heavier weight and find your inner strong man/woman, find one of us trainers to make sure your form and set-up are on track, as safety is number one in the gym. Be strong; be powerful!  Happy lifting!