Famous 8, 10 or 12 reps. Why exactly these numbers and how many repetitions should we do to maximize muscle growth?
After the demolition of several myths, we are going to start another one today ... well, it is actually not a myth and it certainly is not a major problem. It is in the gray zone, so to speak, and this issue is called the number of repetitions in each series and their effect on increased muscle mass or strength.
Since the 1950s, the bodybuilding scene has had the idea that fewer reps (1-5) with a sufficient load (about 85% or more of your 1RM - maximum per repetition) have built up strength, a medium number of repetitions (5 -12) has a better effect on muscle formation and a large number of repeats (12-15 +) have been associated with endurance. In this article, we will be interested in those ± 5 to 12/15 repetitions that are found in the so-called. “Hypertrophic range” - a range of repetitions that should have the best effect on increased muscle mass growth. But is there a direct magical range of repetitions? And why does everybody do 8, 10 or 12 reps?
Before we dive deeper, we need to clean up what we already know, thanks to a huge pool of research. Performing a small number of repetitions with great weight builds our strength. However, exercising with lower weights with a greater number of repetitions, respectively with a moderate load and a moderate number of repetitions, also affects the generation of strength. But strength gains at lower repetitions + heavy load are significantly higher! Something similar is true for muscle endurance, where training in “medium” reps helps build up, but higher reps is a better and more optimal tool for improving muscle endurance. But now we are interested in muscle mass creation, trying to find the “miracle zone” of the number of repetitions.
We have written about it a long time ago, so today just in a nutshell - how does muscle grow at all, or what factor stimulates muscle growth? From a mechanical point of view, this is mainly metabolic stress and mechanical stress. The more you load on the dumbbell and add weight (increase the mechanical tension), the less you do the repetitions (reduce metabolic stress) and vice versa. You can therefore imagine muscle growth as the center of the rope between these two competing factors. This implies, very simply, that you can use a variety of repetitions and weights for muscle growth.
Doing only rumors such as 8, or focus on a larger variety of reps?
Now a little science is coming. If we're talking about muscle growth, Brad Schoenfeld always knows what to say. Not so long ago, his team gave us not one but two researches on this issue. The first deals with the effect of small / medium number of repetitions on increased muscle growth, while the second research addresses the effect of medium and higher number of repetitions on muscle growth. Well, what we are extremely interested in is only a few dozen days ago published study, which compared exercise using only the so-called. "Optimum number of repetitions for increased muscle growth" (6-15 divided by group) versus the use of a full range of different repetitions - the use of DUP (Daily Undulating Periodization - in a nutshell, this means constantly changing workload, repetitions and series counts). And yes, everything with trained, on average 23-year-olds.
This is the first research specifically addressing this problem, using specific instruments to measure muscle endurance, thickness and size. However, we will not bore you here with a detailed and lengthy description of the study, if you look closely at it, we would rather pinpoint the potential that we can put into practice when working out in the gym. Research has shown the potential advantage of using a different number of repetitions to increase muscle growth and muscle strength in the upper body. Unfortunately, to what extent we do not know when it also depends on many other variables (type of sport, personal preferences…). It is also not entirely clear why the results were not identical with the muscles of the lower body. However, what you should take away from this is that performing repetitions in the so-called. The "hypertrophic zone" is not superior to the use of a variety of repetitions in terms of muscle strength and gain.
So is there a slight increase in muscle formation at a specific number of repetitions? Yes, it does. Should you only perform this range of repetitions? No, I didn't. Although this “zone of increased hypertrophy” when performing 6-15 repetitions results in better muscle mass growth than when performing LEN low or high number of repetitions, this benefit is not so much noticeably higher - about 10-15% only one unit of activity. Using a variety of repetitions, you can effectively influence and increase muscle production, and this publication has also shown us that by using all the repetitions, we induce almost identical elevations in muscle protein synthesis, but the pathways that signal muscle growth respond quite differently to small / medium / a large number of repetitions in a series. It follows that using only "hypertrophic" repetitions is likely to cause you to lose some muscle growth.
If we look at this question from a practical point of view, doing 6-15 reps will provide us with a hard enough workout by practicing for us with reasonable weight, doing the exercises technically correctly, not doing too much cheat repetitions, igniting the central nerve system and last but not least we have less chance of injury. Also, the load is heavy enough to provide the necessary stimulus for muscle growth. It follows that there is more or less no "miraculous" range of repetitions performed in the series, but the possibility of performing good and sufficiently heavy training. So why do they usually do rumorful 8, 10 or 12 reps? Essentially, because the average number of repetitions is probably the easiest way to create a sufficient amount of training with a sufficiently heavy iron. Let's take another example and compare the following:
3 series of 10 reps with 75kg weight (= 2250kg total)
5 series of 5 reps with a weight of 90kg (= 2250kg total)
If you do the first variant (3x10x75kg), you will work on muscle endurance. If the second variant (5x5x90kg), your power will come to the fore again. But you can see that the total volume of training would be the same, which suggests that the differences in muscle size will at best be very, very small, and the result, ie muscle growth, will be the same.
If we were to put this issue in a few sentences and provide some good conclusions with recommendations, it might look like this. To maximize hypertrophy, try to do 60-70% of your workout in the range of reps that are most convenient for you, 15-20% of exercises with higher weights and fewer reps, and the remaining 15-20% should be light weights and more reps. However, it is very important to perform all scales of repetitions and not to neglect one or the other. On the last sentence, the above mentioned and not only respected and respected Brad Schoenfeld, Eric Helms, but also the whole scientific / fitness community, which is worth watching, agree.
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