"How Many Reps Should I Be Doing if I Want to (Get Stronger, More Toned or Build Muscle)?"
How many reps should I do if I want to (insert ‘get stronger’, ‘more toned’, ‘build muscle’)? This is a very good question that I receive fairly regularly and I am writing this article to clear up any misconceptions. Personally, I don’t think there is a specific amount of reps for any given exercise that will give you the most gains. With that being said, context matters.
With my own training and most of my clients, I like to work in rep ranges → 3-6, 5-8, 6-10, 8-12, 10-15, 12-20, 20+. These are the rep ranges that I use most and I think our training should include them all (most of the time). Before I go any further, always remember that context matters. If you are a powerlifter or weightlifter who is a few weeks out from competition where you have to lift a 1-rep max, then maybe doing sets of 15-20 with the lift that you compete in isn’t the best idea. But if you are a regular human like most of us are, I recommend lifting in a variety of rep ranges over the course of weeks, months and years.
Why do I recommend lifting in a variety of rep ranges?
You get a different stimulus doing a 3 reps compared to a set of 20. Lower rep sets will usually require more focus and more central nervous system (CNS) recruitment assuming you’re using more weight. In contrast, a set of 20 will require much more muscular endurance than a set of 3.
When you vary the rep ranges, this automatically varies the amount of weight that you’re using. Although it’s fun to lift heavy weights, it isn’t necessarily the best idea to lift heavy all of the time. Our body can take a beating if we are constantly lifting near our max weights. Going to failure with 1-3 reps is much more demanding on the body than going to failure in the 10-12 rep range.
Varying the rep ranges can keep things fresh - not only physically, but mentally. When you’ve been lifting for years, hitting 5 sets x 5 reps can become a bit monotonous. Keep things fresh and change it up. No, you will not get weaker if you switch over to lifting in the 10-20 rep range compared to the 3-6 rep range. As long as you continue to push hard when your body allows it.
“But wait, are you sure I won’t get weaker if I lift in the 10-20 rep range versus the 3-6 rep range? Everything I’ve read says that if I want to get stronger, I need to do less reps and if I want to ‘be toned’ and build more muscle, I need to lift higher reps.” There is some truth to this because scientifically, a higher rep set will involve more ‘time under tension’ which helps to break down the muscle so that our body can rebuild it. Makes sense right? Yes and no.
The part that is often neglected is this - in order to lose fat and get more toned, you need to eat in a caloric deficit. In order to build muscle and become stronger, you need to be eating an adequate amount of calories and protein to fuel the body and ultimately, your progress. So the question shouldn’t really be, ‘How many reps should I be doing to achieve x, y and z?’ That is a minor detail compared to the quality of your nutrition and whether or not you’re eating according to your goals.
So let’s assume that you have a good handle on your nutrition and you’re eating according to your goals. If you are eating well, staying hydrated and sleeping well, then any rep range will help you get stronger - as long as you are progressing in some way, shape or form over the course of weeks, months and years.
What do I mean by progressing? The most common way to judge progress is our ability to do more - more weight, reps or sets. But this isn’t the only way. Other ways to judge progress could be:
You’re able to do the same amount of work in less time
You’re doing the same weight but with better technique
You’re doing the same weight but now you can go slower or add pauses to your sets
With that in mind, I want to share how I like to facilitate progress. Keeping a training log or tracking your progress is essential for this. It’s easy to remember how much weight and reps I did last week but there’s no way I can remember what I did 5 years ago, let alone 1 year ago. Let’s use pushups as an example. Today, I can do 3 sets x 6 reps with good technique. Next week, I do 6, 6, 8 reps. BOOM! I improved by 2 reps. Next time I do pushups again, I do 6, 6, 10 reps. Wooohooo! Go me! Next week, I do pushups and I get 6, 8, 12 reps. So over the course of 4 weeks, I went from being able to do 18 pushups total (3 sets x 6 reps) to being able to do 26 reps (6, 8, 12). I also moved from that 5-6 rep range to the 10-12 rep range.
Let’s say I continue doing pushups until I am able to do 15-20 reps each set. At this point, I can make the pushups harder by adding weight or pausing at the bottom of each pushup. Let’s add weight. Now I’m doing pushups with 10lbs on my back. For the first week, I do 3 sets x 5 reps with 10lbs on my back. A few weeks later, I can do 3 sets x 8-10 reps (because I’m fueling my body well and recovering well through good food, water and sleep, right?!). Let’s say I continue doing pushups and I can now do 3 sets x 15-20 reps with 10lbs. Now we have to decide how we want to progress. Maybe we can elevate our feet onto a bench and do pushups with the same weight. Maybe we can use 25lbs instead of 10lbs. Maybe we can add a pause to the bottom of the pushup. Hopefully you get the idea by this point. You can take this same setup and use it with your bench press, squat, chinups, etc.
When you become a bit more advanced and have been in the gym longer, this kind of approach might not work as well as it does for a beginner/intermediate. At that point, you may have to approach things a bit differently. But for most of us, this kind of progression will work well for a very long time. But one thing I’ve learned over the past 12 years is this - it’s easy to point at our program and blame that for our lack of progress. But what we should really be looking at is what we’re doing when we’re not in the gym. Am I drinking enough water? Am I eating according to my goals? Am I getting enough sleep? Is there a lot of stress in other areas of my life that may be affecting my ability to perform?
This brings us to the last segment of this blog post and another common question that I receive, “Should I lift to failure? If so, how often should I go to failure?”
I have 2 rules when it comes to AMRAP (as many reps as possible) sets. Rule #1 - Don’t break technique - ever. Rule #2 - Don’t die. As I said at the start of this post, context matters. There’s a big difference between lifting to failure on something like the BB Back Squat or the BB Deadlift versus lifting to failure doing TRX Rows or Bodyweight Walking Lunges. The risk involved in some lifts are simply greater than others. We also have to take into account your level of experience in the gym. As someone who’s trained for a long time, I have a better understanding of my capabilities and when I might start to break technique in an AMRAP set versus someone who just started training two weeks ago.
With that being said, I think training to failure is okay if done sparingly and intelligently. You don’t have to go to failure on every single exercise during every training session. It’s a good idea to pick and choose where you want to push yourself into that 100-110% effort range. I’m a big fan of knowing where the 80-90% range of effort is and doing most of my training in that range. Then if I’m feeling especially strong one day, I might test things out by going to failure or going heavier than usual. This comes back to my training philosophy of ‘building strength’ 90-95% of the time and ‘testing strength’ 5-10% of the time. Save the test days to when you’re actually feeling good. Don’t go into the gym on 4 hours of sleep, subpar nutrition and expect a good outcome from testing that day.
Let me give you one last piece of tactical training advice in regards to training to failure. Let’s use the DB Bench as an example. Let’s say I did 50lbs for 3 sets of 8 last week. This week, I might go in and do 50lbs x 8, 8, max. Let’s imagine I ended up doing 10 reps on my max set this week. Okay, great. Now next week, let’s go back in there and do 50lbs x 8, 8, max again but this time I get 12 reps on the last set. This is a good sign as I’m slowly progressing in the right direction.
Next week, I will go back in and again, I do 50lbs x 8, 10, max and I end up getting 15 reps on the last set. That’s beautiful. Clearly I’m doing something right. At that point, I might bump up the rep scheme to 50lbs x 8, 12, max. After a while, I might be doing 3 sets x 12-15 reps with this weight and at that point, I can try 55lbs and start the cycle again at 6, 6, max. I like to set it up like this so that your first 2 sets are guaranteed to be high quality sets with perfect technique. This gives me a great opportunity to practice and since strength is a skill, we definitely need to practice. Then the AMRAP set can be used for two reasons - we can use it to judge our progress and it’s fun to push to occasionally push to 100-110%.
In conclusion, I hope that this post was helpful for you. I hope you now understand that it’s not necessarily the amount of reps or sets that we’re doing that will determine our progress - it’s a combination of consistently training hard as well as doing what we need to do outside of the gym to fuel our progress inside the gym (aka eating, hydrating and sleeping well). Lastly, I hope that this post will inspire you to start keeping a training log because having that data in front of you will help you tremendously for years to come.