If you're wondering how to build muscle quickly you are in the right place. Today we are going to answer one of the most asked questions in the gym: How many reps should you do when you are trying to build size and strength?
The majority of people who train are a little bit lost so if you're in a situation at the moment where you don't know what to do the first thing you should do is stop worrying. You aren't alone, that's for certain. But today you'll be well on your way to getting some results.
If you ask most men what their goal is it is usually very similar. They want to build a more powerful physique with less body fat.
The first step to achieving the body you want is to learn that your body will not change by itself. You literally have to force it into change. It's only concern is keeping you alive, it really doesn't care if you'd like to look different. In order to make it more powerful you need to force it to become so.
There are two main ranges of reps which will help you to determine what type of results you will get:
* Muscular growth or hypertrophy.
* Endurance.
So given the fact you're reading an article on how to gain muscle we already know that you're mainly here because you want to learn how to pack on head-turning size. This tells us you need to be primarily focusing on hitting the muscular growth zone, which means you should be trying to land each set between the eight and twelve rep mark.
The other zone we mentioned is for muscular endurance. It's suited to those looking to build stamina as well as tone up, but it will not be a fantastic way to train for those more concerned with pure strength and size. That zone is made up of sets which end in the 15-20 range.
If you'd like to give yourself a confidence boost, we urge you to take a look around the resistance section the next time you walk into your local gym. You will see people training with seemingly no structure, going through the motions and, despite putting in effort while training, not seeing any results specific to what they want to achieve.
So you now know that the rules with weights have nothing to do with the popular gym mythologies out there. You know the ones we're talking about, right? Things such as 'high reps are just for women'. High reps are for those looking to build muscular endurance, regardless of your sex.
None of this information will do you any good of course unless you remember the golden rule of weight training. Some people call it progression, others call it overload. Basically, you need to force change from your body as we mentioned before. If you keep on doing the same thing your body will adapt and then simply stay in the same place.
Use your rep zone to determine how much weight to lift as well as deciding when it is time to increase the resistance. How? It's actually very simple. Whereas most people don't know when the right time to increase a weight is, or most women are scared for fear of gaining muscle mass, simply remember the rules of your target rep zone. If using the hypertrophy zone use a weight which you can manage to lift eight times. Stick at that weight until you are able to get past 12 reps with good technique, then it's time to increase the weight, consistently forcing yourself to increase loads and stay within the right rep zone.
So now not only do you know how to build muscle but you also know how to push consistent gains from your body to avoid the plateau most people encounter and never break free from.
The majority of people who train are a little bit lost so if you're in a situation at the moment where you don't know what to do the first thing you should do is stop worrying. You aren't alone, that's for certain. But today you'll be well on your way to getting some results.
If you ask most men what their goal is it is usually very similar. They want to build a more powerful physique with less body fat.
The first step to achieving the body you want is to learn that your body will not change by itself. You literally have to force it into change. It's only concern is keeping you alive, it really doesn't care if you'd like to look different. In order to make it more powerful you need to force it to become so.
There are two main ranges of reps which will help you to determine what type of results you will get:
* Muscular growth or hypertrophy.
* Endurance.
So given the fact you're reading an article on how to gain muscle we already know that you're mainly here because you want to learn how to pack on head-turning size. This tells us you need to be primarily focusing on hitting the muscular growth zone, which means you should be trying to land each set between the eight and twelve rep mark.
The other zone we mentioned is for muscular endurance. It's suited to those looking to build stamina as well as tone up, but it will not be a fantastic way to train for those more concerned with pure strength and size. That zone is made up of sets which end in the 15-20 range.
If you'd like to give yourself a confidence boost, we urge you to take a look around the resistance section the next time you walk into your local gym. You will see people training with seemingly no structure, going through the motions and, despite putting in effort while training, not seeing any results specific to what they want to achieve.
So you now know that the rules with weights have nothing to do with the popular gym mythologies out there. You know the ones we're talking about, right? Things such as 'high reps are just for women'. High reps are for those looking to build muscular endurance, regardless of your sex.
None of this information will do you any good of course unless you remember the golden rule of weight training. Some people call it progression, others call it overload. Basically, you need to force change from your body as we mentioned before. If you keep on doing the same thing your body will adapt and then simply stay in the same place.
Use your rep zone to determine how much weight to lift as well as deciding when it is time to increase the resistance. How? It's actually very simple. Whereas most people don't know when the right time to increase a weight is, or most women are scared for fear of gaining muscle mass, simply remember the rules of your target rep zone. If using the hypertrophy zone use a weight which you can manage to lift eight times. Stick at that weight until you are able to get past 12 reps with good technique, then it's time to increase the weight, consistently forcing yourself to increase loads and stay within the right rep zone.
So now not only do you know how to build muscle but you also know how to push consistent gains from your body to avoid the plateau most people encounter and never break free from.
About the Author:
Creator: Russ Howe PTI is the UK's most subscribed Personal Trainer. Learn how to build muscle with our free video walkthrough teaching the five rules to a more muscular body.
