We have our week laid out and exercises chosen. But how many do I do?!?! A lot of studies have been done at this point on ranges of repetition and what they achieve. I’m going to make it simple with the table below.

GOAL REPS

Max Strength 1-5

Power 1-8

Muscular Endurance 15-25

Hypertrophy 6-20+

Let’s break this down.

MAX STRENGTH

Lift heavy shit and get strong as hell. These lower rep ranges obviously allow you to move heavier weights. Your RPE with these should be about an 8-9/10, working at 75-95% of your 1RM. You’re only doing 5 reps max so leaving any more than 1-2 in the tank is really short-changing your workout. Exercises using these rep ranges are usually the big compound lifts (bench, deadlift, squat, row, hip thrust) also power exercises like plyometrics and slams.

POWER

Move heavy shit fast. Power = load & speed. The more powerful you are, the faster you can move your body/weight. These sets are about 100% effort for short periods of time. Once you start getting fatigued and slowing down the movements, you’re training the wrong muscles. Stay in a low enough rep range that you maintain the performance.

MUSCULAR ENDURANCE

Lift/run/move heavy shit for longer. Improving your muscular endurance increases your lactate threshold (build-up of lactic acid in the muscle) which decreases the rate of recovery for heavier lifts and can improve your running or other cardiovascular exercises. These lifts are usually around 50% of your 1RM and have shorter rest times (1-2 mins). Exercises using these rep ranges are usually more accessory lifts or body part splits such as bicep curls, and leg extensions.

HYPERTROPHY

Get buff. This is the golden ticket everyone wants. “Tone”, “firm”, “look like I workout”, etc. Call it what you want, but in reality, you want to increase muscle size. There are some old misconceptions about this because new science has shown us that there isn’t one set rep range for this. It used to be 8-12 reps was the “hypertrophy range” but as new studies come out, we’re finding that it’s less about the reps and more about your MECHANICAL LOAD UNDER TENSION that affects the size development of muscles. That being said, we need a wide variety of rep ranges to help stimulate all muscle fiber types to grow at the most optimal rate, which means that incorporating all the rep ranges as well as slower tempos into your plan whether that’s in phases, or all at once is going to be the best way to increase muscle size. The volume also plays a big role in hypertrophy which we’ll get into later.