How Many Reps?

By Oliver Wolter

How a SMALL CHANGE in your rep scheme could BOOST your MUSCLE GAINS

If you are working out like most people, you are using a rep scheme of 6-12 repetitions for muscle mass.

You could read it anywhere and this seems to be one of the iron rules in bodybuilding.

But following this rule could hold you back from serious gains!

Almost nobody can tell you why you should perform this rep scheme for muscle mass.

Some people will tell you that 6 reps is 80% of your one rep maximum - the range where most muscle fibers get involved.

But can you really perform 6 reps with 80% of your one rep max?

I can't tell you, but what I can tell you is that you are probably wasting a lot of your gains by blindly following this rule.

Don't get me wrong, I believed that performing 6-12 reps is an iron rule for achieving maximum muscle gains. This all changed when I started to test the one rep maximum on all my training clients.

What came out is that a few of my clients could do more than 20 reps with 80% of their one rep maximum, while others could only do 3 reps with 80% of their one rep maximum.

After using the individual scheme of between 3 and more than 20 reps for muscle gains, almost all of my clients made better gains.

Some even doubled their progress rate instantly after changing the rep scheme for muscle gains.

So please test your one rep maximum and load 80% on your one rep maximum on the bar and test how many reps you could do.

To get a little bit more advanced I would advise you to take the time while performing your reps.

I always use this technique beneath others with good success in my personal training Software X-Size Oliver Wolter is a world renowed fitness and bodybuilding expert. He is the author of X-Size weight training computer software.