Background

This is the bedrock of any good workout plan. The ultimate way to pack on muscle and strength. Without it we are doomed to spin in circles never getting closer to what we want. We have all seen people at the gym, god bless them, who are consistently doing the same reps with the same weight every time they step into the gym. They are on a treadmill with no aim to get better. Nothing will change for them. The body adapts to it environment and while we don’t need to surprise the muscle with sporadic work outs we need to bring it close to failure. Only this will cause the muscle to adapt to its new limit, its signaled to grow.

The premise is that each time we are in the gym we want to beat what we did the week before. This can be achieved in a few ways, time under tension, weight, amount of reps, tempo of reps. Most people use weight and number of reps because they are the easiest to track. So you either want to be lifting more weight than the week before. Or move the same weight more times (more reps). This ensures you are continuing to push your muscles close to failure. Creating stimulus that triggers muscle growth. A major key to fat loss is having more muscle. More muscle raise metabolism which leads to more fat loss. How do we build more muscle? Progressive overload.

Rep Ranges

For these reasons I prefer to work with rep ranges vs set reps. It allows you to push close to failure and indicates when you are ready to add weight. So lets use 6-8 reps for example. If you bench 215 for 8 reps this week. Then next week you should add 5 – 10 pounds and try to get at least 6 reps with 220 or 225. You use that weight until you get 8 reps then you increase it again. You continue this step in perpetuity until you reach the size you want. Alternatively if you aren’t able to hit 6 reps then you need to drop the weight. Another reason I like the 6 -8 rep range is safety. It’s enough intensity to really test your strength and promote growth but not so heavy that you risk injury or cheat your form. This keeps us honest with our progress.

Failure

Note that when we say failure we are talking about mechanical failure. The goal here is not to be pinned under a bar. Mechanical failure is when you will not be able to get one more rep without sacrificing your form. If your form suffers the rep doesn’t count and do not try for another one. You risk injury and that will set you back much more than the gain of completing another rep. Perfect form is what we are after, it is important to keep it consistent so that you can track improvements week to week.

TLDR

To put it all together TLDR: you need to be either increasing the amount of reps or the weight. It helps to work in a rep range and when you hit the top number of reps you increase the wieight. This way you can always be puching your muscles to adapt and grow.