Remember when you first started lifting weights? It was all so simple then. You would walk into your gym and tackle whatever exercises looked good. It was all about challenging your body from every angle back then, and you loved every second of it. You probably didn’t count anything except the number of plates on the bar, and you kept adding weight every week. It was a glorious time, with those beginner’s gains. However, those days seems to have passed you by. Today it is much harder to grow bigger and stronger in the gym. You actually have to focus energy each day upon specific body parts, and it does matter what exercises you use. Set and rep ranges are influencing your success to a noticeable degree for the first time. When should you go heavy, and when should you stay light with the weight? It can be confusing to say the least. Let’s look at three common repetition ranges and decide which is best for you, and when.

1 to 5 reps

Bodybuilders should rarely be lifting in the range of under 6 reps per set. Gains made in this range arrive as a result of adaptations to your nervous system, and not the muscles themselves. This is why powerlifters don’t grow all that much as they make improvements in their lifting numbers. You recruit more muscle fibers, to be sure. But you don’t cause them to grow.

6 to 10 repetitions

If you are looking to make massive gains in terms of power and raw muscle mass, then a repetition range of 6 to 10 per set is probably going to be where most of your sets should land. Gains made when using this repetition range are of the size variety due to significant jumps at the metabolic level of the muscle. You don’t get all that much stronger lifting in this range, but that shouldn’t matter to bodybuilders.

10 or more repetitions

Unless you want to look like a big frumpy block of wood waddling from place to place with all this new muscle, then you’re going to want to take your sets to the land of 10, 12, or 15 or more sets per movement, for at least one set per exercise. Adaptations by your body at this level occur at the cellular level. You attain much better endurance, with maximum blood flow to the muscle group being achieved. But you aren’t going to get bigger.

Any rep scheme you use is going to make you bigger, stronger, or both. The key to success in bodybuilding is to decide what your goals are, then to employ sets in the range most beneficial to you reaching these goals. For most bodybuilders seeking gains in muscle mass and shape, 60 to 80% of their sets should fall in the 6 to 10 range, with the remainder being in the 10 or higher range. Sets lower than 6 reps should be saved for those special occasions when you’re maxing out on bench press with your friends. They are not conductive to bodybuilding success.

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