How Many Reps Should You Do To Build Muscle?

By Russ Howe


How many reps should you do to build muscular size and strength? Today we'll give you that answer and a few others as we help you on your quest to discover how to build muscle quickly and effectively with proven, science backed methods in the gym.

Firstly, while you may feel like you are the only person who is lost with regards to your training you certainly are not. In fact, you probably aren't even the only one at your gym in this situation, never mind the entire world. As a fitness instructor I meet hundreds of people per week who need help, so don't for one second think you are by yourself. Today you'll learn some progress producing facts.
If you don't know how to build muscle today's interview will assist you a lot.


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.

In order to get the right kind of results from your workouts, however, you need to know how to force your muscles to do what you want them to do. It will not grow by itself and this is where so many people go wrong. They don't force progress, but we'll go into that a little bit later.

The first thing to do is to understand the different repetition ranges and what they do:

* The hypertrophy zone.

* Muscular 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.

The next time you visit your local gym or fitness center take a quick look around. You will notice that not many people are training with a specific goal in mind, despite the fact that if you ask them what they want to achieve they will be able to tell you straight away.

Most people don't take the time to learn the different benefits of various ways of training. This is why most women believe they'll get huge if they touch weights or do any kind of resistance training. These false beliefs will do nothing other than hold you back.

The second thing you need to do to make the most of hitting the hypertrophy zone is to progress. Your body's only job is to keep you alive, it does not care about your desire to build a more appealing look. It's not going to change unless you force it to change.

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.

You will now find results far easier to come by. It might seem rather simple, given the amount of confusion in the health and fitness industry in general, but these facts are proven and backed up by decades of scientific research. Learning how to build muscle is simple, but most people never figure it out. You now have!




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