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 yet following this
rule will 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 was an
iron rule for achieving maximum muscle gains,
too. 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 track
the time while performing your reps.
I use this technique
with good success in my personal
training software X-Size for one good reason:
Nobody uses the same speed for their repetitions
any time.
There is also
another trick hidden in it and by this you can
determine if Creatine is going to be useful
for you (I'll tell you that below).
Now I want to
leave the theoretical part behind and give you
a practical example.
Test your one
rep maximum on two different body parts.
First test your
one rep maximum for barbell bicep curls and
write it down. If you didn't choose the right
weight at the first time (almost nobody could
do this) take 3 minutes off - before you try
it a second or third time. (for example your
TESTED one rep maximum for barbell curls is
100lbs)
Second, test your
one rep maximum for leg extensions. (for example
your TESTED one rep maximum for barbell curls
is 200lbs)
After you do this
- rest for 10 minutes. In this time calculate
80% of your one rep maximum for barbell curls
(100 * 0,8 = 80 lbs) and the leg extensions
(200 * 0,8 = 160)
Now that you know
your real one rep maximum for both exercises,
after the 10 minutes rest, load 80lbs on the
barbell for testing your repetitions on the
curl.
For example, let's
say you are able to perform 9 repetitions for
barbell curls with 80 lbs. So 9 repetitions
is your optimum rep scheme for barbell curls.
After another
10 minutes of rest you could make the same test
with the leg extensions.
For example you
could do 15 leg extensions with 160 lbs. So
this means you should always aim for 15 repetitions
for leg extensions because this gives you the
best muscle gains.
Did you take your
time for the reps?
If so I can tell
you the following:
If your time
for each of both exercises was below 60 seconds
Creatine could be quite useful for you.
If your time was
below 40 seconds for both exercises and you
haven't Creatine - what are you waiting for?
It will definitely give you a good boost in
muscle mass.
One final advice
I would like to give you. You should do this
test for any exercise you are performing. Probably
you have seen that you get different results
for different body parts...you will also get
different results for different exercises for
the same body part.
This is because
every exercise involves slightly different muscle
fibers. So probably your optimum rep scheme
for barbell curls is 9 reps, but for preacher
bench curls it could be 6 reps.
This may sound
over the edge for you, but think twice! I involved
this technique in my X-Size
software along with other techniques to
boost muscle gains for good reason.
This technique
alone could give you "only" 20% more
muscle gains and it could also double your progress
rate. This adds up over the time to big gains.
And if you add some more of these tricks in
your training schedule you could double or even
triple your progress rate instantly.
Click
here to learn more about X-Size now...
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