How to Perform Reps for Most Muscle Growth

You know , one of the best things that Jeff taught me since I've been working for him has been , it's not just the exercises that you choose , but it's how you do them .

What's up ?

What are you doing ?

All right .

So remember when you told me that it's not just doing the exercise .

It's about how you do them , you know , going from point A to point B Yeah .

Well , dude , you're 100% right ?

Take , for example , take the robot curl .

It's a good exercise .

It works your biceps .

But the problem is if I do it like this , I don't feel anything literally nothing .

However , when I become the robot ready biceps , forearms , biceps and forearms , dude , it's incredible .

You gotta be the robot to feel the robot curl .

Someone's gotta turn you off , man .

Can I take these system failure ?

You know , I just wish he'd try it without noise , with noise , without noise , with noise .

What's up guys ?

Jeff Cavalier athlete next dot com today .

I want to try to help you to determine how you should be performing your reps on whatever exercise you're performing because it's a big question .

There's a lot of different ways .

We could actually lift a weight , right ?

We could just get it from A to Z .

We can really try to get it from A to Z focusing on a lot of details .

We can push it fast , we could push it slow , the rep speed matters , all this stuff , guys , we know we need to focus on it .

But what's the right answer ?

So I have to answer that by first asking you a question .

That question is , what are you training for ?

You ?

See , because if you're training for strength or for hypertrophy , the answer could be different .

If you're training for strength guys .

There's one thing that you should always be seeking .

The first thing you should be seeking is efficiency .

And what I mean by that is you want to try , let's say you're doing a bench press .

We realize that the bench press is going to recruit our chest , our shoulders , our triceps , we're not trying to isolate on a bench press .

If we're trying to improve strength , we're trying to get those muscles to perform the work together .

I'm not trying to in this instance , say , hey , get those shoulders back .

Yes , to protect the shoulder .

But not for the sake of trying to get the chest to drive the movement and really , really , really squeeze , get that heart contraction on the chest as much as you can squeeze your hands together at the top .

It's about moving the bar and maintaining a proper bar speed because it matters actually moving with a velocity .

So you can increase your power as well because we know strength and power go hand in hand .

So it's not about being specific about trying to isolate a muscle .

However , if you're trying to train for hypertrophy , meaning increase the size of a muscle , then you should not be looking for efficiency .

But actually inefficiency .

How can you actually introduce new ways to make a rep harder ?

Because the more we can do that , the more stress we can deliver to a muscle and therefore help it to feel more overload and adapt in response by growing bigger .

So we have to look at a few different scenarios .

I'm going to actually use a lap pull down here and we're going to take a few examples here guys where we actually let's say train to a certain rep range for failure .

Now , we already know that train to failure is not always essential , especially depending upon the volume of your training .

But to make this this example , very easy to understand , we're going to say train to failure .

The first example here would be , let's say I'm using a rep range of actually write it down here .

Let's say I'm training with my 10 rep Macs on a lap pull down here and I'm going to fail at 10 .

But in this one here , I'm actually taking a similar approach that I was when I was training for strength and that is , I'm just worried about going from A to Z , moving the bar from A to Z here .

Right .

That's the first scenario .

The second scenario is I actually use a little bit of a lighter weight , not much , but let's say 12 , maybe 12 , 13 rep Macs .

And I'm training to 10 rep max failure , right ?

10 rep failure .

So , in these two scenarios and this one here , I'm really trying to be focused on increasing tension in a specific area of that lift .

So if I'm trying to grow my laps from an underhand lap , pull down , I'm really trying to squeeze .

So let's take a look at what these look like if I'm doing , let's say the first example here and I go to pull down .

I realize I have the biceps as my friends here .

I realize that I have my upper back as my friend .

I realize that I have my lats as a friend .

I realize that what I'm trying to do is get this bar down to my chest as efficiently as I can with multiple muscles participating .

OK .

That's scenario one .

And what happens is when I get to about rep number 10 , I'm trying to and I can't get it anymore because I basically fatigued the overall movement , not necessarily one specific muscle that participates in that movement .

That's scenario one .

Scenario number two is this one here where now I'm like , all right , I got to lighten this up a little bit because what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna focus on making this much more of an inefficient movement for my lap specifically .

So I don't want an overactivity and contribution for my fors trying to cheat this .

I don't want my biceps pulling too much here .

I want to get my elbows down into my sides , add ducted hard and back into extension .

So I can actually actively activate , maximally , activate the LATS .

So it looks more like this .

I come down , squeeze .

I hang out there for a second .

I come up a little bit slower for the eccentric .

I'm down , squeeze and come up , scream and come up please and come up and I come up .

Right .

So , and let's say how the last rep I fail at 10 .

Now that is a weight that I could actually normally handle if I didn't do all those extra things for a few more reps , 12 to 13 in particular .

But I stopped at 10 because I couldn't do anymore .

Those extra intensifying techniques leveled me out .

OK .

So now what's that do ?

Well , if we look at a graph here , if this is intensity , right ?

And this is my reps from 1 to 6 to 10 , from 1 to 5 to 10 , let's say halfway .

If we start on this graph with those two types of training , what do we have ?

Well , we know that the first one , the true 10 rep the 10 done for 10 and not worrying about the journey so much , that's going to be an intensity level , let's say of here .

Ok .

Now , the one that was at a 12 to 13 rep max , where would that fall on this intensity curve in terms of the rep below it ?

Hello , Jesse chiming in .

Good , good to know that you don't disappear on the intros .

So , now below it , he's right because it's , it's a lighter weight .

The intensity driven by that rep is a little bit lighter .

However , you know , I hope that I could take this and depending upon how I performed that rep in the journey that I did take to get to A to Z I could take this way the hell down below this .

And if you need to see an example of that , all you got to do is look at the following example here .

If I have some weight on here , just because it's a heavier weight doesn't mean that when I get in here and I start doing this , which you see a lot of guys do that does absolutely nothing .

That's bullshit when it comes to developing and trying to create her poetry in the LA .

That is just a waste of time and effort .

So I just took this , which was a heavier weight and I dropped it all the way down here , right ?

So we're not talking about that .

We're talking about this example here .

However , do realize that I could take that weight that I had .

That was a slightly lower weight and I can bring that intensity level right up from rep one up here or even higher because of how much intensity and focus I put into the , into the initial rep .

And then what winds up happening is their journey throughout the set .

So as this one goes , this is a high intensity rep , this is a high intensity rep .

This is a high intensity rep .

This is a high intensity rep .

I also have this mounting intensity here just because of the overall fatigue .

So it's climbing , it's climbing , it's climbing , it's climbing , climbing .

I get to 10 and I'm done this one down here .

This is pretty easy in terms of the intensity level because I'm not applying any of those extra techniques .

And you guys have felt that yourself , you go through rep 123456 .

It feels like the only ones that are hard are the last couple .

That's what I'm talking about here .

They're here , they're here , they're here , they're here .

Oh , we start to get towards the end now .

It kind of shoots up and it might even end a little bit more intensely because it was a your weight that we used .

But look at the difference in the quality of that set .

This is where I tell people all the time you seek inefficiency when you're trying to get hypertrophy and you're always going to wind up in a better place because all this accrued , additional intensity underneath this graph is what creates that stimulus for growth and overload .

That's much more significant than what we could do here .

Now , a couple more points , this is all meaningful guys .

I'm telling you if I take this concept , I go , I knew it .

All I need to do is go really light and get that tension time under 10 is everything time .

Guys , I preach time on attention a lot .

But it's not always a blanket statement of time on attention because I can come here and go and squeeze as hard as they want .

Squeeze , squeeze , squeeze , squeeze , squeeze , squeeze up , squeeze , squeeze , squeeze .

And that slow e centric , slow , slow , slow , slow , slow , slow , slow , you know all this super slow motion .

That's not doing anything either guys .

The threshold for , for intensity was too low .

This weight was not enough to create to cross that threshold to even make it productive unless you are training for a metabolic overload .

And a lot of guys are not necessarily prepared to train metabolically because the thing with metabolic training is you do take a light weight to failure but you better be prepared to take it to a level of intensity .

You haven't trained for with in a long time to make metabolic training effective .

It starts when it be the , the set starts when you start to burn .

Not when you burn , it's over when you start to burn , that's when your set starts and you go through that burn , you resist it more and more and more .

And it takes a mental toughness that a lot of guys don't apply .

They therefore making it ineffective .

So then you could say , well , if that's the case , do I discredit this attempt , this approach ?

And my answer to that also is no , you don't discredit that approach .

Why ?

Because this is still about there's still a huge value to this guys , despite the fact that this is great at creating hypertrophy .

This is also great at a lot of other things .

Number one , it's actually great at strength training just like it was on the on the on the example in the bench press in the beginning .

If I get stronger on this , if I become good at efficiently moving this bar , even on a lap , pull down to the point where I can keep increasing this pin from workout to work out to work out to work out .

Am I not getting stronger on this lift ?

All strength doesn't have to happen in a 2 to 3 to 5 rep range .

That's a myth .

You can get stronger in any rep range .

And what's great about that is as that top end strength improves there .

And this is also athletic because I am moving multiple muscles , getting muscles to contribute together , to move this bar .

It's not about isolating to create inefficient overload on the LATS .

This is a more efficient athletic lifting pattern .

But as this top end strength improves , guess what happens to this little green mark because it starts down here .

Well , this would go up , my overall strength would go up .

I might start at a higher level there , but the green also starts at a higher level .

So then when the green jumps up , it jumps up to a higher intensity level there .

So bringing up our top end strength is also going to bring up that , that adjusted strength that we had on that second example .

So guys , all of this matters , when you go to train , you have to understand how you're training , you have to understand the goals of your training .

And more importantly , you have to understand why you're there in the first place .

It's not about moving from point A to point B or point A to point Z .

However , we do it sometimes it's about the journey in between depending upon what it is you're training for .

There's a reason why we follow different rep branches and when we program them , we program them at specific places to elicit specific responses .

And we do that in all of our programs , depending upon the goal that you're trying to achieve right now .

They're all over at ax dot com .

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