🌱 Should You Add Reps or Weight?

SHOULD YOU ADD REPS OR WEIGHT?

383 words | 1 min 23 sec read

QUOTE OF THE DAY 🌱

This is a question you will no doubt have asked yourself during your training journey - and it makes logical sense.

We will get to a point with an exercise where the weight we becomes less challenging.

The 10kg dumbbell we could only manage 8 Reps with 4 weeks ago we can now easily get 12 Reps with.

In Tuesdays issue we discussed progressive overload (doing more each session) is the key to muscle growth and strength development.

But when applying progressive overload, how should we do it?

As a Coach I like to prescribe rep ranges in my programming, this allows us to develop different qualities like strength and hypertrophy within the same cycle

whilst allowing for a drop off in repetitions as the sets go on.

But before we get into the debate of whether to first add reps or weight we need to make sure we are ticking the following boxes:

1. We are training within 0-3 Reps of failure (or 7/10 effort)

2. Technique is good

3. We are training throughout the exercises full range of motion

4. We are resting appropriately between sets

I always encourage my members to first build on last weeks reps and keep the weight the same.

This allows them to continue to learn the skill of the exercise and grow muscle.

But we can’t add reps for ever.

At some point we have to add weight to the bar!

TAKEHOME MESSAGE 💪

Adding reps is a good way to develop the skill and grow more muscle (more volume is great for building more muscle).

But doing 50 Reps per set per exercise will leave us in the gym for 4 hours at a time - we have a life!

Once you can complete an additional 2x Reps ABOVE the target rep range for the last 2x Sets on a given exercise

That’s a great indicator to add more weight next time.

If you’re specifically training for strength, then weekly additions in weight will be the priority..

But by adding reps, then weight - we are growing muscle AND getting stronger simultaneously.

So let’s get to work.

Thank you for reading. Have a great day 🌱

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