The Benefits Of Periodizing Your Rep Scheme

Many of those people who are interested in building muscle, will tend to find a program they enjoy and stick with it for a period of three to four months, before changing to something else.

While this is generally a good approach, since in order to prevent a plateau, you'll want to be changing your workout around every so often, it may not be exactly optimal for building the best, long-lasting muscle tissue.

Common Workout Program Rep Set-Ups

Most workout programs use a common rep set-up where you'll stay within whatever given range you're aiming for.

Those who are aiming for hypertrophy try and stick around the 6-8 rep range as they've been told this will deliver the most results.

Those who want strength gains, they shoot for 3-5 reps, as that will allow them to hoist the biggest amount of weight.

Then, those who are looking for more endurance benefits will elect to use a 10+ rep range, as this forces the muscles to adapt to contracting and relaxing for a longer duration in time.

The higher the rep range utilized, generally the decrease in weight lifted.

Where The Problem Lies

Now, when looking at this, the big problem is that if you are training in the hypertrophy range, your muscles will definitely grow, but you're results may not be long lasting.

Your muscles will look larger so long as you are training them at least a few times a week, but when you take time off, they may dramatically reduce in size.

This is really quite common when training using this protocol.

If you train for size, however, and use a lower rep range, you will be slower to grow, but you'll also find that your muscles don't start shrinking nearly as quickly if you take time off from the gym.

The difference between the two protocols is the way in which the muscle fibers react to the given stress load.

So, to get optimal results then, what you ideally want to do is periodize your rep range so that you are getting the best of both worlds at all times.

The Workout Set-Up

To design this, take the first two weeks of the month and work in the range of 6-8 reps. This will allow you to target in on the hypertrophy side of the equation.

After that, drop those reps down to the three to five category and bump up the weight.

You're main focus here is not on completing those five reps, but rather, hoisting that weight as best as you can.

Do this for the third week, and then during the fourth week, back off the weight considerably and do ten reps per set.

This last week essentially is then a de-loading week, which allows your muscles a chance to recover better, without taking complete rest.

Further, since this is a higher rep range, you will get a small amount of more endurance-type training as well.

So, if you're looking to build muscle optimally consider this set-up. It really doesn't take much to vary things like this but the pay-off can be well worth it.