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Strength Training Basics – How Many Reps Should You Do?
07-05-2010
Tagged Under : Reps, Strength Training
If you lift weights, you do a certain number of reps of each exercise. Most of the time, you do between 8-16 reps, depending on your goals but, if you’re new to strength training, you may have no idea how many reps you should be doing. I had a client ask me about this the other day, wondering why I always had her doing 12 reps. Obviously, it amuses me to force other people to lift weights repeatedly but, beyond that there is a good reason for that.
8-16 reps isn’t just an arbitrary number. That rep range is based on percentages of , which is the amount of weight you could lift just one time for any given exercise. People much smarter than I have figured out that when we lift weights at above 85% of our one rep maximum, which comes out to about 6 reps per set, the risk of injury increases dramatically. When we train at 65% of our one rep max, about 15-16 reps per set, there’s a decrease in strength gains. That leaves 70-80%, or 8-12 reps, as the best range for building strength and muscle while avoiding injury.
What about you? Do you get confused about how many reps to do? How did you come up with your rep ranges and what does a typical workout look like for you? Leave a comment and give us the details about how you choose your reps.
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