Sets and Reps

B

Biggie

0
Ok once and for all i'm bulking, working out for mainly size gains. How many sets of how many reps should i be doing? I'm about 90% sure that 8-12 reps is right, but i don't know about sets. I heard it's better to do a lot of sets, like around 10, but i've been doing only 3 sets. Should i be doing more?
 
Optimally you want to do 10 - 20 sets, with little rest in between, even if this means doing it at a lower weight.
 
I'm not so sure that more Sets are better, but I know that some Bodybuilders go with a lower Rep limit, even lower than you've mentioned here... I've seen 6-8 Reps for Size, 8-10 for Size/Strength, 10-12 for Strength, 12-15 for Tone... ...that's the range of descriptions that I've seen.

I can't see going hard and heavy for a small number of reps, and then trying to do 10 sets - it doesn't make sense. It opens you to injury, and must overtax the muscles in some way.
 
Working at high lifting percentages (85%+) is hard on the CNS but those parameters are important because of overload and they force the muscles to work harder.

You'll see a lot of 3X10 setups in magazines and yet if you were to reverse that order (10X3), you'd still have the same time-under-tension, same amount of reps, and yet the amount of weight you can lift for each set would be greater, which leads to-more strength and more size.

Biggie, you might try a 5X8 approach and hit each muscle group with 3 movements.
 
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