1. Decide your target number of repetitions
The repetition continuum is a useful concept when designing training programs for muscle building.
Stimulating muscle growth requires performing weight training exercises with an amount of weight that typically only allows you to perform 1–20 repetitions.
In general, the repetition states that weights you can only lift for 1–5 repetitions tend to build more strength, weights you can lift for 8–12 repetitions tend to
build more muscle, and weights you can lift more than 15 times tend to increase muscular endurance.
Understand that these ranges will have some crossover, meaning that 3-repetition sets with the respective weight will cause some muscle growth, 8-repetition sets will build some strength, and 20-repetition sets will build muscle as well.
Additionally, recent suggests that different individuals may respond better to lower or higher repetition ranges when it comes to building muscle.
To put it simply, depending on your size, your muscles may grow more with lower reps using heavy weights or with high reps using lighter weights.
2. Choose the right amount of weight
Typically, the weight must be heavy enough that performing much more than 20 reps is impossible.
The weight you choose to use should leave you at or near failure on your specified number of repetitions.
For example, if you’re performing a set of 10 repetitions, by the tenth repetition, you should be unable or nearly unable to perform another repetition.
You should rarely have more than “two reps in the tank” by the end of a set if your goal is building muscle.
The overall implication of the repetition range continuum is that you should go through different phases of training using different repetition ranges to see what
gives your body the most muscle growth.
3. Choose your exercises well
As mentioned, muscle building is specific to the muscle being worked.
For example, to build bigger biceps, you need to perform exercises that work the biceps. This could be an isolated bicep exercise, such as a bicep curl, or a compound movement that uses the biceps, such as a pullup.
Compound and isolation movements can be equally effectiveTrusted Source at leading to muscle hypertrophy in terms of the best exercise type for muscle building.
Nevertheless, your training should include compound and isolation movementsfor the best long-term fitness results.
Compound movements like a barbell back squat effectively stimulate multiple large muscle groups in a single exercise and provide more functional movement for
real-life activities. This leads to both more efficient workouts and more practical muscle strength.
Isolation movements are an excellent way to target specific muscles, and beginners may initially find them safer and easier to learn than compound movements.
Additionally, isolation movements are typically easier to perform when you’re fatigued, as you’re not stabilizing your entire body.
This may allow you a few extra targeted sets at the end of a workout when you’re otherwise too exhausted to do another compound exercise.
4. Structure your workout to avoid overtraining
A good rule of thumb is to perform 3 sets of 3–5 compound movements, followed by 3 sets of 1–2 isolation movements per workout.
Generally, you do your heaviest sets using compound movements and perform higher repetition ranges on your isolation movements.
Assuming you’re performing 3 working sets per exercise, limit your total combined compound and isolation movement exercises to 5–7 movements per workout.
This allows you to benefit from each type of exercise while maximizing the overall muscle-building potential of your training program and avoiding any symptoms of
overtraining.
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