The Best Repetition Range for You

What is the best repetition range for your workouts? This is a question that is often discussed and has many rumours surrounding it. Generally, the distinction is made between low, medium and high repetitions. Below, you'll find a brief description of each of these rep ranges along with their strengths and weaknesses.

Low Repetition Range

Anything between one and about seven repetitions would be considered "low repetitions". If you are using an amount of weight for an exercise that you can only lift a handful of times, then this is clearly a high weight-load for your body. In this repetition range, the weights will feel heavy, even during the first rep of the first set.

The greatest benefit of training with low repetitions is that they stimulate the greatest strength increase. Note that I wrote "strength" and not "muscle size", though. If muscle size is what you're after, then low repetitions aren't the ideal choice.

Of course, doing fewer reps takes less time than doing more repetitions. This has it's own benefits and drawbacks: While it saves time for your overall workout, this also means that your muscles are under stress for a reduced period of time. This, in turn, can mean less growth stimulation.

Perhaps the greatest drawback of low repetition ranges is that there's a greater risk of injury, due to the high weight-loads. Obviously, you have to be especially careful when hauling around these kinds of weights (especially when doing free-weights exercises).

Medium Rep Range

This rep range is between 8 and 12 repetitions. This is every bodybuilder's favourite repetition range, since it's been shown repeatedly that doing 8-12 reps is best for hypertophy (increase in muscle size). You won’t see the strength gains you get from doing lower reps with higher weights, but you’ll certainly look like, you’re growing stronger.

Positive and negative aspects of this rep range are quite obvious: If your goal is to grow larger muslces, then 8-12 is your perfect repetition range. If actual strength increase is more important to you, then this rep range is not ideal.

Highest Repetition Range

Anything above 12 or 15 repetitions is in the high rep range Performing more than around twelve repetitions of an exercise will generally take longer than half a minute. 30 seconds is about the outer threshold of what can be called strength training. If an exercise lasts longer than that, you’re already entering “cardio” territory, from a biological perspective, at least.

This doesn’t mean that a higher rep range has no merits, of course. It simply means that your body needs to recruit different resources to keep up high repetitions and this kind of training is not best suited for muscle growth.

There's one very commong, and plain wrong, rumour about high repetitions: High rep ranges do not build “lean muscles” rather than “bulky muscles”, as is often claimed. High rep ranges simply stimulate less muscle growth, but you can’t really influence the shape of your muscles with a particular way of exercising.

In conclusion, for most people, low to medium repetition ranges are ideal. Having said that, it's actually also a good idea to switch between different repetition ranges from time to time, as diversity in training is very good for your overall fitness.

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