Your Opinions on Rep Ranges in Strength Training

Jungman said:

I had a eureka moment reading that, cheers. I always thought conditioning was how fast you can recover from one set before performing the next, not in how many reps you can do in the actual set itself. What I could not work out, even from my session yesterday, was why after my main work set I could not bust out more reps in my backoff set (with far less weight). Perhaps I need to work on conditioning and overcoming fatigue.

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+1 to that. I always thought strength training was enhancing your muscles to do any task you wanted; be it lifting something heavy once or doing one task all day long.

I also thought that the 'maximum you can lift' was pigeon holed under 'power lifting'.

So in my case of rowing i wanted a) toned muscles for better endurance and b) stronger muscles for extra performance.

So after some time training like i mentioned (high reps low weight) i could not only row better but do more physical work easier and recover much faster. For me anyway, that's what i have associated 'Strength' to be, that and looking at some strongmen comps you see guys doing a lot more than just one rep of some test, there are nearly always several or more to do (squats, farmers walk, atlas stones etc)

Well you are correct a lot of tasks require strength AND endurance, especially sports and competitions of sorts, but people just get confused, once you are strong enough to complete a task once you now have enough strength to do it, if you want to keep repeating the task no further strength is needed IE you do not need to get stronger you need to have muscle endurance. Hence why we add weights in weight lifting to increase strength.

Doing weight training and most other activities will build up both strength and endurance, so doing sets of 10 and adding weight when it gets easy will still get you stronger, but getting stronger will only have limited carry over to endurance. A person that can bench press 400lb x1 can not necessarily do 100 push ups or vice versa, there is very little carry over.

I often hear people say I am not strong enough to to this or that, and most of the time they talk about endurance tasks such as doing lots of push ups, chins, sit ups etc. Doing 500 push ups does not really demonstrate any more strength than doing 100, it shows the muscles ability to perform a given task repeatedly.

If you get a 80kg martial artist that does not train weights and a 80kg strength athlete (Oni for example who has strong lifts) you will find the martial artist will be able to to a crap load of body weight push ups, dips, squats etc but his strength will be no where near that of Oni. Both train for different things, and both will on average perform better at a given task than someone who sits and drinks beer all day long, both both will excel in different things.

Big Mick, while I share your general sentiments I have a situation I would like you to consider
Exhibit A is training for the NFL combine 225 bench rep test. His current number is 15 reps and his 1rm 315. If all else stays equal but his 1rm increases to 365 do you think he will now bette his 15 reps?

In theory he should as the 225 is now a smaller percentage of his 1rm and his initial work load at 225 will be easy for him, especiilally if he has still kept up is rep training and not just trained with one rep to increase his strength. But increasing his 1 rep max would not be the most efficient way of increasing the number of reps he can do with a given weight. there will always be some carry over but the higher the reps get the less carry over in general.

And again the other way around increasing his reps from 15-20 should see a slight increase in his 1rm, but would not expect it to be major or again the most efficient way of increasing his 1rm.

There will always be exceptions and freaks out there that will defy all rules.

The Hamburgler said:

Big Mick, while I share your general sentiments I have a situation I would like you to consider
Exhibit A is training for the NFL combine 225 bench rep test. His current number is 15 reps and his 1rm 315. If all else stays equal but his 1rm increases to 365 do you think he will now bette his 15 reps?

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of course he will