Your Opinions on Rep Ranges in Strength Training

[Headley]

How strong?

What is your squat, bench, deadlift?

Strong enough to do a lot of physically demanding work for as long as i wanted that wasn't weight lifting related... like shearing, furniture moves, rowing so fucking hard i could turn our boat around, and i could also run faster and further

It was more aimed at group sports

 

[spartacus]

some of things I have seen done by surf rowers over the years has astounded me.

Just rowing your ass off in a swell flat out is going to build great strength, as I have observed of rowers doing chins and other movements.

It is what I say consistently, there are plenty of ways to get strong and powerful.

 

[jj80]

Some great replies in this thread, is Prilepin's chart enough volume though?

If my 1rm on bench was 100kg, would 24 total reps of 55kg-65kg for a workout really be optimal? What sort of frequency is that assuming per week? I would think a trainee benching 100kg could do it easily in 2 sets.

Or are you supposed to use the entire table, and do every row? (Again, what frequency though?). Feel like I'm missing something but I've seen it before.

 

[Sticky]

Strong enough to do a lot of physically demanding work for as long as i wanted that wasn't weight lifting related... like shearing, furniture moves, rowing so fucking hard i could turn our boat around, and i could also run faster and further

It was more aimed at group sports

My point is you said you got really really strong doing a silly style of training (in regards to strength).

Now if a novice reads this thread, and takes your advice on programming/repranges, they should also know how strong you are.


That said, if your programming is working for your current goals, stick with it.

 

[Big Mick]

And big Mick, you keep lifting your heavy weights, because that is what you have to do, according to you.

This is what I love about this forum, people just make shit up with no factual backing.

Where did you get the information from that I exclusively lift heavy??? Strength is not one of my primary gaols and as such I do not follow a low rep program designed for maximal strength gains.

I have trained for over 20 years and have never focused on strength but rather endurance and sporting performance with mostly high reps, this is why my strength is relatively low (see lifts in my signature all are still current).

In my late teens I could do 200 plus correct form push ups in one sitting no problems at all often a single session involved 5-10km warm up run, 200-400 push ups and 500 body weight squats as well as other torture, a fitness session would last two plus hours, at that time I could only bench about 75kg or so, and squat 80kg at about 90kg body weight (fighting weight of 85kg). My goals were conditioning and endurance geared towards fighting sports that I was competing in nationally and internationally at the time.

I can still easily do 50-100 full push ups today, yet only bench 130kg, so according to your theory I should be able to bench 200kg just beacuse I can do lots of push ups

I got up to 172.5kg (touch and go) in bench press, 155kg clean power clean, and I always did mostly moderate weights and higher reps. Perhaps I did not know how to train.

OK so lets follow your theory some more, I could do 200 push ups but only bench 75kg, so if your theory is correct when you benched 172.5kg you should easily have been able to do at least 400-500 push ups.

Strong enough to do a lot of physically demanding work for as long as i wanted that wasn't weight lifting related... like shearing, furniture moves, rowing so fucking hard i could turn our boat around, and i could also run faster and further

It was more aimed at group sports

some of things I have seen done by surf rowers over the years has astounded me.

Just rowing your ass off in a swell flat out is going to build great strength, as I have observed of rowers doing chins and other movements.

It is what I say consistently, there are plenty of ways to get strong and powerful.

Again I think you people are still confusing strength with conditioning and endurance.

Strength is how much weight you can lift once for a given exercise, that is the maximum load you can move/bench/squat/press, dead lift what ever. None of the activities mentioned in the quotes above (apart from moving furniture may be), give any indication of strength, if you can shear one sheep you are strong enough to shear sheep, thats that, you don't have to be any stronger to shear 1000 sheep, you just got to have muscular and mental endurance to do so, no additional strength required as you already demonstrated you are strong enough when you sheared the first one.

Chins and stuff do not demonstrate strength either, again if you can do one chin you are strong enough to do chins, to do 10 you do not require any additional strength, just endurance, doing 20 chin ups does not demonstrate strength in any way it just demonstrates muscular endurance at a given load, doing one chin up with 100kg strapped to you will demonstrate strength over a person of the same body weight that may only be able to one chin with 20kg strapped to them.

I have never really trained chins, a mate of mine used to love them, he regularly did sets of 20 chins in good form, I could only ever do 10 or less, I can only do about 5 or six now, yet I am stronger today than when I used to be able to do 10 and I was way stronger than my mate who could do 20.

So do not confuse muscular endurance with strength two completely different things. Otherwise all strong man would be great endurance athletes and long distance runners.

 

[Sticky]

Some great replies in this thread, is Prilepin's chart enough volume though?
Its plenty man, but my programs have more.

If my 1rm on bench was 100kg, would 24 total reps of 55kg-65kg for a workout really be optimal? What sort of frequency is that assuming per week? I would think a trainee benching 100kg could do it easily in 2 sets.
I would say not, and if you look at the sheiko templates, you would probably do a set of 6 at 60, few sets of 3 at 72.5, then a few sets of 2 at say 85 for example.


Or are you supposed to use the entire table, and do every row? (Again, what frequency though?). Feel like I'm missing something but I've seen it before.
No, do not do every rep/set in every row in 1 session...... though it would be a solid workout lol.

In red

 

[spartacus]

Mick,
I apologise for not observing your rep range on your log.

but there are guys who just do chins and bodyweight exercises that are indeed stronger than most people on this forum, albeit just a few. I refer to NFL legend Walker who did 370 pounds first time he did max bench. He weighed 100kg, 5% bodyfat, 10.11 for 100m, and 1m standing vertical, so fair bet he could have done massive squat and deadlift first time. Same is true of Bo Jackson,110kg nFL and baseball legend, who did not do weights. Please don't insult them by saying they are not strong athletes. They would probably piss themselves laughing, as would the NFL coaches that tested them for power, the ultimate indicator or strength prowess.


Of course, a guy weighing 100kg is not going to do as many bodyweight reps as a guy 75kg. Common sense, that is why power to weight ratio of world records of strength athletes declines sharply from 90kg and higher divisions.

I once did 50 full rep dips at 80kg; my best when I got stronger was 35 but I weighed around 100kgs. in theory I should have done more at heavier bodyweight as my bench press to bodyweight ratio was actually higher at 100kg bodyweight.

Reason why some people are better at reps is their genetics and training specificity. This does not mean that a guy, just doing chins or dips, will not get stronger with different rep ranges.

and, I strongly disagree, chin-ups is a strength exercise.

Also, please post a clip of a one set max of your pushups or dips. We both bench about the same at moment (130kg), so I would be interested to see you do 100 reps in one go, or even how far you can beat me at reps. They have to be full range though. Pushups full extension and touching chest, or dips rock bottom and full extension.

Your analogy about strength and endurance is poor. Power sports operate up to 30 seconds in duration, which allows room to move in terms of reps chosen to train with, but endurance is aerobic, an entirely different energy system, albeit a good endurance athlete will also need good speed say in running, cycling and swimming.

 

[Big Mick]

I still think you are missing my point, of course you will get stronger if you train even at higher reps but it's minimal.

This thread is about the most effective way to increase strength, not a hand full of freaks who fall out of the norm.

High rep training certainly is not the most effective and efficient way to do so, no mater how many exceptions you can find.

Don't have a video and living where I am living I am on dial up speed internet, so watching or uploading videos is an impossibility, even photos are often pointless and can take a few minuted to upload.

You don't have to worry about my push up form, have been doing them since I was 12, and I know how to do a full push ups, and find them quite easy to do, does not seem to give me a 200kg bench though. Again it's muscular endurance not strength that is required to do multiple reps, sufficient strength is demonstrated with the first rep already.

Used to work with this Polish guy who could lift heaps of heavy shit at work, he used to drink Vodka every night, yet never trained with weights in his life, so may be we should advise the OP to stop training and start drinking Vodka, or may be he needs to join the NFL?? See how there is always an exception, but I bet 99.9% of guys who demonstrate extraordinary strength will be training with heavy weights mainly using low reps.

 

[spartacus]

ok, but you cant mock reality.

There are guys that just do light stuff, supposedly not strength related, that are freaks of nature. They will blow virtually all forum members away with their power and strength. Just look them up.

If a guy does explosive pushups, even clapping between reps, how is this any less effective than doing bench presses.


Of course, after a while, he should or could be doing more reps, which would lead to the conclusion that heavier bench presses then become more suitable, or another exercise, but he still would have built up his strength from a low base.

If the given exercise works the muscle fibre 100%, which can be done by speed of movement as well as by weight load, then strength will be built. I can point to triple jumpers who built huge quads just from explosive bounding.

People do not have to maximal lifting to prove very powerful when actually being tested doing one rep or a similar explosive power test.

The muscle does not distinguish between a barbell or bodyweight. It responds to the intensity of the stimulus.

 

[Big Mick]

ok, but you cant mock reality.

There are guys that just do light stuff, supposedly not strength related, that are freaks of nature. They will blow virtually all forum members away with their power and strength. Just look them up.

If a guy does explosive pushups, even clapping between reps, how is this any less effective than doing bench presses.


Of course, after a while, he should ort could be doing more reps, which would lead to the conclusion that heavier bench presses then become more suitable, or another exercise, but he still would have built up his strength from a low base.

If the resistance works the muscle fibre 100%, which can be done by speed of movement as well as load, then strength will be built. I can point to triple jumpers who built huge quads just from explosive bounding.

The muscle does not distinguish between a barbell or bodyweight. It responds to the intensity of the stimulus.

You are still talking about exceptions to the rule, with millions of athletes in the world you will always find some.

So anyone that can squat 500 pounds should also be a champion high jumper?? And we are not talking about muscle size either, I think muscle size can be build better by higher reps in some persons.

We are talking the most weight you can lift just once.

I doubt doing explosive push ups and clapping will beat the same guy doing heavy benching for building max strength, but it will get him good at doing explosive push ups and clapping, but not much else really.

The easiest and most efficient way of being able to do something and getting good at it is to do it, not to do something else and hope to get good at the thing you actually want to be good at.

Have another great story for you, a friend of the family wanted to join the Police Force, yet he had trouble passing the swimming test to qualify, so he started going to the gym, three months later he again failed his swimming test, by chance I was talking to him and he told me what had happened. Not once did he go to the pool to practice swimming, I could not believe it, he went to the gym and trained weights for three months hoping to pass his swimming test This is a 100% true story

 

[spartacus]

funny story about guy needed to pass swimming. I am not a swimmer, and gym has not helped me. He needs to learn specificity.

to return to debate, explosive pushups will only go so far, as reps may be too high to get optimal strength which I believe can be developed in many ways of reps and speed movement from 70% or higher.

I don't train on pushups myself, because I can do 60 good ones, rather I work on weights mostly 60-70%, always have and this got me reasonable strength levels for someone who was to skinny at my height. never fulfilled my potential.

as for 99.9%, not true. Just look up the programs of the great soviet Olympic lifters, they trained much lighter than the Bulgarians but did just as well.

Like I suggested, they were more into speed and other factors, but delivered results.

There are many ways to skin a cat, training heavy is just one of them, even for weightlifters.

 

[Undercover]

What programs do the likes of Jay and Phil do?

 

[spartacus]

As for 99.9%, here is one from a powerlifter, one who deadlifts 455kg, who does not necessarily always train heavy.

'usually train my squat with higher reps and speed. I try to use it to fatigue my quadriceps, allowing me to maintain better form on the DL unconsciously. I prefer not to alter my form consciously. Rather, I try to program my body to do what I want it to do naturally.
I generally try to keep everything feeling light and consistently keep my work sets in the 70-80% range. After all, speed is king.

Interview with Benedikt Magnusson(World Record Deadlift Holder.) | Brotherhood of Iron


And for the majority of sports, where people do weights, yep speed is indeed king. After all, only a small percentage of athletes, interested in power and strength, are ever going to maximal lifts, but even then I could find many that train a lot lighter than many text books advocate.

Here is one from two-time Olympic super heavyweight champ (256kg clean and jerk 1976).

'Even though Alexeev competed in two exercises, there were extensive variations of those exercises used in his training as well as a number of different assistance exercises. This kept his training interesting. Second, it demonstrates that if an exercise or a quality is to be improved it must be emphasized in training. There was a disproportionate focus on the snatch, snatch pulls, squats, and presses in training, whereas the clean and jerk was minimized. At least in Alexeev’s case, there wasn’t a need to perform the majority of exercises with more than 70% of 1-RM in training. In other words, even when seeking to improve strength there isn’t necessarily a need to beat up the athletes with too much intensity'.
http://www.yourhpservices.com/blog/2012/01/classic-article-alexeevs-training/



In other words, it is not just about grinding out heavy weights; there a whole lot of variables that need to be considered.

I do agree, however, that weights are the most basic and readily available tool to build strength quickly, but argue that the optimal rep range and % intensity will long remain a source of debate. Too many champs that don't fit the mould of needing to lift heavy.

 

[Big Mick]

There are millions of variables, and everyone responds differently, my personal goals now are to train for the sake of training, I don't complete in Body Building or any strength or endurance sports.

I lift weights for my own personal satisfaction and to 'look' like I am lifting, I also want to have reasonable strength, but it's not my main concern, really it should not matter to me how much I can bench and how many push ups I can do, but it still does, as I measure my progress in the mirror as well as by the numbers, for no reason at all.

I love it when I am somewhere and people struggle to do something or move something and I just walk over and pick it up. I am full of stories but one I recently had when I was visiting my mum on the Gold Coast, they had a skip bin and there was all this stuff around the bin (cabinets, washing machine etc) and the guy they had doing the clean up had put it there waiting for his mate to get there to lift it into the bin. I got out of the car after a 6 hour drive looked at it and just picked the stuff up and threw it in the bin, and proceeded to unpack the car.

My missus just shook her head and mum talked about it all week

I loved it...haha

 

[DREADLIFT]

I think Sticky answered the thread in like the third post, being World Champion and all, how the fuck is there 10 pages.

 

[spartacus]

yes, I am the same.

No real reason to worry about strength levels, but I just enjoy the challenge of such a hobby, one that will help us age that bit more gracefully while holding some reasonable everyday physical abilities. I could think of a lot worse hobbies to undertake, or more boring subjects to argue about.

 

[Shrek]

What programs do the likes of Jay and Phil do?

Search them on YouTube and you'll get an idea. Being bodybuilders they do 4-5 day body part splits with lots of volume. LOTS


Sent from my iPod touch from Pluto

 

[Jungnaut]

Strength is how much weight you can lift once for a given exercise, that is the maximum load you can move/bench/squat/press, dead lift what ever. None of the activities mentioned in the quotes above (apart from moving furniture may be), give any indication of strength, if you can shear one sheep you are strong enough to shear sheep, thats that, you don't have to be any stronger to shear 1000 sheep, you just got to have muscular and mental endurance to do so, no additional strength required as you already demonstrated you are strong enough when you sheared the first one.

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.

 

[BigMan92]

I just want to know what your experience with rep ranges with respect to strength training, long term. As I am a bit stuck with my training.

Most popular beginner programs advocate a 5 reps to build a foundation of strength. This works well as long as there is linear gains to be made. Well, what happens beyond this?

What I have found is that while I can continue to make gains on a 5 rep range, trying to do the equivalent on a higher rep range (8 or more) has me seriously lacking even with a lighter weight. This is more obvious with pushing exercises.

For example, my bench is 95kg 5 reps. I can push 3 reps out at 100kg. But what good is that if I can barely get 8 reps out at 90kg? So - what really should I be doing, keep grinding away at 8 reps or drop the weight down and start doing 8 reppers?

In short, I don't feel particularly strong when I am failing at 8 reps at a lower weight than my 5 rep weight. Even with sufficient rest periods between sets. So what can I do from now to try and build my strength/stamina up?

for the bench press part you should try changing the exercise. i havent been able to get past 100kg so i changed my grip to reverse grip (palms facing toward my face) and used the smith machine because your chest needs to adapt before using an unassisted bench press.

I noticed my upper chest and the inside of my chest was being worked a lot more then normal bench does. I went for 50kgs to 80-90 in a matter of weeks and noticed my chest was allot bigger.

finnally i tried bench press and managed 5 reps of 105 with no spotter. this was a pb. hope this helps out

 

[0ni]

[MENTION=4221]Sticky[/MENTION];
I find that exercises that limit my strength are best for getting me stronger.
Front squats, deficit stiff legged pulls, close grip bench presses
My squat went up so fucking fast when I did nothing but front squats and jump squats. I don't know if this is what they mean by "build strength then demonstrate it" but I generally do most of my training on other exercises now and do very little in my competition style. It also improved my technique in the competition exercises

There is also the chance that I haven't figured out how to train the competition exercises though. But this is the correlation that I've noticed. To the point where my front squat hasn't gone up since forever but simply doing them has raised my squat considerably. This is only in 6 months though so who knows what it means in the long term.