For years, there have been widespread misconceptions about repetition ranges (i.e. – how many reps you do in a given set) and what these repetition ranges accomplish. These misconceptions occur and continue to be believed for a variety of reasons:

-the local natural, genetically gifted “wonder boy” does XYZ routine, so half his school copies him
-professional bodybuilding magazines want you to use routines that don’t work to get you to buy recovery-enhancing supplements, so they publish all these goofball routines in their magazines
-the “certified” personal trainer at the local big-name gym doesn’t really give (or know) a rat’s ass about training, as he’s just working there to hit on the girls on the exercises bikes – so really, he wouldn’t know a power rack from a Powerbar, much less the difference between training routines

Reasons like this could go on forever. Fact is, whatever the reason, many of these misconceptions have lasted for a looooooonnggg time…
In this week’s article, I’m going to try to clear up a few of the most common misconceptions and identify a couple things which should be taken into account when designing your training routine.

“High Reps Get You ‘Cut’”

No, they don’t. High reps get you, well, better at high reps. Getting “cut” (i.e. – making muscle definition more pronounced) is a matter of diet, rather than routine. Drop some bodyfat, and you’ll get “cut.” Now, using higher reps can have a slight effect on fat burning in that higher reps can burn more calories, but not enough so to make a very significant difference. You’d be better off performing some HIIT conditioning and adjusting your caloric intake if your goal is to get “cut.”

“High Reps Are Good For Building Endurance”

Not necessarily – as I discussed in my article a few weeks back “MMA Strength-Endurance Training – Be Stronger…Longer” (found at http://www.mmaweekly.com/this_week/weekly_columns/index.html#strength), while higher reps may build some overall endurance, it won’t do squat for your strength-endurance. See the article for more explanation.

“Using Heavy Weight with Low Reps Will Get You Big”

No, eating a lot of food will get you big. Now, traditionally, it’s been thought (and rightly so) that if you were looking to put on some muscle, that using heavier weight for sets of lower to medium weight would work well. While this is true, a couple of other things have to be done as well.
First of all, just as long weight (bodyfat) requires adjusting your diet to eliminate calories, gaining weight (muscle) requires adjusting your diet to add in excess calories. Without the excess calories, I don’t care what kind of routine you’re on, unless you already eat a lot (in which case you’d be overweight anyway), you’re not going to gain any muscle.
Secondly, you need to optimize rest times between sets. Hypertrophy training (i.e. – gaining muscle size) requires a larger amount of volume of training within a shorter amount of time. The way to do this is to keep rest periods relatively short.

“Few Sets of Low Reps Can’t Help You Build Strength Without Putting on Some Size. No Extra Muscle = No Extra Size.”

Wanna bet? Doing just a couple sets of a couple reps each or almost each day (routines much like that outlined in my “Singles & Doubles 2” book or even like those espoused by Pavel Tsatsouline) can build strength so quick, it would make your head spin. Now, granted, the strength built is based around improving neural efficiency, and there have been arguments as to the carryover of such strength to other activities, but that’s another article. The point is that you can dramatically increase strength and not gain a pound of bodyweight.

What Else to Consider

When designing a strength training routine, aside from the number of sets, how many reps, and how much weight you use, there are a couple other things you should figure on calculating.

Diet

Rest Intervals

I think that rest intervals are one of the most important, yet most overlooked parts of setting up a strength routine. Many times it is the rest intervals you use that can change the entire scope and results of a workout regimen. For example, say you’re performing Barbell Clean & Press for 10 sets of 1 rep. Using 3 minutes of rest time between each set, you’re got a workout designed pretty much just to improve basic brute strength of the Clean & Press – maybe add a little muscle size if you’re in a caloric surplus. However, if you do that same workout, but instead of resting 3 minutes, you rest only 20 seconds, you’ve got a workout that will not only build brute strength (though not as much as the workout with the longer rest periods), but also heavily taxes strength-endurance and easily lends itself to Hypertrophy training.

Just be sure you are using the correct rest intervals – the shorter they are, the more you’ll be working endurance/strength-endurance. The longer they are, the more you’ll be working just brute strength.

Train Hard, Rest Hard, Play Hard.