What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com. If you could do me one favor? Could you please
stop counting already? Like counting your reps. Because for those that count reps instead of on
how they're performing their reps, you're going to leave a lot of gains on the table. And I want
to show you an alternative approach that I think is going to be very helpful to you. So, we have a
wide array of numbers up here on this board from one all the way to 33 and beyond. And I can tell
you one thing, as a matter of fact, and that's every one of these ranges will build muscle. So,
it should be a big relief to you because there's no one single magic number. And a
lot of people will actually apply a number, like a magic number to gains. Right? Sets of eight sets
of ten sets of five, or they might even go in, expand the range a little bit, 10 to 12, 5 to
7. But there's really nothing magical about that range in terms of that number being the producer
of gains. As a matter of fact, what you really need to do is stop focusing on where you're going
to end up and start focusing on two different things a broader range, and also the journey
to get to where you're going to end up if you really want to see your most substantial gains.
A lot of times this come from programs. People will see a program that will call
for sets of eight, and that mindset gets you really focused on landing on a and choosing
your weight accordingly. And whether or not it's telling you to reach failure eight or
whether or not it's even talking in RPE and tell you to leave it one or
two in the tank with an end goal of eight, you're still kind of fixated on the number.
Instead, what I try to do is apply a bucket mentality, a weight class mentality. And the
first weight class I sort of tell you to focus on is the heavy weight class,
and that's just somewhere in this broad range of reps. So, we'll get to the details in a second.
The next thing I say is sort of the moderate range and I expand mine a little bit beyond 12 to like
14. So somewhere in this range. And the next one will be a light range. And this is a pretty broad
range because we're going to go from here all the way around and then sort of back to around 30.
And then we had this range all the way up here, which I actually disagree with people on, and
believe that even over 30 is capable of building muscle. So, it'd be very, very light weights.
And if I was going to apply an exercise sample for you to understand how this works, well on a
dumbbell curl for me, if I grab something fairly heavy, maybe 60s, even 55s or 60s,
I'm going to fall somewhere in this range. Now, obviously, I can go even heavier and go towards
the one rep max side of it. Not going to look very pretty, but I can do that, and I'd fall somewhere
in here or I'd grab maybe 40s or 45s and know that I can comfortably fall somewhere in this range. Or
I grab maybe 20s or 25s or maybe even 30s, and I fall somewhere in this range. And if I wanted to,
I can grab even very, very lightweight like 5s or 10s and keep repping out to thirties and forties
and fifties somewhere up there. And what we need to focus on though is not necessarily
what number exactly you're going to fall on, because I don't think that matters as much,
is what effect you're trying to get from each of these ranges, Because we know that each one of
them is capable, as I said in the very beginning, of producing gains. So, if I were to focus on the
heavy range of the heavy category here, the weight class, I'm focusing not necessarily on
failure as much as I'm focusing on the ability to drive high levels of tension with the exercises.
I'm choosing for this rep range. So, if I took an exercise like the squat, I don't have to take
a squat to failure, many times we don't. I don't have to take a deadlift to failure,
many times you would not want to do that, especially for the safety of the exercise.
You're just trying to drive high levels of tension through the heavy weights that you use
normally to perform those exercises and that in and of itself is a driver of hypertrophy. Now as
we start to shift into the to the lighter weights here, something unique happens, we actually start
to focus more on the ability and the necessity to drive our gains through failure. It becomes much
more imperative that you reach failure as you get higher and higher up this chart, especially as you
start to get into the 20s. Because we don't have adequate levels of tension to drive hypertrophy
through the lower and heavier rep ranges here. But we have to have high levels of effort and
intensity and pushing ourselves to failure here becomes much more mandatory if we want these to
be able to deliver the gains. You could take this to failure if you want to, but failure
here and failure here are not equal. Failure here has accompanying it lots of high-level tension,
which is going to help to offset the need for failure. So that's an important point.
When you get back into something like this, I think this is where really
interesting things start to happen because in this moderate category,
a lot of us train in the 10 to 12 rep range. And I told you before,
three sets of 12 is killing your gains because this is where I think most of us trip up. We focus
so much on that number that we forget about the journey to that number. So, if I'm just focusing
on getting to failure here or even just getting close to failure here, leaving one on the tank
or so. I'm forgetting that these repetitions as well matter, especially when we get to this range.
Why? Well, we know that these let's say 10th, 11th and 12th reps are going to be the grinders going
to be the more difficult of the set. And those are going to be what we call the effective reps,
the ones that are effectively promoting new hypertrophy. But we're missing an opportunity
if we don't make these reps effective. In other words, there's things that we can do down here
to make this strategy work better for us and give you even more gains that you're getting right now.
And that is, we know that there's a level of fatigue that's absent here that becomes more of a,
of a, of a factor here that gives us a chance to perform the same movement pattern to get
better at recruiting the muscle fibers we're trying to recruit. That gives us a chance
to actually perform the exercise correctly before fatigue sets in and starts to alter
how it looks a little bit. That gives us the chance to actually recruit the muscles to the
exercise that we want and not let momentum take over. And it gives us more importantly,
that my muscle connection that is oftentimes lacking on exercises and is a good, I believe,
long term driver of hypertrophy. Because you're giving yourself that my muscle connection that
establishes a better contraction and establishes over the long-term better recruitment capabilities
for more growth. So, if we can take advantage of that and treat this repetition definitively,
there's one, there's two, there's three. We're not counting them, though, we're just making them
count. Because I don't care where I land, I don't want you to care where you land. Whether I land
here or here or here or even at 14. It doesn't matter if what you did was focus on making these
reps effective by having high quality contractions and high-quality effort each step of the way where
you land for failure or just sort of failure is not going to matter. Especially here. Whether
or not I land to 18 to failure or whether or not I land at 21 to failure, it's still the same effect.
You're still pushing yourself. And as long as the effort and intensity is high enough
to create that failure that I say becomes far more necessary in this range, then you're going
to drive gains. And interestingly, down here, as I said, I kind of have a little diversion
from what others think. I think that this range can also drive hypertrophy, but you better be
willing to accompany it with a hell of a lot of volume. And I'm talking very high volume. And
what happens is we can, we can look at examples of this, I've shared before. My wife was a barber,
held nothing more than a few ounce pair of scissors in her hands for many, many years.
And the fact that she held their arms up like this, cutting all the time for days on end,
weeks on end, years on end, the load was very light, but the duration was incredibly long.
But that was capable of having her develop trap growth that I envy. And the fact is,
if you're not prepared to accompany these really, really light loads with incredibly high volumes,
they're not going to do anything for you. Because it becomes necessary to give adequate amounts
of intensity in effort to what we do in order to make it work as we get higher and higher here. So,
my point is, if you can stop thinking about the number of obsessing and necessarily about
the number and the number itself doesn't really matter. And that focusing on the
end portion of that number is not the only thing that matters either.
Just start thinking in terms of buckets and weight classes. Is it something you're doing
heavy? What's the goal there? Is it something you're doing moderate? What is your shifting goal
there and is it something you're doing? Like what is your shifting goal there? Obviously,
it's got to be towards failure in this range. That's going to set you up for much better gains
long term. And more importantly, it's also going to make your training life a little
bit easier because you're going to approach these numbers in a much different way with
a much different mindset. Again, not just counting reps, but making your reps count.
Guys, if you're looking for programs where we have the same mindset with everything we do. We put the
science back in strength. You can find them over at Athleanx.com if you haven't checked out the
three sets of 12 video, it's a very important thing to remind yourself of what you don't want
to do, you can watch that right over here. If you haven’t done so guys, please subscribe and turn on
your notifications so you never miss a video when we put one out. All right, guys, see you soon.