Recently I had a chance to speak with  Steven Low, who is a former gymnast.  

Here is a list of his feats of strength, and he  is probably best known as the author of the book,  

Overcoming Gravity. Is there a recommended general  rep and set scheme for training body weight  

skills? Yeah, so for beginners and intermediates  you generally want to go with the 5 to 10, maybe up  

to 12 rep range to build the requisite muscle  mass because most beginners and intermediates  

don't have as much muscle mass as they need for  the skill. Mid-intermediate to advanced and beyond  

generally the three to five rep max is superior  for strength gain. From my point of view, you know,  

achieving advanced body weight moves is similar  to maximizing your ability to doing one rep maxes  

because I'm pretty sure most people would rather  be able to do a five-second planche instead of a  

one-minute straddle planche, for example. Is that  statement right? Because if that's right, then  

my intuition is we should train one rep max for  one rep max, right? Why do we want to spend extra  

effort at getting better at three rep maxes and  five rep maxes? Yeah, so to answer that, we gotta  

get into the physiology a little bit. Based on  like the Henneman's size principle, that states  

that your body recruits low threshold motor units  to high threshold. Steven eventually went into the  

details of the science, but I want to explain  what Steven means in layman's term. Training  

3-5RMs is optimal because you mainly train for  strength, but you still get some hypertrophy.  

Just for a quick review, high overall volume is  optimal for hypertrophy. High intensity per rep  

is optimal for strength gains. According to  Steven, the strength gains of training 1RMs  

are equivalent to those of training 3~5RMs. If I  mainly train 1RMs, I will probably get results a  

bit faster because of specificity, but eventually  I will hit a plateau because there's a limit on  

how much strength potential there is per muscle.  Therefore, increasing muscle mass becomes the  

solution to increasing the overall strength output  to take ourselves to the next level. However, you  

have to only increase the muscle mass only in the  target region, which usually means the upper body.  

If you increase your muscle mass uniformly  throughout your entire body, including legs,  

bodyweight exercises will actually become harder  as I explained in this video, so check it out  

later if you haven't yet. And of course, if your  strength level is low, increasing muscle mass will  

make bodyweight exercises harder for no reason.  To sum up, when your strength level is high,  

increasing muscle mass in the target region will  be the key to taking you to the next level in  

bodyweight exercises. What's the typical intensity  of 3 rep max versus one rep max, is it like 50% of  

one rep max or is it 80%? What's the typical? Okay,  so there are studies done on this and generally  

around 90% of your one rep max is your three rep  max. 5RM is about 85, uh maybe a little bit higher,  

87-ish percent. Even at these lower weights away  from one rep max, you're still getting a very good  

training intensity there. That intensity  definitely sounds a little too high to me.  

I think there's no way I can do ninety percent of  one rep max intensity for three reps because if  

you actually times the number, so let's say ninety  percent times three, that's actually 2.7 times of  

volume. I find that kind of impossible, so is this  actually the norm that most people experience?  

There is specificity there and that you'll be able  to usually do more reps at the intensity that you  

practice at as opposed to the ones you aren't  practicing, but it normalizes pretty quickly if  

you start training the other rep ranges. In terms  of hypertrophy, how can you increase muscle mass  

just on the muscle group that you want? And  usually that's the upper body. It's pretty simple,  

you mainly work the movements that you're trying  to get. So what I'm hearing is, you know, I can  

eat a maintenance calorie like without a calorie  surplus, but I switch my one to two reps training  

to like three to five as you suggested, I will  start to see muscle growth over time on myself. Is  

that what I'm hearing? If you're eating at caloric  maintenance, then you're not going to gain weight,  

so the only way your body is going to add muscle  is if it slowly recomposes itself, like slowly  

loses fat by burning up the fat calories with the  protein you ingest to add on muscle, so you'll  

basically gain muscle where you need it if you're  staying at the same body weight. Okay, I think my  

body fat is pretty low, so I guess I still have  to eat a calorie surplus to grow muscles. The  

training structure, if someone does full body  for a day and someone split between push-pull  

and someone split between lower body and upper  body, so I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on  

these? Full body allows you to hit exercises three  times a week so that's why it's generally best for  

beginners and intermediates. The reason why you  would move on from that is you're hitting so  

many things at once, so you're getting your upper  body push, your upper body pull your core and legs.  

Um, if exercises are getting very hard so like if  somebody is using squats and deadlifts for their  

legs, those can be pretty taxing on the nervous  system, where the quality of your upper body push  

and upper body pull will start to drop compared  to actually doing them on different days, so that  

would be a good reason to switch over from a full  body routine to a split and usually that occurs  

in the intermediate or advanced range. There is  a way to make full body work as you're getting  

like really strong, but it tends to be harder to  do than just go to a split. So for me personally  

I split it between push-pull, and I've been doing  that for multiple years. Do you actually recommend  

splitting into even more fine grain? So meaning  like four days, one day it's like straight-arm  

push, one day is straight-arm pull and one day  is bent-arm push, and one day is bent-arm pull.  

What's your recommendation on how to do  this? Usually I don't split it further,  

and the reason for that is because strength  is basically predicated on repeating exercises  

over and over, and you know progressing with them.  You're going to be doing all those exercises maybe  

like once a week. One time a week not that good  for progressing things, you only get about 50  

workouts in a year with each exercise. With at  least two, if you're doing the two-day splits, and  

that's, you know, 100 days a year, more chances to  improve specific exercises incrementally and so  

you usually get a bunch more progress that way.  We continued the discussion in depth for about  

an hour, but I know not everyone is interested in  nerding out on the details of bodyweight training,  

so I will stop right here. If you  happen to be interested in the details,  

you should definitely check out Steven's book,  Overcoming Gravity, and also his subreddit  

r/overcominggravity. It was very enlightening to  have an expert like Steven to assess my training  

routine. It looks like I am doing everything  right except that I am too hyperfocused on  

increasing strength. If you completely ignore  hypertrophy like me, you will eventually hit a  

plateau at some point. To me, being able to do the one-arm pull-up is a pretty good plateau to be on,  

and as a climber, I have a motivation to keep  my body mass low because there's no such thing  

like finger hypertrophy to increase finger muscle  mass. If bodyweight exercises is your main sport,  

you should focus on increasing strength  and get some hypertrophy along with it.  

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