Proper Reps

[LionFox]

I read alot of lifting magazine, partly for inspiration, partly for knowledge. Now I know Diesel says most of these are bull**** but I have, from time to time, found some good tips in them.

Anyway.. I've got two conflicting sources of information on bicep size and strength training, and I hope someone might be able to help me out.

One source says that its useless to train biceps more than 12 reps at a time because of the smaller muscles and how they extert themselves turning the training. I took this advice and most of my bicep training has been heavy weights, 6, 8 and 10 reps.

Now I've just read another guy who says he uses the 40 rep method. 2 sets of 20, or 3 of 15, or 4 of 12, depending on your preference. I say, this sounds like bull****! If you can do 20 reps with any weight it's too light!

Any thoughts,
LF

 

[semag]

If you can do 20 reps with any weight it's too light!

Well... sounds to me like you answered your own questions. Or, in other words: I agree.

 

[livin large]

I don't know about all you, but for me it's really hard to get a good bicep workout. When I'm doing legs, or chest, or shoulders, I can feel like I got a good workout from doing sets of 4-8. When I do bicep, it doesn't feel like I worked them out at all if I do sets of 4-8.

I know a 19 year old kid with damn big guns (17 inches +). He got them using a combination of the 2 methods. He'll start his workout with a set of 20-30, then do 12-18, then 8-12, then 4-8 (reaching failure in those ranges). He'll do the rest of his bicep work in the 4-12 range until the last exercise. On the last exercise he'll burn out at 20-50 reps. All together he probably does 12-15 sets of bicep. I know a lot of you think this is too much, but it's worked amazingly well for him (considering 17+ inch arms without supplements), and I'm starting to get good results.

Basically, my opinion is you don't gain as much as you could if you leave the gym without feeling like you got a good workout in. Do what it takes to get a good workout.

 

[wheelin&dealin]

Curls are for girls!


Hit the power cage if you want to make some huge gains.

Squats
Deadlifts
Good Mornings

Are what your workout should revolve around.

 

[Nocturnal]

w.d... whats a 'good morning'?

 

[LionFox]

Good morning..:

Stand with legs about 6 inches apart. Holst a light/medium weight barbell across your shoulders. With your back held stiff and with a slight arch, head held straight, begin to lean forward until your upper-body is parallel to the floor, then, reverse the movement until your posture is straight again.

It's great for working the lower back, but you should be careful, done wrong or with too much weight, you could really hurt yourself.

 

[swigue]

Originally posted by wheelin&dealin
Curls are for girls!


Hit the power cage if you want to make some huge gains.

Squats
Deadlifts
Good Mornings

Are what your workout should revolve around.

Agreed of course...but that wasn't his point/question was it Wheelin?

 

[wheelin&dealin]

Originally posted by LionFox
Stand with legs about 6 inches apart. Holst a light/medium weight barbell across your shoulders.

I can good morning more than I can squat... so, you can go pretty heavy.

 

[wheelin&dealin]

Originally posted by swigue
Agreed of course...but that wasn't his point/question was it Wheelin?

Why answer his question when there is a better answer to the whole concept?

 

[Turalyon999]

Actually, all of you are right. It's a experimentally proven that as long as the weight and reps are directly proportional, you gain the same amount of muscle mass

example. say you lift 200 lbs. and do 5 reps, you could lift 100 lbs. and do 10 reps and gain the exact same benefit. The amount of weight doesn't matter, nor the number of reps just the total amount of work done.

I've conducted a study designed to verify this fact and found it to be true. This also explains why livin' large's friend has huge biceps but uses high reps.

Now before you flame me and say that lower reps are better; I agree, higher weight-lower reps, if anything else besides making you feel like you've worked a muscle group, is much more time efficent.

Turalyon

 

[semag]

Umm... not to flame you dude, but by that logic, wouldn't you be able to say, take your reps at 100, cut them in half, and double the weight? That makes absolutely no sense, cause if you can do 10 at 100, you can do 1 at 800????

100 x 10
200 x 5
400 x 2.5
800 x 1?

heheh... *grins*

 

[Turalyon999]

I never said it was practical, but scientifically that would be correct. You could do 1 rep at 800 lbs. and your muscles would be doing the same amount of Work. However, for most of us, lifting 800 pounds even 1 time is impossible. So try not to think in such extreme measures. You could lift 800, but why would you want to.

Anyway like I said, fewer repetitions are more time efficient, I wrote the response to show the original poster that there is no "proper" number of reps, that you could do more or less as long as you keep the weight in proportion. example: If you can put 200 lbs. on a bar, do it, you'll save time by doing fewer reps (plus not get bored doing the same exercise for an hour) but say your at home, and you don't have enough weight to load 200 pounds on a bar, but you don't want to hurt your performance in the gym. You could use a lighter weight and do more reps. This is more of a practical application, and generally what I do when I don't have time to go to the gym.

Turalyon

 

[swigue]

No offense, but as far as I can see your theory is wrong. If I can't lift 800 lbs, then I shouldn't be able to do the equivalent amount of work at a lighter weight. I can easily bench 100lbs ten times, but 800 will NEVER happen.

Maybe you are not explaining this well?

Isn't what you really mean that it doesn't matter as long as you go to failure?

(I don't agree with this, but I think that is you're real argument.)

 

[DIESEL]

Originally posted by livin large
I don't know about all you, but for me it's really hard to get a good bicep workout. When I'm doing legs, or chest, or shoulders, I can feel like I got a good workout from doing sets of 4-8. When I do bicep, it doesn't feel like I worked them out at all if I do sets of 4-8.

I know a 19 year old kid with damn big guns (17 inches +). He got them using a combination of the 2 methods. He'll start his workout with a set of 20-30, then do 12-18, then 8-12, then 4-8 (reaching failure in those ranges). He'll do the rest of his bicep work in the 4-12 range until the last exercise. On the last exercise he'll burn out at 20-50 reps. All together he probably does 12-15 sets of bicep. I know a lot of you think this is too much, but it's worked amazingly well for him (considering 17+ inch arms without supplements), and I'm starting to get good results.

Basically, my opinion is you don't gain as much as you could if you leave the gym without feeling like you got a good workout in. Do what it takes to get a good workout.

I would venture to say that your friend is benefitting from his youth, better than average genetics, and good nutrition.. he will notice as he gets older (and his T and GH levels drop) that his gains using that workout protocol will begin to taper down big time.

I advocate heavier weight because it is the only way that you are going to overload those type b fibers to make them grow nice and big.

What you could try is drop sets - i.e. use the regular heavy weight where you hit failure at 4-6 reps then immediately drop some weight from the bar and keep going - til you hit absolute failure at 12-15 reps.. i think that should give you that pump you're looking for.

I do think 15 sets for bis is overkill. He sounds like he's doing to many "garbage sets"

D