One of the biggest controversy is about high reps vs low reps for muscle growth. Which one is the correct strategy to improve muscle mass?
Fitness fanatics and professionals usually consider switching between them as potential support to encourage muscle growth and overall fitness.
Whether your goal is to build muscle like a bodybuilder or just get a lean muscular physique, it’s necessary to know the difference between low and high reps.
So, let’s dive into the journey of a detailed comparison analysis of high reps vs low reps for muscle growth.
Key Insights:
- Doing reps in sets is the biggest factor in getting strength, stamina, gain as well as endurance.
- There needs to be more clarity about high reps or low reps and which one is better for muscle growth.
- Plenty of benefits are associated with both the method of exercising; however, there are some downsides as well.
- If you want to get the most out of your training, it’s advisable to pick the best while considering the one that’s best-suited to your goal.
Read on for a more thorough comparison based on their training methods, benefits, and downsides to find which one will suit your goals better.
High Reps vs Low Reps for Muscle Growth
You need to up the weight load along with consistent efforts to grow muscle mass. Through consistent periods of stress, a particular muscle tends to grow more rapidly.
But you not only need to work hard, but you need to work smart.
Based on training principles, building muscle mass or changes to the size of the muscle needs a holistic approach for gains.
The goal of bigger muscles requires low reps with heavy weight. Undoubtedly, lifting heavy weights builds muscle, but constantly increasing the weights leaves your muscles exhausted, which takes more time to recover.
On the other hand, high reps with lighter weights give the muscle tissue and nervous system a chance to recover while also encouraging endurance.
So, when it comes to which of the two would be best, there’s no direct answer here. Considering both the approaches can lead to positive results if they’re done correctly!
All in all, there are additional factors that users are nowadays concerned about, such as “Do bodybuilders do high reps or is it okay to try building muscle with light weights?”
Now, there are many more differences between low reps and high reps for muscle growth.
High Rep vs Low Rep – Training
Considering the mechanism or the facts about how the concept of high reps and low reps for building muscle mass.
The basic factors low reps with heavy weight tend to increase muscle mass, while high reps with light weight boost muscle endurance. But how do they actually work?
High Reps Training Effects
Resistance training with relatively high reps forces the muscles to grow. It helps in increasing body weight and muscle growth by improving muscle tissue cross-sectional area.
This eventually affects the hypertrophy of individual muscle fibers. Apart from this, heavy resistance training eventually stimulates fast-twitch muscle fiber proliferation which ensures better growth.
Low Reps Training Effects
Low-repetition, high-intensity training primarily targets fast-twitch muscle fibers. These fibers are responsible for generating powerful and explosive movements.
They fatigue quickly but have a high force output. The emphasis in low-repetition training is on neural adaptations.
Eventually, it involves improvements in the nervous system’s ability to coordinate and activate muscle fibers. This leads to increased strength without necessarily causing significant muscle hypertrophy (growth).
However, which among the both will be more favorable for building strength then?
High Rep vs Low Rep for Building Strength
To get the perfect answer to “high reps vs low reps for strength”, we should reconsider the working mechanism of both tactics.
There are chances that higher reps put prolonged stress on tendons and ligaments, contributing to their strengthening over time. This can be the best rep range for muscle growth and is beneficial for injury prevention.
However, low-repetition training is highly specific to activities requiring maximal strength, such as powerlifting. It mimics the demands of lifting heavy loads for a short duration. The ideal approach to strength training often involves a combination of both high-repetition and low-repetition methods.
Along with increasing gains and strength, there are also some additional benefits one can get with these training modules.
High Reps vs Low Reps – Benefits
Since muscle mass and strength are connected linearly, you will acquire greater strength the more hypertrophic your workout is. Here are some of the additional benefits of both high reps vs low reps for mass:
High Reps Benefits:
- Improve Your Muscular Endurance
- Cardiovascular Health
- Build muscle
- Reduced Risk of Injury
- Calorie Burn
- Joint health
Low Reps Benefits:
- Increased Strength
- Power Development
- Neural Adaptations
- Improved Form and Technique
- Muscle Endurance
- Hypertrophy (Muscle Growth)
With an effective strength training program, one can definitely get these positive benefits.
High Reps vs Low Reps – Downsides
Considering the downsides of these workout strategies of following low reps and high reps to gain muscle mass also vary from person to person. Here are some of the downsides of determining any single workout form for a longer period.
High Reps
Most probably it is the majorly practiced by fitness experts and trainers. Bodybuilders and other fitness freak to grow muscle faster usually practice this.
Higher reps of lighter weights sometimes lead to slow growth of muscle and are not likely to increase your endurance.
Low Reps
Practicing lower reps mostly kind of restricts people to a minimum zone of 5-6 reps. This may cause them to lift heavier by when individuals force their bodies to increase reps, it leads to several complications.
Some of the common effects individuals experience include a significant amount of physical and mental fatigue or burnout.
So yeah, it’s considerable that relying on any specific workout form is not the perfect technique to increase muscle growth.
Do Bodybuilders Do High Reps?
The fact about bodybuilding is that higher rep potentially produces hypertrophy adaptations. Usually, higher rep ranges probably around 15 reps can be used for muscular endurance and hypertrophy by bodybuilders. However, they also combine low reps of light weights too for strength and power.
Basically, the specific reps range varies based on individual goals and their training intensity.
Hypertrophy training is specific to maximal muscle growth; it mainly focuses on the high volume (reps, sets, load, intensity) with minimal rest periods. For bodybuilders, it actually is the best strategy to force adaptation.
Overall, by indulging in this particular method, bodybuilders do high reps of heavy weights for insane muscle growth.
But if you’re a newbie and would like to start lifting weights as a beginner, take assistance from a coach or trainer to find out whether low reps or high reps would suit your goals better.
High Reps vs Low Reps – Which One is The Best?
So if high reps promote hypertrophy and low reps facilitate strength increases. This clearly indicates that while considering high reps vs low reps for toning. Talking about more muscle hypertrophy considering the best among the two would be better for a short-term practice.
If your goal is to grow muscle, both aspects can be true but one takes more time than the other. For bulking heavier sets of lower reps are mostly considerable. However, professionals suggest that higher reps of light weight help in getting a pump.
On the other hand, performing sets by mixing lower and higher reps helps in gaining muscle mass as well as toning the body.
The best part is that you don’t need to relegate yourself to lifting in just one specific rep range. Try to make a perfect set with mixed techniques, i.e., low and high reps to increase the intensity and noticeable outcomes.
FAQs
These are some of the queries beginners have been looking for regarding low reps vs high reps for bodybuilding.
1. Can you build muscle with light weights high reps?
Not significantly. For better growth, you need to force your muscles by putting in extra effort. Lifting light weights with moderate to high rep ranges with lighter weights can still induce muscle hypertrophy (growth) among beginners.
2. What is the ideal reps for bodybuilding?
Depending on the objectives of your goal, the ideal reps may vary. It’s worth considering that For hypertrophy (building muscle), the best would be 3 to 4 sets of 6 to 12 reps.
3. Do shoulders respond better to higher reps?
Yes, side and rear deltoids typically grow faster with higher reps. This is because the muscles that mostly consist of type 1/slow twitch oxidative muscle fibers respond positively when trained, with higher reps.
4. Why are high reps harder?
Higher reps need consistency and more endurance than lifting heavy for lower sets. They are harder because performing too many reps sometimes challenges the muscles to do it.
5. What muscles respond better to high reps?
Typically, muscle groups with type 1/slow twitch oxidative muscle fibers generally respond better to high reps. The examples are calves, quadriceps, side and rear deltoids.
Final Note
Overall, this discussion here shared a clear analysis of what is the difference between high reps and low reps, and which one should be considered based on your body goals.
For better muscle-building results, it’s good to indulge in full-rounded workout intensity and emphasize on other factors as well.
Do ensure not to strain too much as it may cause serious injury.
Also, once your body adapts to any specific training module like high reps or low reps, it indeed adds fuller muscles when you continuously progress by adding heavier loads to the bar. This eventually stimulates adaptation and hypertrophy, resulting in better muscle growth.