Heavy Weights/Low Reps Vs Light/More Reps?

[Chicagotarsier]

I agree. If I had 10 guys I was training that was equally hard core motivated for a year....I would do things very different than guys working 40 hour a week jobs and like beer on the weekend haha.

I see the working class in the gym daily...doing the same crap. Working with too much weight..plateaued...not progressing...saying fuq it and quitting after 3 months. High reps allow a person to track progress better then low rep heavy weights...but again this is for the working class. I see the two guys other than me over genetic potential doing HITT high weight low reps. I am the only one that does high rep training. Who progresses faster? I do not know..those 65 kilo China guys really do not translate to a 130 kilo white boy.

[JDToronto]

I agree. If I had 10 guys I was training that was equally hard core motivated for a year....I would do things very different than guys working 40 hour a week jobs and like beer on the weekend haha.

I see the working class in the gym daily...doing the same crap. Working with too much weight..plateaued...not progressing...saying fuq it and quitting after 3 months. High reps allow a person to track progress better then low rep heavy weights...but again this is for the working class. I see the two guys other than me over genetic potential doing HITT high weight low reps. I am the only one that does high rep training. Who progresses faster? I do not know..those 65 kilo China guys really do not translate to a 130 kilo white boy.

Working Class guys as compared to those who don't have a job/work?

[BrockBadger]

I would definitely consider what charger69 has said.

charger69

Everyone has a different fast/slow twitch combination which makes everyone different. The generic answer is 4-6 reps. This is backed by a study in 2007 from Goteburg Univ that training with weights between 70-85% of your one rep max produced maximum hypertrophy. That American college of sports medicine published a paper in 2002 that 5-6 reps is most effective for increasing strength.
Ohio Univ also backed this up.
With that being said there is a lot more to it than that, but I believe that this satisfies your question.
I myself mix it up. It is probably more mental than scientifically proven.

I also like what Musclescience said:


A second key point is time under tension or how effective the negative phase of the contraction is at stimulating or eliciting micro trauma to the myofibrals. The research is pretty clear that the negative phase of contraction is very important in hypertrophic training. How you accomplish that is a matter of personal opinion I think.

Something I may add is think of all your muscle fibers as potential for each to grow. It's not that you want to hit just the type 2 fibers... You want growth of all your fibers. Type 1 included. So if you hit the rep ranges of all the fiber types they will grow to some extent instead of just hitting a narrow range of only type 2 fibers. With this is mind something else I can add is best your previous 1RM. What I've found is nothing stimulates muscle hypertrophy more then besting your 1RM say on bench. Get as strong as you can on some of the big lifts and you will see growth/hypertrophy.