High Reps or Low Reps for Muscle Growth?

[Anoop Balachandran]

The recent study finally sheds some light on this long lasting debate of high reps versus low reps for muscle growth.Though I will post this here and it will be ok.

http://www.exercisebiology.com/index...muscle_growth/

[Donald Lee]

Anoop,

Have you read "The Influence of Frequency, Intensity, Volume and Mode of Strength Training on Whole Muscle Cross-Sectional Area in Humans" by Mathias Wernbom, Jesper Augustsson, and Roland Thome?

If you have, what do you think of the recommendation for the 40-60 rep range for hypertrophy?

[Dave Van Skike]

i think it's a universal truth that if a debate is long standing, neither side is right and in many cases, the debate is not important.

[Anoop Balachandran]

Have you read "The Influence of Frequency, Intensity, Volume and Mode of Strength Training on Whole Muscle Cross-Sectional Area in Humans" by Mathias Wernbom, Jesper Augustsson, and Roland Thome?

Hi Donald,

Yes. I have read the article. I had mentioned about the article in the comment section of my article.

I think those are pretty reasonable.

We need more quality RCT like these to figure out what's happening. They did a pilot study which showed similar result and same trend was seen with older adults which add credence to their results.

The study basically shows that there is a ceiling effect to protein synthesis and you hit that ceiling by around 10-15 reps. Increasing load further will not increase protein synthesis and may increase protein breakdown.

The authors think that volume might affect the duration of protein synthesis and intensity the peak.

[Steve Shafley]

Ironically, the anecdotal experiences of lifters and bodybuilders the whole world over have come up with pretty solid places to start.

[Anoop Balachandran]

Ironically, the anecdotal experiences of lifters and bodybuilders the whole world over have come up with pretty solid places to start.

We can only do better if we have an evidence-based approach.

There is a good reason why anecdotal evidences are considered to be the lowest form of evidences. And I don't think bodybuilding/fitness is any different.