The Best Set and Rep Scheme for Gains
What is the best set and rep scheme for building strength and muscle?
Is it 3x10?
5x5?
6x6?
Well, the honest truth is there no single “best” rep and set scheme as there are so many effective options.
It’s extremely difficult to know which is the best rep and set scheme as there are different sets of reps and schemes for different goals.
Fortunately, we don’t have to choose one scheme at the expense of the others because all can work.
There are three common goals my online clients have with their training: build muscle mass, improve performance, increase strength, and/or lose body fat.
While there isn’t a magical set and rep scheme for any of these goals, there are certain principles that need to be considered when it comes to determining sets and reps.
How to Get Stronger and Build Muscle at the Same Time
The single best way to stimulate muscle hypertrophy growth is to get stronger. Strength training with lower reps and heavier weights is often better at stimulating muscle growth than “hypertrophy training” aka lighter weights and higher rep ranges.
This is because there are three primarily “triggers” for muscle growth:
Mechanical Tension
Metabolic Stress
Muscle Damage
Mechanical tension refers to the amount of force produced within the muscle fibers. This is created by using a heavy load and performing exercises through a full range of motion.
Along with lifting heavy weights to create mechanical tension, it’s also well researched that lifting moderate to light weights for higher rep ranges will also promote muscle growth.
This is known as metabolic stress, also known as the “pump” or the “burn” as you do higher rep ranges with shorter rest periods.
This results in the muscles being placed into an anabolic state to increase the hormonal response for additional muscle growth.
Finally, we have muscle damage. Muscle damage is sustained during resistance training and refers to the microscopic damage caused to the muscle fibers by high levels of tensions and stress.
While we want to induce muscular damage, we also don’t want to induce too much, causing you to struggle going up the stairs.
Of these three, mechanical tension is by far the most important because it provides the greatest muscle growth. The best way to create higher levels of tension is by training heavy compound exercises while adhering to progressive overload.
Progressive overload is simply doing more work than previously and it’s the oldest, most researched training principle.
There are many different means to adhere to progressive overload, the simplest is getting stronger over time. As you get stronger, you’ll be able to lift more weights for more reps, making every other training goal significantly easier to accomplish.
Strength training generates large amounts of tension in your muscles and thus produces a more powerful stimulus for muscle growth than traditional hypertrophy-based training.
Just to be clear, isolation exercises are not bad. They can be perfect for activating stubborn muscle groups and should be playing second fiddle to strength training
Strength
Optimal Sets: 3-5 reps
Optimal Reps: 1-5 reps
Appropriate Training Percentage: 75-100%
Best Rep and Set Scheme: 3x3
Optimal Rest Period: 3-5 minutes
As you can imagine, strength is the display of lifting as much weight as possible for 1-5 reps. Everyone can benefit from improving their maximal strength from recreational lifters to high-level athletes.
To quote strength coach John Rusin, “strength is the foundation of all other physical characteristics depend on.”
This is because strength is largely neurological in nature, meaning it will develop certain physiological characteristics and hardwired new movement capacity i.e. handling heavier loads for increased reps.
Over the long haul, this means that an increase in strength can improve both hypertrophy and endurance.
This is one main reason why you should always do maximal strength the first thing within your training program.
When training for strength, you want to keep your training loads between 75-100%. However, very rarely should you be training at 100% intensity or at your 1 rep max, unless your powerlifters or a high-level lifter.
Powerlifters are judged on their ability to lift as much weight as possible and you’re probably not in that situation. However, testing your maximal strength is still an available option as it’s a excellent measure of overall progress. anI usually program this in
I usually program maximal strength work every 12-16 weeks within my online client’s programs to see how much stronger they’ve become over their training program.
Speed and Power
Optimal Sets: 8-15 Sets
Optimal Reps: 1-5 Reps
Appropriate Training Percentage: 50-75%
Best Rep and Set Scheme: 8x3
Optimal Rest Period: 30-45 seconds
Unfortunately, power and speed is an often-neglected physical trait that, when ignored, leaves a number of potential benefits untapped. Speed and power can be displayed by lifting “lighter” weights with the highest attainable speed. This is all about being as explosive and fluid as possible.
By improving your speed and power, this will positively transfer to a variety of daily life activities as well as improving your sports performance. There are two primary reasons why you should include power and speed work within your training program
1) It primes and excites the nervous system to improve your strength gains.
Priming the nervous system allows you to lift more weights, perform better during fat loss training, and move more efficiently inside and outside the gym. Simply put, the goal here is to explosively prime and excite the muscles for the day’s main exercise (i.e. squat, bench, deadlift) with high-velocity movements. For my online clients, I’ve program these into their warms up to ensure they’re primed to dominate their workouts.
2) Power creates explosiveness and athleticism
This is crucial when it comes to succeeding in your training program. By training for power, this will dramatically boost fat loss, accelerates muscle gains, aids in building strength, and develops athleticism. Think of exercises like medicine ball slams, sprints, skips, and box jump as this will accelerate building muscle and getting stronger as speed is often the missing link for breaking through strength and muscle-building plateaus.
Hypertrophy
Optimal Sets: 3-5 Sets
Optimal Reps: 6-12 Reps
Appropriate Training Percentage: 65-85%
Best Rep and Set Scheme: 4x8-12
Optimal Rest Period: 1-2 minutes
Hypertrophy is strongly influenced by two primary factors: Mechanical tension and metabolic stress. Mechanical stress i.e the amount of force being produced aka how much your lifting is largely dictated by your strength work. In short, the stronger you become, the easier you can handle lighter loads for increased reps.
However, hypertrophy is also influenced by metabolic stress, which is why we want to handle lighter loads that stress the muscles quickly while facilitating sufficient time under tension. While having a solid strength foundation is essential to building muscle, muscle hypertrophy is generally easier obtained through a moderate set/rep range.
I’ve repeatedly found that doing 4 sets of 8-12 reps is the sweet spot for building muscle hypertrophy as this rep range creates a sufficient amount of metabolic stress (i.e. that burning feeling) while allowing you to challenge yourself with lifting. If you can comfortably get 12 reps, then bump up the weight. If 8 reps are too challenging, then decrease the weight. This type of rep/set scheme is the sweet spot for creating that metabolic stress and pump.
—-> Click here for the complete guide on building Hypertrophy
Endurance
Optimal Sets: 2-3 Sets
Optimal Reps: 12-20 Reps
Appropriate Training Percentage: 50-75%
Best Rep and Set Scheme: 3x20
Optimal Rest Period: 30-75 seconds
Truth be told, this is what a lot of recreational athletes/lifters hate doing and neglect because it’s not fun. However, doing endurance sets with the appropriate exercises should almost be a necessary requirement to build muscle.
This is important because endurance sets work on creating metabolic stress within the muscles to promote greater muscular gains. This can also fall under the “pump” category. Endurance sets are best reserved for isolation-based exercises that involve the rear delts, biceps, triceps, glutes, and hamstrings to augment your main exercise or strengthening weak links.
These sets are best utilized as an intense finisher to any type of training day. Embrace the suck, keep your rest periods short, and challenge yourself as going to failure won’t take a significant toll on the system.
This is something you should be doing at the end of your workout. You definitely don’t want to do it before your strength work nor hypertrophy. Instead, you always wanna do it at the end so you can elicit that metabolic stress. This won’t take that much time to complete when compared to the others.
Putting it All Together:
Now that we have covered the essentials, you can use this knowledge to design a training program geared towards your specific goals. Here’s an example 4 day upper/lower training split to improve muscle hypertrophy and max strength by combining everything we’ve discussed above. Again, this is just an example of an intelligently designed training split as I wrote an entire article about the 5 best training splits.
Day 1: Lower Body (Monday)
1. Kettlebell swings 3x8 reps, rest 30 seconds
2. Deadlift 4x4, rest 3 minutes
3. Front Rack Split Squats 3x8 reps/leg
4. Glute Ham Raise 4x8
5a. Standing Calf Raises 3x20
5b. Hanging Leg Raises 3x20
Day 2: Upper Body (Tuesday)
1. Dynamic Effort Bench Press 8x2 reps, rest 30 seconds
2. BB Floor Press 5x5, rest 3 minutes
3a. Db Bench Press 3x8 reps, rest 30 seconds
3b. SA DB Rows 3x10 reps/arm 4x8, rest 1 minute
4. Push-Ups 3x 20 reps, rest 60 seconds
5a. Bicep curls 3x15, rest 30 seconds
5b. Tricep Pushdowns 3x15, rest 30 seconds
Day 3: Lower Body (Thursday)
1. Box Jumps 3x3 reps, rest 30 seconds
2. Front Squats 3x3, rest 3 minutes
3. BB RDL’s 3x8 reps/leg
4. Walking Lunges 3x10/leg
5a. Band Pull Thru’s 3x20
5b. Cable Crunch 3x20
Day 4: Upper Body (Friday)
SA DB Snatch 3x5ea reps, rest 45 seconds
Barbell Bench Press 4x8, rest 3 minutes
Barbell Bentover rows 4x6
Lat Pulldowns 4x12
Cable Rows 3x25
Hollow Body Holds 3x45second
Virtually any set and rep scheme will work. However, their effectiveness largely depends on whether the goal you’re trying to achieve is conducive to your training program as a whole. This is where having an experienced coach comes into play as they’ll infuse all these training elements into your training program.
Your Next Steps
The goal of this guide (and online coaching) is to empower you through education.
I want to help you stop guessing when it comes to making sustainable progress and start achieving the results you desire.
So, what is your next step?
Realize that all the knowledge you’ve gained from this guide doesn’t equal real change.
If you’re fed up with how COVID fucked up your year, invest in a coach.
If you’ve read LITERALLY DOZENS of guides like this in the past and still haven’t made the change nor the confidence you want, invert in a coach.
If you’re overwhelmed by the content in this article, invest in a coach.
If you cannot be consistent with the strategies within this article, invest in a coach.
If you are ready for a change, I’m here to coach you.