
What have you practiced the most? Have you trained with mostly a high or low number of repetitions? What does your individual muscle fiber type distribution look like? Is the exercise performed by muscles that are primarily fatigue resistant or explosive? Can you rest at the top or bottom of the exercise (as in deadlifts)? What does the movement path and the force curve look like? The lighter the weight in relation to your 1RM, the more repetitions, or reps, you will be able to do in one set.Įxactly how many reps you can do on a given percentage of your 1RM depends on many variables, such as:

The heaviest weight you can lift in one repetition is called your 1RM – 1 repetition maximum. How much weight you lift when you train and how many repetitions you do, is one of the most important factors for what results you will get from your training.Ī high number of repetitions with light weight give you different results than if you do few repetitions with a heavy weight. For the longer version, keep reading! How Many Reps Should You Do? That’s the short version of this article. That is, the point where you no longer can do another rep. Note that these numbers apply to sets taken to, or close to, failure. Up to about 10–20 reps per set (~60% of 1RM) is moderately effective for strength, but any lighter than that and the strength gain is small.About 1–5 reps per set (>85% of 1RM) is probably most effective for strength.

Here, the muscle-building effect is large, and it is quite easy to tire out your muscles.

How many reps should you do to build muscle vs.
