- Brian Ashley Miller
Rep ranges
This subject has been written about time and time again, what’s the best range, 1-4 3-6 8-12? Studies have shown that 8-12 shows the most muscle activation, but that’s misleading. After 3-4 weeks, your body becomes adapted and you get less and less results the more adapted you get to a particular rep range. To maximize my results, I like to change with each month to make tracking it easier. I did 1-3 reps, 3 minutes rest between sets in January so heavy singles, doubles and triples. Classic body builders like Arnold, Franco Columbo, Frank Zane, etc. believed these were what gave them the denser, harder, grainier look., February I did 3-6, 2.5 minutes rest. In March I did, you guessed it, 9-12 reps with 2 minutes of rest between sets and in April I’m doing 12-15 reps with 90 seconds of rest. If you’ve been working in the same rep range for more than 4 weeks, I would suggest tweaking your numbers on reps and rest times, your progress will spike, especially if you’ve been in your rep range for an extended period of time.
