How many reps should you do to increase strength?

The amount of repetitions you do for any exercise has an effect on your fitness level and development. Learn how many reps you need to do when exercising to increase strength, build muscle, or increase endurance.

Introduction

Progression is the heart and soul of any strength training or muscle building program, and different amounts of repetitions (or reps) yield different training results.

Knowing how many reps you need to perform for any exercise is vital when trying to increase strength, increase muscle mass, increase endurance, or lose body fat.

The Overload Training Principle

The OverLoad Training Principle is a principle that says that to make progress in bodybuilding training, you need to progressively increase the intensity of your workouts.

There are 4 basic ways to increase the intensity of your workouts:

  1. Increase the amount of weight that you use to do for a particular exercise.
  2. Increase the number of reps that you do with a chosen amount of weight for a particular exercise.
  3. Keep the weight, sets, and reps constant for a particular exercise, but decrease the amount of time you take to rest between sets.
  4. Increase the number of sets.

Each amount of reps has a different purpose

Low reps in the range of 1 – 5 reps primarily develop strength and power.

Medium reps in the range of 8 – 10 reps primarily develop muscular size, definition, and local muscle endurance.

High reps in the range of 12 – 15 reps primarily develop muscular endurance and definition, and less muscle size.

Very high reps over an amount of 20 reps used in a non-stop circuit fashion without any rest between sets, develop heart and lung endurance.

Low reps and heavy weight for increased strength and power

To increase strength by following the Overload Training Principle where you progressively increase weights, reps, or both, this means that if you decrease the amount of reps for an exercise you must increase the amount of weight for that same exercise to make progress.

For example, you won’t increase strength if you use the same amount of weight that you use for 20 reps and do 3 reps with it. This will not yield the strength and power training results you’re after.

So to increase strength:

  1. Decrease the amount of reps to a range of 1 – 5 reps.
  2. Increase the amount of weight that you use for an exercise.
  3. Do basic exercises, that is, exercises that target large muscle groups and that involve using several muscles to work together to move the weight.

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