Hi Micheal,

Increasing your bench by 90 pounds is good!

Yeah try playing around with higher reps. But it doesn’t have to be EITHER high or low. Keep doing a few low rep sets (or even singles) a week, and try to build strength in multiple rep ranges.

Good luck!

hi Jorn. I don’t think you will reply to me cause this post isn’t new, but… I have gone from 201 pounds to 247, increased my bench 90 pounds, and I did it while keeping my rep ranges in what worked for me. 2 to 3 reps including singles. But… I feel I still didn’t even really look like I went to the gym lol. Reading your article, I’m now excited to try the higher reps closer to failure! I’m coming up with my own routine protocol, but on bench press.. I was hoping to reach a goal I may never attain. I have benched 315 before covid ruined me, and for that specific exercise, I was thinking of a goal of 225 x20. And not worrying so much about getting back to 315 yet. I was thinking of doing 5 sets of 2 on bench every 2 minutes, rest 3 minutes and do as many as possible. Each workout drop a set of 2, and hopefully my failure set will keep increasing. What do you think?😊

Hey Darell,

I’m happy to hear you’ve been able to figure out a routine that produces the results you aim for.

However, I do not agree with your statement that rep ranges become more important the more experiences you are. The science simply does not seem to agree with that. And while we can go into anecdotal examples/discussion, that simply won’t be productive.

I’m just sharing the science. It might give people some new ideas. If your personal experience is different and you value that more, by all means keep doing what you’re doing because it sounds like you’re doing well!

-Jorn

However for the true body beautiful, wide shoulders narrow waist and breaking plateaus everything changes.

Firstly everyone has a natural ceiling, yes you can break it but it might take a year to add 5% strength in muscle growth that probably does not represent more than 1,5% growth, hence the popularity of temporary steroid gains.

Really heavy weights result in, joint problems and inevitable injuries, there is a point whereby walking away from the monster weights and concentrating on muscle gains beyond your strength limitations.

Factor in that virtually all monsters bodybuilders these day sport 40″ waists whilst having 60″ chests..nah 52″ waist v 30 ” waist is far, FAR more impressive and aesthetic.

However the real, REAL factor morever personal experiance, coped by pals who ALL reported the same across the exercise spectrum.

I was permanently stuck with a good bench, awesome dips yet crap, truly crap shoulder press..300b bench for 12, 9, 7, 5 5 reps… dips (wide) 69 in one set, yes sixty nine and deep, military press a poxy 140lb x 12, 9, etc etc…so I droppd the weight to100lb and did 25 first set…next time 28, then 31, then 34, 35, 38, then 40…after 40 i added 2lb everytime i reached 40 reps…after 4 months of this protocol I was doing 125lb for 40 reps….today at 60 years of age in strict form I can do 48 reps x 125lb…shoulders are bowling balls.

So, work out why….it’s not hard…..clue, i broke the muscle halting caused by the strength limiting ceiling through other means.

When you go to failure you stimulate both types of muscle fibers.

Yeah that looks good!

So to get the best results you should;

1 – Go as close to failure as you can without actually failing if using compound exercises or when more volume is needed.
2 – If you do go to failure on an exercise, choose less demanding exercises, such as isolation exercises.

So would a chest set up like this would be optimal for maximizing strength as well as hypertrophy;

Exercise 1 – Bench Press 5 sets, 5 reps (Heavy Weight w/ RIR)
Exercise 2 – Dumbbell Flyes 1 set (Lightweight) to failure

Yes, the further away you stay from failure the less muscle growth you produce (with that set). An advantage of not going to failure is that you’ll be able to erform better on your next sets. So for example, if you do 5 sets to failure with the same weight, you might get 12,10,9,7,6 reps. If you don’t get to failure you might get 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, for a higher total volume.

I don’t think that heavy weights vs light weights makes much of a difference for safety, but exercise selection is more important. On a squat, you going to failure is pretty risky regardless. On a biceps curls, both low and high weights are pretty safe. But if you would go closer to failure with lighter weights, it should produce more muscle growth all else being kept the same.

If you do 28 reps with a weight you could do 30 reps, you would still get some strength-endurance adaptations, just slightly less. But again, by not going to failure, you can perform better on your subsequent sets/exercise, so that can compensate for it.

An example being heavy vs light weights.

With heavy weights you are better off leaving reps in reserve (lets say 2), because its best to avoid complete failure for safety reasons. Lightweights however, you can go to max failure with no need to leave any reps in reserve.

By that logic, the lighter weights will produce more muscle growth than the heavy weights due to fatiguing the muscles to their max.

Is this correct?

Also, what happens to the strength-endurance you would normally get with lighter weights when not taking reps to failure? Do you still get that benefit but on a smaller scale or since you went to failure does all of the work done go directly into building new muscle?