Matching Rep Ranges to Exercise and Goals

If you think, okay, what about the exercise? Would you do a four rep max on a leg extension? Yeah, if you hate your knees, go for it. But there are certain exercises that aren't going to be appropriate for heavyweight low reps. Are you going to do, let's look at the back squat. Would you do 12 reps in the back squat? You could, but it's probably not the best rep range over time. It is when you're a beginner, but when you get decently strong, yeah, that is going to be fucking fatiguing. so a leg press is probably going to be more appropriate for 12 to 15 when you're strong and a four to eight is going to be more appropriate for a back squat so like there's these details and this nuance matters of if i'm going to pick a rep range i need to make sure that the exercise fits that the client fits that and it's conducive to the goals because if you just want hypertrophy you got a lot of rep ranges you could do and if people go well you'll get fatigued too fatigued if you do high reps. Well, there's an easy way to overcome that. Get in better fucking shape. You're just too out of shape for the rep range, which means that we can use, let's say you do 12 to 15 reps. You're like, fuck man, that's destroying me. I'm huffing and puffing. Great. We're going to stay on that rep range for a while because you're still going to get hypertrophy there, but we're going to get you in better shape and work capacity. If you want to get really fucking strong, the only way to do that is to lift heavy ass weight. So if you want high perch feed, but you also want to get really fucking like ruby level strong, you're going to have to lift lower reps and heavier weight. But it really depends on what the outcome is, right? Beginners need to get in shape and build muscle. When they're becoming like, when they're decently well-trained, now the focus should be building muscle and building strength and maintaining their endurance, like maintaining their ability to do repeated efforts under a specific load. Parking that out of shape thing for when we talk about cardio and conditioning later, but this is why it doesn't pay to ask someone about what they're doing with their training because it doesn't mean you're going to get their like their results someone asked me what my optimal leg day is and mine is uh three sets of five exercises max maybe four but five exercises max between four to six reps for the first three maybe up to eight and then maybe the last one I'll do for eight to 12 reps. To me, I'd rather 85% of my training be below eight reps, like the four to eight reps and only 15% if that be eight to 12 reps, because I can make more less. I mean, I can make less more. And that is something to know as well. And people don't like there, it's harder to know how many reps left in the tank, the more reps that you have. That's right. They also have to realize too, you're an elite level, like you, like no matter what your strength is right now. You've been, you have been, and I have been in the past. I'm not anymore, but at an elite level of strength. And we got there lifting heavy ass weights, which means heavy weights is probably going to do best for us because of how strong we have been in the past and our training age. But that doesn't mean if I, if I tell somebody three to one wave loading gives me the best results, that doesn't mean that that's the best program for everybody, because it took me years to be able to get anything out of 3-2-1 wave loading, right? It took me years to get, to be able to grow significant amounts of strength and muscle with triples. But I think if somebody was like, hey, Luke, what's, what is your optimal leg day or chest day or whatever? I'm going to have to go, well, let me, let me stop you. What is the outcome we're looking for? Because my training is variable depending on what I'm trying to get out of my stuff. So like, like right now I'm doing a protein sparing modified fast. I'm doing sets of 12 to 15. I wouldn't normally do that. I'm only doing it because I need that to squeeze out all the glycogen so I can maintain ketosis until my refeed, until I switch phases into a different phase of dieting. So it's like, I know, you know me, I hate, like I've told you many times in the past, if I do traditional hypertrophy stuff of like eight to 15 reps, I just get smaller. Now, if I stick around four to eight reps, that's where I actually grow. But that's also a factor of being a former powerlifter, bodybuilder, strong man, 30 something years of training, you know, 318 kilos squat, almost 500 pound bench press, 730 pound deadlift, blah, blah, blah. Like, am I designed to get a response out of that? Is that just the way I'm built? Maybe, maybe, maybe you and I are like just fast twitch monsters and we are genetically built for that. Or maybe that part of it Maybe it also a nurture part as well We train to that level at some point So that what our brain remembers and that what our body remembers That what our motor neurons remember That what our muscle nuclei remember So they go I remember this It time to grow because we getting back into what we used to be doing Right But everybody needs to understand that there is a ton of rep ranges you could do just like there a ton of exercises You need to base what you going to do on how much time you have where, what training age and what level you're at, what your, what your outcome or what you want to get out of the training and, and also what you like. Like, so I train, I mean, I train guys who love, love high time under tension, high volume. Like they, they fucking love the burn and they grow on that shit i can't think of anything fucking worse than that i would rather hit a hard five five rep set and then rest three or four or five minutes do an antagonistic muscle rest another three four five minutes you know but you know if you're going to lift in those four that like if you're going to lift it at five reps with heavy loads you're going to need a lot of rest so that's going to chew up a lot of your training time so if you want to do a ton of different exercises that's not the style but if you if you want to specialize on three exercises and the four exercise and a workout and you want to lift heavy, you can make it work. There's just so many different things to think about when we're designing programs.