Dr. Ben House on Hypertrophy and Rep Ranges

Last but not least, one of my favorite writers and teachers, Dr. Ben House. His episode was number 49. And we talked about all of the things that affect the calories in, calories out equation and the tools at your disposal to manipulate it to change your body composition. But Ben House is a man who loves helping turn men into gorillas. A lot of episode 49 focused on fat loss, but Ben and I also chatted about what it takes to gain muscle. And realistically, lifting something other than your body is what you need after you experience your initial newbie gains. If you want to build muscle, you need at least 30 to 40 percent of your rep max. But you need to take 30 to 40 percent of that to failure. Uh, so that's going to be puke city. And that's where I think, well, that's where we just, we generally just get put in the 60 to 80% of one RM realm because that's, what's effective and time efficient. Um, and cause like 30% of my bench press, like, what is that? That's like 95 pounds. Like I would have to, I would have to do that until I couldn't do it anymore. Like I have no idea how many reps, no idea how many, like that's you probably deadlifting like 135 until you couldn't do it anymore. Like that would be death. Um, and so like, that's not, that's just probably not maintainable. I thought that was pretty wild. Most people think 20 plus reps puts you in the endurance range, not hypertrophy range, but that is an oversimplification. As Ben pointed out, most programs prescribe doing sets and reps in the 60-80% of your 1 rep max range, because you're more likely to follow that than a plan that asks you to go to true failure with lightweight. I mean, jeez, I can't imagine how crappy doing 135 pound deadlifts to failure would be. Oh, God, that just sounds awful. And I just want to take a second to thank the strength gods for bestowing heavy weights and lower rep ranges upon us meaty mortals.