Is it better to do 5 or 8 reps?

Is it better to do 5 or 8 reps?

Lighter weights – say sets of between 8-12 reps performed to or near failure – are usually touted as best for hypertrophy or muscle growth purposes. If you’re looking for the “sweet spot” between these two adaptations, you’d do sets of between 5-8 reps.

Can you build muscle with 8 reps?

While choosing a weight at which you can do just 8-12 reps builds muscle, it also builds strength, no doubt. But that weight is not optimal for strength building. When focusing on maximizing your strength, you want to train with even heavier loads, ones you can lift for just 1-6 reps.

Is 5 reps too little?

Reps in the 1-5 range build super dense muscle and strength. Reps in the 6-12 range build equal amounts of muscular power, strength, and size. Reps in the 12+ range primarily build muscular endurance and size and also cardiovascular health.

Is 8 reps a good amount?

It turns out that 8-12 reps is actually good advice. It sits in the Goldilocks Zone of reps and loading, it’s time efficient in that it can maximize the number of tough reps per set, it’s energy efficient in that it doesn’t require too many reps to stimulate hypertrophy, or involve loads that are unnecessarily heavy.

Is 5 reps good for hypertrophy?

If your objective is strength or power (think: heavy lifting), the textbook advice is to perform 3 to 5 sets of 2 to 6 reps per exercise. For hypertrophy (building muscle), the sweet spot is 3 to 4 sets of 6 to 12 reps.

Is 5 reps enough for bench press?

Doing around 6–20 reps per set is usually best for building muscle, with some experts going as wide as 5–30 or even 4–40 reps per set. For bigger lifts, 6–10 reps often works best.

Why are 5 reps the best?

More specifically, 1–5 reps are generally preferred for maximal strength development. Given strength is based on lifting the heaviest load, it makes perfect sense that training with a relatively heavy load (1–5 rep range) would optimize strength adaptations. There is evidence of this in the research.

Will sets of 5 build muscle?

Packing on lean muscle mass Although 5 repetitions are fewer than the typical 8–12 range often utilized in muscle building, research suggests that loads of 5 repetitions or even lower lead to substantial gains in muscle tissue and strength ( 4 , 5 ).

Is 8 reps and 4 sets good?

Reasoning: A moderate range of 4 sets of 8 reps allows the lifter to handle loads that stress the muscle quickly while facilitating sufficient time under tension.

Is 5 sets enough to build muscle?

What Were the Study Results? The group that did 5 sets per exercise gained more strength, endurance, and muscle than the groups that did 1 or 3 sets per exercise or body weight exercises. The main finding was that the more sets people did, the better their results on the whole.

Is 5 sets good for muscle growth?

Can 5×5 build muscle?

5×5 training is one of the original and most popular muscle mass building programs being used by elite bodybuilders and athletes. It’s designed to hit a muscle group hard 2-3 times per week, while still providing enough recovery time to promote significant muscle growth.

Is 5 reps good enough?

A tried and true bodybuilding and strength protocol is 5 sets of 5 reps, which is enough volume to elicit improvements in strength AND size.

Is it OK to do 5 sets?

The main takeaways were: People who did 5 sets gained more muscle than everyone else. People who did 5 sets gained more strength on almost every exercise than everyone else. People who did 3 sets gained more muscle than people who did 1 set or body weight training only.

Is 5 sets per exercise too much?

Analyzing your fitness goals is the first step in figuring out how many exercises you should do per muscle group. It doesn’t have to get complicated, though. Research shows that even fewer than 5 sets per exercise per week can grow muscle. So get moving and fine-tune your approach as you go!