Why rep ranges still matter

Philip Pape 0:00

You've probably heard that rep ranges don't matter as long as you train close to failure. You've also heard that only the last five reps of a step count, which is a misinterpretation of the effective reps model. Both of those are tied to legitimate research, but don't tell the full story. My guest Andy Baker is back on the show today, and based on his experience coaching lifters for two decades, he's going to walk us through five rep ranges and discuss why you might use each one, and for which exercises and hypertrophy or strength goals. You'll learn why you should care about rep ranges at all, when low versus high rep sets are worth doing for the best results, and why age does matter, especially if you're over 40 like me or you have some beat-up elbows and knees. If you've ever wondered about the best rep ranges for your strength training program to get strong, big, or jacked, this episode is for you. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness device under the microscope, finds a hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix it does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, and the premise that we're going to challenge today is that rep ranges, maybe they don't really matter for building muscle. You've heard this from the science-based corner of the internet that anything from five to 30 or more reps works the same as long as you go close to failure. Or on the other hand, that only the last five reps matter. And there's some truth in all of this as always, but it's also highly misinterpreted and miscommunicated. So tons of people are confused about their programming. My guest today is Andy Baker back for, I think, his fourth time on the show. We never have technical issues on how to do this. And you guys know Andy, but if you don't, he owns Baker Personal Training in Kingwood, Texas. Also the online Baker Barbell Club, which I'm a longtime member of to this day. He co-wrote practical programming with Mark Ripito and the barbell prescription with John Sullivan. Andy coaches all the populations from teenagers to lifters in their 70s and 80s. And he sends out a really good training newsletter. In fact, today's episode came right out of an email he sent last week called Your Guide to Selecting Effective Rep Ranges for Hypertrophy. So what better way to walk through rep ranges than with Andy himself? So he's going to explain what each of these rep ranges is for, the exercises in each range, why your age and joints might factor in, and what he thinks of things like the effective reps model. And we'll get into some other topics like variation and training to failure. Andy, welcome back to the show, my man.

Andy Baker 2:24

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Philip Pape 2:25

So your email walks through the rep ranges, but before we get there, you know, I'm thinking of when I was a kid and my friends would be training in the gym in the garage. And, you know, when you're 12 or 15, you're just like doing curls until you can't, and your ego is the only thing stopping you. And, you know, a lot of people carry that into their older years. Bodybuilders, I imagine Arnold in Austria was like not really thinking about rep ranges when he was young. He was just training the heck out of it. And so like the fundamental question I want to start with is why should we care about rep ranges? Like before we get into the camps, why do we even need them?

Andy Baker 3:01

Well, I mean, when you start a set or you write a program, I mean, you're you're you have to have you have to have some aim of the set. You know, you have to have some system in place to where you track progression from workout to workout. And, you know, there there is practical reasons why different rep ranges may work better based on the goal of the individual, based on the specific exercise that you're doing, based on the outcome that you would like to have from that. So the rep ranges do matter. There's flexibility in those rep ranges, but I think more than anything is that you need to assign to your exercises that you do, even if it's arbitrary, a rep range that you're going to do for that movement so that you can have some measurable metric of progression from workout to workout. You know, I want to assign five to eight reps for the squat and I want to progress within that rep range. Otherwise, it's too hard to measure if this workout, if it's all random, and oh, today I feel like doing heavy threes, and tomorrow I feel like doing sets of 15 to 20, and then I'm gonna go for some heavy, it's when it's kind of random like that, it's it's very hard to structure any sort of programming or any sort of model that you can progress within. And so, I mean, that's why that they matter. I mean, do they have do different rep ranges have different effects? Of course. And so kind of knowing what those are and then assigning it to each exercise in a practical sense where it makes sense for that exercise and for the goal of the person doing it. I think understanding, you know, how how these different rep ranges work and when when it matters and when it doesn't matter so much, I think is important just for the structure of your programming.

Philip Pape 4:39

Yeah, and I know a lot of my friends or lifters or in your group, they're like, Why are you asking such a dumb question, Philip? But it's a good question because I did P90X back in the day, I did CrossFit. Like there's modalities where you realize in hindsight, there are elements of total randomness and just going to your sweat, going to your store, it changes from day to day. And there's almost like a pedestal that that stuff gets put on for for its own sake. But then there might be some truth to okay, if you're if you're doing certain things like training to failure for mechanical tension,

What hypertrophy research actually proves

Philip Pape 5:08

it's because some of that matter less, right? And we're gonna get into some of those, like the camps, which actually I want to ask about next, is that you talk about, I guess, two camps of nerds arguing about the the Brad Schoenfeld, like just train to failure crowd, and then Chris Beardsley effective reps crowd, and and you say in your email, like the claims about them aren't always true. Like what they say might not match what people interpret them on the interwebs. So, what are the claims they're sharing, or what have they shared through evidence, and what are the camps that we have?

Andy Baker 5:37

So the the famous kind of Schoenfeld study, I believe it was 2017, maybe wrong on that, doesn't really matter, but it's been around for a while. Oh, you're right, it is, which was basically a meta-analysis of a bunch of different aggregated studies. And, you know, basically at the end of the study, what they reported was that hypertrophy can occur basically anywhere between five and 30 reps, so long as that like RIR RPE was equated. In other words, those sets were taken, you know, right up to failure. So a set of 30 could grow muscle, a set of five could grow muscle, set of 10, 15, 20, all of those had the capacity to grow muscle as long as those were limit sets. Now, what a lot of people interpreted that as, and I'm not sure, I'm not gonna put words in Schoenfeld's mouth one way or the other, because I I don't, I didn't investigate, you know, all the stuff that he said or didn't say about it. I'm not sure that he made the claim that then rep ranges don't matter, but a lot of people did. A lot of people that read the research and kind of look at the results of that study kind of just said, well, it doesn't matter any as long as anywhere from five to 30 and you're good. So don't worry about rep ranges. And I think that's kind of a misinterpretation of it. And what I said in the newsletter was that reporting the results of a study is not the same as generating real-world practical advice. So, what that study kind of told you is that there's some flexibility in rep ranges and that multiple rep ranges can work for the stimulation of hypertrophy. That doesn't necessarily mean that rep ranges don't matter, and that a set of pro a program that uses mainly sets of five or six reps is going to yield the same result as a program that uses mainly 25 to 30 reps. I think that's one of those things where you just have to use your brain, you just have to use your eye, the eyeball test, some practical experience of being in gyms for you know 30 years and be working with lifters, observing lifters, that you know, if you put one guy on a program of nothing but five to eight reps and another guy on a program of 25 to 30 reps, it's probably not going to get the same outcome. I mean, just some that's just and I and I don't so I don't that study didn't necessarily say just do whatever. I, or at least that's not that's not how I interpret it, just that there's some flexibility there and that, you know, as needed, situationally dependent, that you can get that you can generate some hypertrophy with a variety of rep ranges. I mean, I would I would actually expand that to below five reps. I think a heavy double, a heavy triple has a stimulative effect towards hypertrophy. I don't think that's the best way to train, but to say that a heavy double or a heavy triple has no effect towards stimulating, you know, some sort of hypertrophic response. I I also don't think it's so I think actually the rep range is even broader than that.

Philip Pape 8:25

I wonder if they weren't even testing that. That's the other thing with people taking research. It's like five is a minimum, but they didn't test below than five, let's say.

Andy Baker 8:31

Right. And so I think that the takeaway there is that there's flexibility, not that it doesn't matter. So I still think it's on the lifter, the coach, whoever, to kind of take that and apply it, you know, apply it to real-world programming that we kind of that we kind of know worse and realize that you don't necessarily have to pin yourself down to a very narrow rep range, that you have some flexibility there. But I think a lot of people interpreted it as it doesn't matter. But a lot of these studies, I think just to a broader point, you know, that's what I was saying is like reporting here's what the study found is not the same thing as saying, here's how you should train. Like there's a there's another level there where you have to take the results of a study or whatever and use it to kind of maybe influence the way that you program or the way that you train, but not you don't necessarily generate programming directly from what a study found, because then you have to go back and look at, you know, how were the a lot of these studies as we know the protocols

Effective reps without the internet myths

Andy Baker 9:22

themselves are not necessarily realistic. They're doing, you know, there are studies that have done where the, you know, the only exercise that would that was used was a unilateral leg extension and it found this, but that doesn't mean you would take the result of that study and then just universally apply it to all of your training. It's just it's a singular data point that may or may not have some degree of small influence in the way that you go about thinking about programming and training.

Philip Pape 9:47

Okay, so if we assume that there's flexibility, but there's still constraints within that you want based on goals, outcomes, and progression and measurement, like you mentioned before. Talk, let's talk about the other camp for a moment, which is the effective reps model, which I I think is more in line with like what we often talk about, but it gets so miscommunicated.

Andy Baker 10:06

Well, and but I and uh and the so the effective reps model, and that's that's Beardly saying, Chris Beardly saying that's kind of I I'm pretty sure he's the one that kind of coined the coined the term, the effective reps model. And basically the very simplified version of that is that in any set, it is only the last five, uh assuming this set is taken to failure or you know, technical failure or whatever, that it's only the last five reps of that set that are that are really stimulative towards hypertrophy, because only at that point where you're getting where you're within five reps of failure. So five reps out, four reps out, three, two, you know, zero reps out from failure, it's only in those repetitions where you have where you're at more or less full motor unit recruitment. And so you you're you're bringing in because at the beginning of the set, let's say of 12 reps, the first five or six reps, those are going to be relatively easy. And you're not gonna be recruiting in those large type two motor units into the exercise yet, because what we call the size principle, and I mean science principle is basically that in any given movement, the muscle is going to start using the smallest motor units, the smallest muscle fibers, those slow twitch, you know, muscle fibers are going to be used first. It's just a conservation of energy type of principle. It's to stand up out of a chair or walk out to get your mail, your your body's not gonna turn on those big, powerful, you know, high threshold, the type two motor units, right? It's it's going to it's gonna use the smaller ones. Okay, so it's only, and that's gonna happen, let's say, at the at the beginning of a set of 12, you're not gonna be using those big type two muscle fibers at the beginning of that set. It's only as you start to fatigue and you get closer to failure, now it's gonna turn those on. It's gonna have to recruit those in order to finish the set. So it's only those five reps, and then that's where those speed of the rep becomes involuntarily slow. In other words, you may try to move that weight fast, but you can't because you're starting to fatigue. It's starting, it's starting to get heavy towards the end of that set. And that's what's necessary for mechanical tension, which we say you hear this repeated ad nauseum, which is just mechanical tension is the primary driver of hypertrophy. Well, where does tension come from? Tension is not a load thing, it's two types of tension. There's tension of if you're holding a heavy deadlift, you know, there's tension on the entire system, there's tension across the muscles, the skeleton, the tendons. That's a that's a musculoskeletal type of tension. There's also tension, though, at the level of the of the sarcomere within within the muscle fiber itself. That is a different type. Okay, so there's tension within the muscle fiber itself at the level of the sarcomere. Everybody can go look that up. It's what the actin actin and myelin fibers do. So the this is stimulated by involuntary slowdown of the contraction. Okay. So this is not the same thing as intentionally moving a weight slow. This is where I want to move this weight fast, but I can't because it's getting quote getting heavy. Okay. So that's what has to occur for tension to take place. And that's only going to occur in those last five reps of a set, let's say. Okay, that's the effective reps theory. So it actually confirms the Schoenfeld thing, which is that five to 30 reps are all effective so long as you're reaching failure or reaching cloth very close to failure. Does that all make sense?

Philip Pape 13:30

It makes sense. And I think where people screw up the logic is they'll say, okay, if it's five, does that mean sets of five? Well, no, you're saying five from failure, from zero R I R or 10 RPE to five RPE.

Andy Baker 13:44

Right. So that it confirms the Schoenfeld thing, which is that a variety of rep ranges can be effective for hypertrophy so long as those are taken, you know, it to or very close to failure. But what a lot of people again kind of misinterpret with the effective reps theory is that okay, if only the last five are effective, then just do five. And I don't think that that's necessarily wrong in a lot of cases. I do think that like, like that confirms a lot of the starting strength stuff that I buy into, which is that fives are maybe the perme. If you were gonna pick maybe one rep range in terms of you know, build the building both strength and muscle, that that might be it. But that doesn't mean that, you know, that work may work for a novice for a while, but that's not gonna work for everybody for over a you know, across a long period of time. You're gonna have to expand outside of those rep ranges. But that's what kind of a lot of the people that really closely adhere to the effective reps model kind of took away was if if we only need the fat last five reps of a set, then just do five, or what they would tell you like four to six, you know, the kind of so and then just apply that to every single exercise, and then you cut out the inefficiency. In other words, you don't why do a set of 12 if the first seven reps are just a waste of time? Just get to those last five. So just go heavier and only do five or let's say four to six reps. That's kind of that's kind of how that was interpreted. And I don't totally disagree with that, where it's applicable, I think that sometimes just going heavier and cutting out some of those inefficient reps, let's say, or let's unnecessary reps is a better idea. And so why do 20 when only the you know only reps 15 through 20 are valuable? Why would why take the time and energy to do those first 15 reps, just make the weight heavier and do sets of five? Um which again, I would agree with in a lot of contexts, yeah, but not all the time. So I think it's a misinterpretation to say that both of the kind of zealots or whatever of those models tend to be it, it's kind of it's just narrow thinking on both it's narrow thinking to think that we have to only we have to reduce everything down to four to six reps or rep ranges don't matter. Yeah, it's like it's it's like you know, it's actually kind of somewhere in the middle, you know. They do they do matter, but it's but there's flexibility.

Philip Pape 16:06

Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna get in and and that should become more obvious once you describe each of the rep ranges, but real quick on the starting strength thing, because a lot of people think about that. It's okay, if you've got three sets of five and your goal is for each of those sets of five to be at the same load, but you have this fatigue buildup, understanding you have rest periods, and even in your very first set, you must not be going to complete failure. What's going on there? And and I think maybe maybe you could explain it better than I, but like in the effective reps model, it's not like you need all five reps. Like we've seen that you need at least two or three of those in a lot of cases, and there's a fatigue component too. So yeah, like what are your thoughts on that?

Andy Baker 16:42

Well, yeah, you're not in general, most novices, if you actually, you know, would if you observe a workout that they're going through, if they're doing especially especially early on, that those three sets of five are not all taken, you know, it's not three sets of five all to failure. And well, and and so two things here. So yes, so maybe let's say if you're we're gonna if we're gonna look at it through the lens of the effective reps model, maybe you're only getting three effective reps from each of those sets, two or three effects, but that's part of the reason you do three sets and not just one, because you're because they're on they're not taking a failure, so it's not five effective reps. And here's the other thing Lyle McDonald has has asked this a lot, and I think it's a good question, which is because he recognizes that it has some validity, as do I. And I think this is a good question as like a as a broader community. Is it everybody tends to think of how much volume do we need? How many sets and reps do we need for you know to stimulate progress? And the better question is how many effective reps do we need over the course of a workout or the course of a week? And I don't think there's a lot of agreement on that. And I think beginners, intermediates, and advanced people probably wind up getting about the same amount, but they get there differently. So that's part of the reason, you know, if it's a if it's a five, a true five from a more intermediate to advanced trainee, if a true five rep max, by definition, you can't repeat that for another two sets. You're done after that. I mean, you may you may unrack that weight again, but you're only gonna get two to three reps out of that. You know, you're not you're gonna have a performance degradation because it was a true five rep max. And the more advanced you are, the stronger you are, the more that's gonna be true. A really advanced guy who takes out a true no shit five rep max, rest five minutes and try it again, he may get zero or one rep because he's so he completely emptied the gas tank with just that one set that he can't do another one. But if you're gonna do, say, three sets of five, that's kind of by definition gonna mean that that you're leaving at least a rep or two in the tank. I think novices who don't have that that that real ability to recruit a lot of motor units yet, like they're not that neuromuscular system is not as developed as a more advanced guy, they can do three sets of five with all five of those repetitions being closer to failure. If we're using percentages, maybe that's maybe they can operate like closer to 85% of a one rep max and still do three sets of five. The more advanced you are and the stronger you are, the more that that say percentage of one RM would come down. If you're gonna do three sets of five, that number is gonna be closer to like 75%, not 85%. And the intermediate's probably around like 80% of one RM, if that makes sense, because you just you develop that ability to fatigue yourself more. So when a more advanced lifter is doing more volume, like multiple sets, three, four, five sets of five, something like that, each one of those is going to have to be further away from failure than it would be for the novice. Okay, so that's that's kind of an important point to understand with all this. It's kind of that proximity to failure changes a little bit, changes the volume equation from beginner to intermediate in advance.

Philip Pape 19:48

Yeah, that's a that's a really good point based on training age, let alone the micro differences in a session you were talking about where the fatigue is based on the fatigue before it, the order of exercises, like your week, your recovery, your sleep, all the other fun stuff, too. So why don't we dive into the rep ranges then? Let's start with the one to four. Many of our favorite, some people hate it, some people have never done it. So it's gonna be, you know, yeah.

Andy Baker 20:11

That's kind of what I did in the email is I just broke it down. I try to just give like break it down into like these little segments, like these kind of rep range segments to show, like, and the thing is before I get off on this, is like one that like the list that I gave

When 1-4 reps work

Andy Baker 20:25

is it's not absolute. There's lots of gray area and lots of overlap. So, like, but what when you start listing stuff like this out, like like right now, I'm gonna say, like, for training for absolute strength, you know, one to four reps. And most people aren't gonna agree with that. If you're trying to train for, you know, for powerlifting or any other in some sort of sports application where you're training for absolute strength, you've got to do at least some of the work during your week or during your training block has to be heavy, low reps, or else you're not you're just not training maximum force production. So that's gonna be that one to four rep range, which that's gonna be about 90% of one RM and above for most people. It's gonna be a low dose of that, but some of it needs to be in there. And again, like I said, it's not the best rep range for hypertrophy. It does it doesn't mean that a set of one or two or three or four doesn't have any uh hypertrophic hypertrophic effect. It just means you can't train that way and do enough volume. You can't get enough of those types of sets in to really move the needle because there is some threshold of volume that we all, and it varies, I feel like by the individual, but there is some threshold of minimal volume that we all need to hit in order to actually grow. I don't think that there's broad consensus on where that is. Even the science guys will say, well, it's 10 to 20 total sets per week per muscle. Well, that's a broad range. There's a big difference between 10 and 20 sets per week. I think for a more advanced guy, it's lower than that. It's it's somewhere in the like six to 10 total sets per week. You know, if you really know how to train, you really know how to push it and you're moving loads. I think the total amount of you know, stimulative sets you week is per week is closer to like. Six to ten, but you just can't get enough of those sets in at those very, very heavy. So those are going to be used just for absolute strength.

Philip Pape 22:07

You mentioned a couple of things in your email specific to this as well. Like one is you said it's easier to gauge proximity to failure, which you've kind of already mentioned earlier today, in a way, but also said you're not limited by like your conditioning or fatigue of the non-target muscle groups. Right. Explain that one.

Andy Baker 22:23

Yeah, I mean, you know, in a set of two versus a set of 20, the target muscle, depending on what, let's say, what exercise that you're doing, but it's you're going to be able to gauge whether you have one rep left in the tank, no reps left in the tank, or three reps left in the tank, much, much easier at a heavier load than you will at a set of 20, because there's other factors that start to kick in, you know, the higher the rep range you go. One of one of which is your conditioning, your cardiovascular conditioning, which has, you know, really nothing to do with the strength adaptation, but your your ability to breathe may be the thing that causes you to hit failure at rep 18 versus your quads or your glutes or whatever muscle that you're really trying, you know, whatever muscle group or groups you're trying to hit. You know, in order to hit failure, ideally for hypertrophy, we want the target musculature to be the thing that fails, not some other aspect. And so if you're if you're if you're failing to hit 20 reps on your squat and you've you failed at rep 18, not because your legs gave out, but because your breath gave out and your heart rate is so high and it's you know, your your heart's beating through your ears, that's not the best way to train for muscle growth. It may be a decent effect for cardiovascular conditioning, but it's it's not the best way to train for growth because something else is failing. You know, similarly, if there's a lot of in a in a complex movement like a like like a squat or a deadlift where you've got lots of muscles all working together, there's lots of peripheral fatigue, meaning there's lots of other muscle groups that are may get tired first before the target muscle does. You know, you're you may get that, you know, if you've ever done really high rep squatting, you know, sometimes what happens is that the fatigue that builds that limits you and causes you to rack the bar is like in your lower back. Like you just get this disgusting like pump in your erectors that you just can't do another rep anymore. And it wasn't your quads or your your you know, your aduct or your hamstrings or whatever that failed. It was your you had to rack the bar because your low back just got so tired, you know, or some some other aspect that happens. It's that kind of stuff happens less with lower rep ranges. It's much easier to gauge is the target, is the target muscle or musculature, you know, being is is that the thing that's failing? And also there's things like just with with massive amounts of fatigue with high rep training, there's going to be degradation of your form, especially not so much on an isolation movement, which we'll get into in a minute, but certainly on a complex movement pattern like a squat or a deadlift or an overhead press or something like that. You know, you get into those really high rep sets, almost, you know, and not maybe not as much if you're a very experienced guy, you can hold it together, but certainly more, you know, beginner and intermediates. Things go to shit when fatigue really, really kicks in. They can't buckle down and hold things together so that they're getting a good stimulus and a safe stimulus. So that's one thing.

Philip Pape 25:19

Now that you talk about that, I'm gonna add one thing to that, Andy, and that is the psychological limits too. Oh having gone through like 531 and 852 and all the rep ranges now, and I've only been lifting properly for like five years. I always look forward to lower reps from a mental standpoint. Like they just it's like they're easy in their own way and super hard in another, and you kind of flip those around when you go to higher reps, you know.

Andy Baker 25:41

So I've been I've been I've been training clients for 20 plus years, and one of the I mean, I mean, this is almost universal, is beginners will always think that lighter weight and higher reps is easier and they're scared of the heavier weights. The longer they train with you and the more experience they get under the bar, the more they will say, Give me sets of two and three all day long, and fuck those sets of two today or 15. You know, if you tell a really advanced guy, hey, we're gonna do three sets of 15 on squats today, is it'd be like, is there any other alternative? Like, how much can I pay you to do that five today, not three sets of 15?

Philip Pape 26:18

Like it's far and like But you often say leg presses respond really well to 15 to 20 reps. I'm like, really? Come on, man.

Andy Baker 26:25

They they do, but that's that's the thing, is that they're they're like, like, that's the thing with like the whole thing about 30 rep sets. Like, okay, let's just say we want to have one of those crazy kind of off-schedule workouts, and we're gonna do something crazy, like go for a maximum set of 30 reps on a leg press. Like we're just gonna, we're gonna put uh you know, as much weight as we can on there and we're just gonna just go, you know, no, no lockout and just go until we truly hit failure, 25, 30 reps of leg press. Like that's really, really fucking hard. Now, are you gonna put together a program where you're doing that week in and week out and trying to get some sort of progressive overload, some sort of linear progression week in and week out, you know, doing those sets of 30 like that? Because, like you're saying, it's it's psychologically demanding. Like you have to really dig deep for a long period of time in order to do those. Now, there's are there some absolute savages out there in the like the bodybuilding world and stuff that can do that week in and week out? Yeah, there are, but it's really, really tough. And you have to be very, very committed to a very, very specific goal and highly motivated to get in there and and truly, and I'm talking about sets of 25 or 30 that are truly like I did 30 reps, but I could not do 31 or 32. Like, people don't realize how hard that is. Like the amount of pain that you're gonna be in doing that, yeah, and especially if you're more advanced and can actually do that with quite a bit of load, like doing that week in and week out, you have to be a savage in order to do that. And psychologically, it's just harder than it is to do, you know. Like I said, for a beginner, the heavy weight is a little bit scarier when they unrack that bar and it's like, oh, I've never felt that before. But that's one of those things that you kind of get used to over time. You know, you still get a little, I still get butterflies. I've been doing this a long time. And when I unrack a really heavy squat, you know, that five a weight that I haven't done in a long time, you still get a little butterflies in your stomach, you know. It's only natural, but it's not like that. You know, I get more butterflies going into a set of you know, 20 rep, you know, all bike presents.

Philip Pape 28:20

So it's like it's like when I hear people talking about like BFR, I'll do BFR, then you don't have to lift heavy. I'm like, no, thanks. I've done it, I've done it. Or or when I go on a podcast and it's like a woman podcaster who I could tell she's asking for her audience, like, do they really have to lift heavy? And I'm like, well, for you first of all, you have to define heavy. Are you talking about close to failure heavy or are you talking about heavy? But I can tell, like, hey, you haven't tried it yet. Like, let's just try it. And you tell me after what you think.

Andy Baker 28:44

Yeah, because it's true with men and women. I mean, the women that I train are the same way. Over a long period of time, they're gonna get more comfortable with those heavy weights. They may not be at first, but once they get over kind of that psychological hurdle of heavy's not gonna hurt me, it's not gonna make me a sore. The set's over with in like 10 seconds instead of two minutes. You know, it's they once they get over that, then then they're all gonna opt for the heavier weight, you know, than they are for the higher rep weights.

Philip Pape 29:08

Let's move on to the second rep range. Four to eight reps.

Andy Baker 29:11

Yeah, and again, that's arbitrary. There's some overlap. Could you say it's three to eight, five to eight? Yeah, I mean, whatever. It's but look, I'm just kind of breaking it up in those little those little four kind of segments like that. But that like four to eight, eight rep range, that medium rep range, I say it's meat and potatoes, is it's heavy enough to where there's still a strength

Why 4-8 dominates

Andy Baker 29:31

adaptation going on. And again, that's actually another problem with the higher rep ranges, is that while motor unit recruitment is high, tension is high, force production is actually low on there because you're moving a weight slow and it's light. So lightweights move slowly are not good for strength. Lightweights move fast or heavyweights move slowly are good, but lightweights move slow are not good a strength training stimulus. And that's it can be good hypertrophy stimulus. People have to kind of wrap their brain around what I just said, that's really important. But that so what that does is it blunts long-term progression because you're not getting a stimulus in there that drives strength. So that low rep, and this is really important for natural guys that don't have the chemical assistance of PEDs because those PEDs are actually gonna give you that capacity for increased force production without actually training heavy. So natural guys actually have to have that heavier work in there to stimulate that ability to produce more force over time, which is not only gonna drive up your lower rep sets, but it's also gonna drive up your higher rep sets. You know, if you want to squat 225 for 20, the best way to do that is to squat 405 for five. That will that's going to rather than training sets of 20, because training in the sets of 20 aren't giving you the force production capacity that the sets of five are. But that four to eight rep range gives you a good mix of both. You get enough volume in there, you get enough reps to get enough of those effective reps accumulated over a workout or accumulated over a week or trading block, or however you want to think about accumulating volume. You're getting enough repetitions done, but you're getting it done at a heavy enough load because sets of five, let's say, would fit in there. It's but four, sixes, seven, eights, I think all probably kind of fit in there. It's enough load to generate a strength stimulus. And it's light enough, it can be applied to lots of different exercises. So you could use four to eight. Works really well, obviously, on multi-joint compound lifts, but you could use them on isolation lifts too. I wouldn't exclusively go with that, but they they have a lot of flight, like four to eight rep range has a lot of flexibility. You could train a deadlift that way, you can train a leg curl that way. It's light enough to where it's safe to use, forgiving enough on like isolation movements. It's not so many reps that you can't do it effectively with compound movements and barbell movements where you're gonna lose your form. So that's why I say it's meat and potatoes, is it it works both as a it's a two for one, and that it's a it's a it's heavy enough that there's a strength stimulus, it's enough total reps where there's a hypertrophy stimulus, and it's somewhat broad, broadly applicable across a lot of different exercises. There's a lot of good bodybuilding coaches better than me that will tell you if you wanted to sum up how do I get big, if you wanted to sum that up into one sentence, it's just to get incredibly strong across medium rep ranges. You know, pick an exercise, pick a medium rep range, which I would consider four to eight. Again, you could fudge that a little bit up or down. But let's say in that four, if you just get pick an exercise and just get strong in that four to eight rep range on that, you're probably going to grow. You know, it's probably the best, has the most predictability of anything. If you wanted to just really, really sum it up, get really, really strong, take your, you know, take your bench, you know, from 225 to 315 in that four to eight rep range. You're going to grow. You're definitely going to grow.

Philip Pape 32:52

Yeah, man. I mean, and and eight is right on that upper limit of where we were talking about the where the mental stuff starts to come in too. I mean, a couple of your programs I've run multiple times over the years, based on those, like 852. Everybody loves that program because it rotates through the two ranges we just talked about, right? Very low up to eight, but it's like hitting each of those and then allowing you to adapt and recover between them. But then also your your bodybuilding program where it's like top set back off, a lot of the top sets are anywhere from like four to six or like five to eight. Occasionally you'll do eight to ten for the big lifts.

Andy Baker 33:26

Right.

Philip Pape 33:26

Kind of plays on that.

Andy Baker 33:27

So yeah, exactly. And that's just that I feel like eight is kind of a again, it's arbitrary. Is it seven? Is it nine? We don't know. But eight is kind of the upper limit of kind of what I would consider like a strength training zone.

Philip Pape 33:39

Like 80% one on roughly, would you say?

Andy Baker 33:41

Yeah, I think you know, for most people, you know, it's probably roughly that. It's gonna vary by the individual, you know, but they but it's it's roughly that. So I feel like you're probably, you know, eight is about the top end of the strength training zone to where you're you're and it's it's clearly enough work to grow. It's enough repetitions where you're accumulating enough reps. And it's not so heavy like that. I use them in that 852 program because it comes after the week of twos, which were, you know, those get those are really, really, really heavy. So it's kind of a nice break on the system to back that weight way down. It's you know, it's gonna be about a 20, 25% drop in load in most cases. So it it feels kind of good, you know, on your joints and just your your system as a whole to not have such a bone crushing weight sitting on top of you, but you're still training strength at that rep range. And clearly you're still training hypertrophy. So it's like that five to eight, four to eight rep range is it is that's the sweet spot for both. If you want to both get bigger and get stronger, training in that medium rep range, that's kind of again, that's the meat and potatoes. That's kind of the sweet spot.

Philip Pape 34:42

Well, it was the only bold italics in your email because you said get brutally strong in this rep range and you will grow. And for the science nerds listening, you know, we covered a couple different podcasts in the past. One on looking at how like 30% and 60% are like the minimum thresholds from research on hypertrophy and then strength. So, you know, 60% is like the bare minimum, but you're still obviously 80% makes sense. And then the big lift more trial that a lot of people are referencing about bone health for menopausal women, like over or over 60 women, they tested 85% and showed, you know, that had a very significant positive effect for bone density. So there's another reason to train for strength.

Andy Baker 35:22

Yeah. And it and like I said, if you don't, like if we talk about the the kind of the next rep range I laid out, like the eight to 12 rep range, if you get brutally strong in the 8 to 12 rep range, are you going to get bigger? I would say yes, you are, but it's hard to get brutally strong in that rep range without doing any lower rep work because it doesn't have that force production stimulus. You've, if you all of all of your exercises in your week, all of the work that you do is say everything is eight to 12 reps or eight to 20 reps. There's nothing lower than eight in there, you're taking out a stimulus in there that drives force production. Those sets of 10 and 12, yeah, taken to failure, they're going to be stimulative for hypertrophy, but you're going to have a hard time progressing them over time because they don't really have that stimulus in there to really drive those strength gains. So those lower rep, that lower rep work that's in your program, that whether it's one to four or four to eight, you know, that lower to medium rep work in there, it progresses itself. In other words, the fives get strong, like fives get stronger by doing fives, but your five, your 12s, your 12 rep sets also get stronger by doing fives because the the fives and the threes and the fours, that's your force production work that's going to that's gonna allow it's gonna get you better at recruiting more motor units into all of the work that you do, not just those low rep sets. You're gonna be recruiting those that lower, you're gonna be recruiting those big motor units and more of them into your higher rep work also by training the lower rep work. Does that make sense?

Philip Pape 36:57

It may yeah, so it goes one direction, not necessarily the other.

Andy Baker 37:00

Right. Yes.

Philip Pape 37:01

So the where does eight to twelve fit in? Because a lot of it, a lot of what I've learned over the history of this stuff is is that was just like 70s, 80s, bodybuilding culture, other some route to it that you probably know about that you're gonna tell us now.

Andy Baker 37:15

I I I mean, I think a lot of it has to do unknowingly with the influence of PEDs, is that you know, in the you know, when when

Best uses for 8-12 reps

Andy Baker 37:24

steroids really, really came into uh the bodybuilding culture, what people don't realize, what what steroids do is they are increasing your force production capacity. They are increasing your ability to recruit more motor units just by taking that pill or or taking that injectable without having to do the heavy work. And so you can train in strictly a higher rep range, and your body is getting better at recruiting motor units without doing the heavy work. Now, do the do the PEDs make your lower rep work stronger too? Yeah, they do. They make you they make you bigger, stronger, and faster. And so, but the why do steroids make you faster? Well, you get better at training, you get better at recruiting more motor units into a movement by taking the performance-enhancing drugs. And so you can kind of get away without having to do the really heavy work when you're taking PEDs. A natural guy needs that heavy work, he needs that force production stimulus in his training program in order to drive long-term strength gains. And those long-term strength gains are ultimately what's going to be responsible for getting you bigger over time, is moving from 135 to 225 to 315, you know, to 405 on different lifts. You've got to have a stimulus for that. You've got to have a stimulus that drives your ability to do that. Heavy low rep training is a stimulus for that. PEDs are a stimulus for that. So if you've got the PEDs in there, you don't necessarily need the really heavy low rep training. You can just do the high rep training and stay away from all the heavy weights, which puts you at less risk for injury if you're on, especially nowadays where guys are taking lots and lots and lots of gear. It's a risk. It's a risk for them to do a lot of very heavy low rep work because the force production capacity of the muscle is going to outpace the connective integrity of the tendon. So guys that are on loads of gear that are getting strong really, really, really, really fast. If they're going venturing down and doing a lot of work in the two, three, four, five rep range, you know, bodybuilders doing this type of stuff, they're putting their the integrity of their tendons, they're at a higher risk for tendon ruptures than is a than is a more natural guy. So that's another reason why a lot of enhanced guides don't like to do anything less than like 10 reps. It's it's a risk. They're when you're training naturally, though, your rate of progression is so slow that your connective tissue is keeping pace with the strength of the muscle. So as your muscle develops the ability can to contract harder, have more force output, their strength of the tendon is developing along with that at the same pace. Whereas for an enhanced guy that's taken a lot, their strength goes up so fast. The the ability of the muscle to produce force goes up so fast, the connective tissue of the tendons doesn't keep pace with that. And so they're at less risk by doing higher ups.

Philip Pape 40:08

Yeah. Okay.

Andy Baker 40:09

And for a bodybuilder, you know, a bad tendon rupture is a career ender.

Philip Pape 40:13

Yeah.

Andy Baker 40:13

It can deform the muscle. You know, it ended some say it ended Dorian's career when he he ruptured his tricep tendon that his arm was kind of deformed after that, never really looked the same. So probably better now. The surgeries are probably better now, but you know, certain it can be a career ender potentially. You don't want a double quad tendon rupture. You know, if you've ever seen Ed Cohn's video, you don't want that. So, you know, you want to avoid that kind of as much as you can. So if you don't have to go with the really heavy, then you don't necessarily need to. But the reason eight to 12 is good, eight to twelve is good because again, it has a for that's where I you do a lot of the work for like single joint movement, isolation type of work, machine type work that doesn't require a lot of sips. So maybe it's not a, you know, like a seated row or something like that is not an isolation lift, but it's stabilized by a seat or a chest pad or something like that. It works, those types of movements, they just and this gets in, I think the higher the rep range goes, the more you get into individual preference. You get into how does this particular movement feel for this particular person. Sometimes it's just strictly of I like the way that this movement feels better in the eight to 12 rep range versus I like this particular exercise better in a 12 to 15 rep range. It just I get a better connection with the muscle, feel like my form is better, I get a better pump in that muscle from this rep range versus that rep range.

Philip Pape 41:29

You know, and I suppose the equipment could could come into it too, right?

Andy Baker 41:32

Like it could vary by exercise, cable smoothness and like things like that. Yeah, like this this particular machine just feels shitty at this at a if I go too heavy. Like it just like I don't feel like my form is good or I can't get a good contraction, or or it just doesn't, it just feels awkward and and not smooth if I try to go too heavy. You know, this one just feels better. You know, maybe this cable exercise just feels better. It could it very like for me, for instance, like when I train arms directly, I don't like to do bicep training at very high reps. I like I personally like bicep training between like six and ten. That's like where the sweet spot. Like I don't want to go real heavy, like I don't want to go below like six reps on most stuff because I feel like that you're getting to the point of maybe rupturing a bicep tendon, which I've already done and I don't want to do again. So like I try to keep things like above six, but I feel like when I start going above like 10, it doesn't mean I never do it, like I have some sort of strict cutoff, but I feel like if I program stuff for like above 10, like I start the limiting factor for me becomes I get like this searing pump in my forearms. And I feel like forearm fatigue becomes the limiting factor for me. So for like biceps, I just happen to like a six to 10 range. That feels right for me. It doesn't mean that 10 to 15 wouldn't work for somebody else. Whereas like tricep training, I like like 10 to 20 reps. Part of that is I'm old and my elbows are cranky, and I don't like to do really heavy like skull crushers anymore. Like occasionally I'll do it, but most of the time when I go to do individual tricep work, my my elbows kind of don't feel so great. They feel fine with higher rep training, they don't feel so good with heavy low rep training. It doesn't mean you can't do heavy ass skull crushers. I used to do them all the time, and I think a lot of my like tricep strength and size is from that really heavy tricep work. I just can't do it anymore. You know, so the calculation is different at 45 versus 25, you know, type thing. So some a lot of I think once you get into the higher rep range, a lot of it is just individual preference on the exercise that you're doing on the individual muscle group that you're doing.

Philip Pape 43:31

So let's talk about that, the the 12 to 20, because I I I can I'm like shaking my head with everything you're saying. The more you do this and have experimented with the different rep ranges, which you should, not like program hopping in random, but you know, yeah, take take blocks of training and say, I'm gonna try this out. You might find, oh, just doing a little higher rep range, it's just like smoother, a little bit more of a pump. You know, maybe I

Higher reps for joints and isolation

Philip Pape 43:53

because the load is lighter, the mechanics are a little bit smoother, those kinds of things.

Andy Baker 43:57

You're feeling you're feeling all the you're feeling all of the Pain, the the pain, and I'm saying pain the good way. The good the good pain is in the muscle, not in the joints. You know, it's like I can do a set of 15 rep leg extensions and it's like, man, my quads feel like they're gonna split through my shorts. I do a set of five rep leg extensions, and all I feel is that my fucking knees for right. So it's like it's you have to just use your head up. That's why I don't like that real rigid of like that four to six rep range. I said in the email, like sure if you're if you want to do all your leg extensions and skull crushers for four to six reps, be my guest. And if you're 25, maybe that's good. When you're 45, you're gonna have a different calculation. The other thing I would say about that is that you know, on certain types, like like we were talking about with squats, like the sets of 20, they're gonna be limited by things other than the muscle itself, right? Like a 20 rep squat for a lot of people is probably gonna be limited by you know their cardiovascular conditioning per perhaps. Whereas a cable tricep press down for 20 reps doesn't have that same effect. You're not, you're not getting, you're not being, you're not gonna be limited. You can take your triceps to failure on a 20 rep set pretty easily and ensure that it was your triceps that failed and not some other component, not some other muscle group, and your form's not necessarily going to degrade. Whereas 20 rep deadlifts, almost assuredly, your form is gonna be kind of dog shit. At least for a novice in an intermediate, it's almost guaranteed 20 rep deadlifts. You're gonna be limited by your grip, you're gonna be limited by your cardio, you're gonna be limited by shitty form, everything other than the muscles that you're trying to train. Whereas on an isolation movement, you have a lot more variability there. You can do 10, 15, 20 reps, and you can much easy, more easily take that target muscle to failure and not be limited by something else. I also think with isolation movements that if you say, okay, I'm gonna do side delt raises, dumbbell, you know, something that's real mechanically disadvantaged, and I'm gonna do nothing but four to six reps. How are you gonna progress that over time? Like, okay, I'm gonna do a set of six with the 30s, and then I'm gonna go to the 35s next week. And what am I gonna do? You're gonna do a shitty set of two. You know, like you can't, whereas like on a squat or something like that, you can do five reps at 315. The next week you can do five reps at 320. The next week you can do five reps at 325. Like you can you can stay in a very narrow rep range and add load for a long period of time. You can't do that with an isolation movement. You're not gonna go from you're not gonna go from the 20s to the 25s to the 30s to the 35s, adding load to that. You know, you're gonna have to use reps in order to progress, meaning you're gonna have to expand the rep range that you allow yourself to train in with certain exercises, or there's no room for progression.

Philip Pape 46:39

Exactly.

Andy Baker 46:40

Same thing with like a skull crusher. You're gonna do a six rep skull crusher, add five pounds, you're gonna be at four, add five pounds, you're gonna be at two. Okay, where do you go from there? Like you're gonna have to expand it in order to progress. You're gonna have to use both a combination of repetition, of adding repetitions and adding load over time, which generally means you're gonna have to operate in a larger rep range. You're gonna have to have some flexibility there.

Philip Pape 47:03

Well, plus, there's a little trick that we alluded to earlier in the episode, and that is if you think of effective reps and you start doing some of the fun stuff, like the rest pause and the drop sets, yeah. Now you get an extra dimension of it, yeah, even the reps don't even matter as much almost in that case, right?

Andy Baker 47:18

And that's the the other thing, too, is everybody right now, and I don't know where this came from, like everybody's like just terrified of fatigue. Like you hear that all the time. Well, this is fatiguing. This is fatiguing. The guys I hear this from the most, it's like they're not separating out different exercises. Like, not all exercises are created the same. I would agree that there's protocols that you might do on a side delt raise that you're not gonna do on a deadlift or a squat because it's gonna drive fatigue too high, you know. And so there's not a real worry about doing rest pause sets up to 20, 30 reps or something like that on a side delt raise. Like that's not going to, you're not gonna get bitten by the fatigue monster doing that. You're gonna have a lot of local fatigue, you know, in the in the delts, which I'd argue is a good thing. It's a it's a sign that you accumulated enough effective reps, but you're not gonna have this systemic fatigue from doing a bunch of you know what junk volume on certain like not all exercises are created equal. And so I think guys are a little too scared sometimes of fatigue, and they're they're applying, they're acting as if all exercises are created the same. Yeah, like I don't ever ascribe rest pause sets or drop sets or things like that to squats or deadlifts or even machine stuff like hat squats, even that, like because those exercises are extremely stressful just by themselves with just plain old straight weight. And even with those, I think it's probably better to do most of your work one or two reps away from failure rather than failure. I mean, I don't I don't really ever want to see a guy in any context squatting to where he's ending his sets with the with the barbell down across the safety pens. Yeah, like like I don't think that's a sign of hardcore training. I think that's a sign of not knowing how to planning, yeah. Right. I mean, is it gonna happen from time to time, especially early in your training career? Sure. And I don't think it's the end of the world that it does. And in some ways, it's almost necessary to have that happen on occasion so that you learn what does one rep away from failure mean? What does two reps away from failure mean if you don't, you've never actually hit true muscular failure where you literally cannot do another rep, then it's very then you have no idea what one rep away from failure means. And so, but once you get good at that, like, but I don't like certain exercises, I think, like like we're talking squats, deadlifts, I think most of those should be done probably one or two reps away from failure. The bulk of your training, it doesn't mean that you never, you know, get zero RIR, but I think most of your sets across the week or whatever should be one or two reps. But like on a curl, on a bicep curl, I tell guys all the time, why are you using RIR on a curl? Just curl in strict form until you try to lift the weight out of the bottom and it doesn't go. That's right. And then you're and then you're done. You know, don't lean back, don't don't lean back and get a bunch of cheat reps and start, you know, sacrificing form and range of motion. But going until you until you can't curl another rep is not the same thing as laying your squats down on a safety pin. Like that effect systemically on your body is not the same. And you probably need to be training the failure on a lot of those smaller muscle groups. Like you probably can't generate enough real stimulus because the loads are lighter and such. You probably need to be training those, all of your sets on that, or the the vast majority of them to actual failure on those types of movements. Whereas on, like I said, squats, deadlifts, bench presses, you probably need to be one or two reps away from failure. I feel like this used to be just known, like kind of like just like an accepted, agreed-upon thing. And then recently within the last couple of years, it's all just gotten so muddled, and now guys are just lost and they're just the science-based movement has gone to the extreme. Yeah, and you know, there's some good things that have come come out of it, I feel like, but there's I I feel like it's for a lot of people, it's just it's just muddled their thinking so much where they just stuff that used to be just kind of I hate to say settled science. I hate that word, but but it was more or less just kind of agreed upon, like that. That's how you that's that's how you trained. And I think it's people are starting to realize it again. But it's, you know, I think with all of this stuff, like always keep in mind that it varies between the exercise that you're doing, and none of these rules that you're reading about are gonna apply to every exercise equally or the same. So when you say stay one or two reps away from failure, yeah, for squats, deadlifts, bench presses, you know, other kind of big multi-joint compound movements that use a lot of load, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah, probably one or two reps away from failure for the bulk of your work is right. But not for curls, tricep extensions. You know, those things need to be pushed hard and even beyond failure at times if you're a guy, if you're not getting good results, you know, things like rest pause or little drop sets and things like that are absolutely effective on that and are not going to generate some sort of you know massive systemic fatigue that impacts your recovery for the next, you know, the next workout.

Philip Pape 52:02

You know, speaking of beyond failure, before we go to the 20 to 30 and the science-based lifting community, lengthened partials are all the rage, right? And I know there's some guys, and and I've tried them myself, and they're interesting where you go to complete failure, and instead of doing cheater reps, you do some length and partial reps. What are your thoughts on that?

Andy Baker 52:18

I it John Meadows used to do it a lot. He was the first guy ever seen, you know, and he was doing that 20 years ago. So again, it's not really new. I encourage anybody that's interested in the type of stuff I talk about, go watch all of John Meadows', you know, RIP. Go watch all his old, every single one of his old YouTube videos. There's more knowledge in there than just about anybody else on social media. You know, he he died a few years ago, unfortunately, but his content was the best. And he was so far ahead of stuff he was saying 20 years ago. Now is the stuff that people are acting like it's new information. And it's like John Meadows was doing LinkedIn partials 20 years ago on stuff. I think on certain exercises, it probably has applicability. It's not a technique that I use personally in my own training, and it's not something I use with my clients. Again, that doesn't mean it doesn't work. I just don't use it. I think they're hard to quantify, you know, and that's I think on certain movements they could potentially put you at some risk. I I used to watch the videos of John Meadows doing LinkedIn partials on leg curls, and I'm like, that looks like a torn hamstring to me because I've torn my hamstring before. So, you know, it's just so somewhat again, it's a lot of this stuff's personal preference. Does it does it have some validity? Probably. It's just not something that I really use.

Philip Pape 53:26

Got it. I mean, you're gonna hit the you're gonna hit the long, like, long part of the range with full range of motion.

Andy Baker 53:31

That's what I've always said. Is it just I've always advocated for full ranges of motion on everything, as full as effective range of motion as as you can on most stuff, you're going to get plenty of work in the in the length and state as well as the shortened state. So I feel like, you know, if you're doing full range of motion, you're probably getting 90% of the of the value.

Philip Pape 53:52

Yeah. And I will say thinking about it from a mind muscle connection can be helpful in certain movements, like calf raises, for example, thinking of that bottom position is the length and position.

Andy Baker 54:02

Like I've always advocated that the the way, like gut, because guys, I a lot of guys don't know what mind muscle connection is. They they don't they don't understand it, what it is, they don't understand why it's important. But when somebody doesn't have a good sense for it and they're trying to, they're trying to learn what you know, how do I develop that mind muscle connection on a given exercise? The way that you begin that process, because I've taught this to a lot of clients in the gym, is feeling that muscle in the stretched position. Where, and that's the best way to really, okay, I can feel it now in this stretch position. And on a lot of the movements that I do, I do a brief pause in the stretch position. I really like that on calf raises, where you know, at the bottom you go down and I don't like bouncy reps on calf raises, like going down, holding that stretch position as deep as you can. One, two, three, explode up, lower down, slow, ease down into that deep stretch position, hold one, two, three, up. I do that on pull-ups. Like I like to have guys go down and hit a true dead hang on the pull-ups and feel their lats stretch. And I feel like that's a really good thing, like feeling your lats stretch on a pull-up. And I know there's people that advocate actually don't go all the way down, but in terms of developing that mind muscle connection, like or on a lap pull down, like feeling feeling that weight stretching, like that's where you feel, and like with back training, especially, guys have no concept of where their like their lats are. They can do 20 sets of lap pull downs and never feel a pump in their lats. It's all the arms, right? Yeah, right. They're they feel it in their forearms, they feel it in their biceps, everywhere but their lats. And I would say that you know, that's part of the reason why people feel like they need to do so many sets is because they're not really effectively targeting the muscle. They, if their if their movement execution was more efficient, they would need a lot less sets to achieve the same amount of stimulus. And so, but feel like feeling your lats stretch is you know, or or any any muscle, you know, that's the that's step one to establishing that mind muscle connection is what does that muscle feel like in the stretch position, and then feeling that muscle contract and and then feel it fully contracted in the shortened position and feeling what that feels like and doing that over and over again with you know, like in your warm-up sets and things like that, is where you'll really learn to establish that. But yeah, so I I always advocate full range of motion and even you know, like partial holds in the fully lengthened position, where I feel like you're probably getting a lot out of that, you know, that the the lengthened phase of the lift.

Philip Pape 56:23

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just being aware of those things, like you said, is it's a great, that's a great tip right there. Right. I was doing spider curls and then preacher curls, and and you realize that there's also even the shortened position has its own boogeyman for some, you know, for something like interesting. I don't often feel that. Yeah.

Andy Baker 56:40

I could just do a full range of motion on everything, and you're probably gonna you're probably gonna get it.

Philip Pape 56:44

All right. So 20 to 30 reps. Now we get into the rep range for maybe rehab, injury, the psychology of it. Where do we go with this?

Andy Baker 56:53

Yeah, that's I mean, so that's what I kind of alluded to that earlier, is that like it's just if you just like from a practical sense, with the exception of a handful of exercises potentially that you know, doing the bulk of your training in that 20 to 30

When 20-30 reps makes sense

Andy Baker 57:07

rep range, yes. Can you generate a hypertrophy stimulus there? Yeah, are you gonna are you gonna have prolonged runs of training, weeks, months, years of training exclusively in that 20 to 30 rep range and really achieve a lot of progressive overload? I would argue on most exercises, probably not. It is going to be much more efficient. Just put a little bit more weight on there and bring your reps down. Like you're you're you're probably gonna get it, you're definitely gonna get a better strength stimulus. You're not getting much of a strength stimulus, 20 to 30 reps. I'd argue almost, almost none unless you were a novice or training some muscle that you've never trained before. You know, it's it's just, I think it's an extremely inefficient way to go there. The exceptions that I gave for like 20 to 30 rep training are training around injury. I think it can be highly useful for that, training around even not necessarily injury, but just like inflamed joints. I will occasionally do sets like that on the cables for like, I'm just speaking about me personally, because I have a very cranky, two cranky elbows, but a very cranky left elbow that gives me some trouble sometimes. And heavy tricep training bothers it. I may be able to do some heavy tricep work for one or two weeks at a time, and then I've got to back off and I don't want to just not do it, but I can go do movements like cable press downs or even, you know, there are all types of different cable variations. There's a million different tricep cable movements that you can do. And I will do sets of like 20 to 30 on there because I feel like I can take the triceps to failure in that 20 to 30 rep range and get a good stimulus and not it doesn't aggravate my elbows. Yeah, but I wouldn't do, you know, given if I had 100% healthy elbows all the time, I wouldn't do that. I would train at a lower rep range. I think it would be more effective. If you've got a back injury or something like that and you're trying to do some leg work, you know, sometimes even things like leg presses can bother your back, you know, heavy. I've had clients with back injuries before, and even trying to load up a heavy leg press doesn't feel great on that back injury. So it can give you the opportunity to do some very low load work on the legs, you know, push hard and get a decent stimulus on the lower body without putting a lot of pressure on the back. So there, you know, maybe it's a shoulders giving you trouble. So you're gonna do, you know, you can't bench heavy, but maybe you can do some seated chest presses or things like that on a machine at a much higher rep range, and you can do you can get some chest work in without the load. And that's one of those things you just have to take in an individual kind of situation. You know, can sometimes heavy weight hurts, but lightweight doesn't. So in that situation, that's where I think like that gives like that Schoenfeld study kind of gives you some confidence to not just skip your training or force a round peg into a square hole and try to force yourself to go heavy when maybe you shouldn't. Is that like, okay, third maybe 25, 30 reps isn't ideal, but it could still work at least for a temporary amount of time while I'm working around this injury, and I can still get productive training in if I modify my protocol a little bit until I'm healed up and ready to go a little bit heavier. So that's mainly how I would use like 20, 30 rep training is working around injury and inflammation. The other way, and I this is almost kind of a joke, but and I would use this sparingly, is just those times where you just want to challenge yourself. You just want to do something. It's and it's kind of like a guy that's training strictly for bodybuilding. He has really no business doing one rep maxes. It's not, there's there's no the risk is outweighs the reward. There's no real stimulus towards his ultimate goal, but but they do it anyway. You know, so guys that are training strictly for hypertrophy are occasionally going to want to take a one rep max on a deadlift or a bench just to see, because people like being strong. And on the flip side, another challenge people may want to do is grab a weight and see how many reps can I do with it. You know, if you've never tried it, if you've never tried to take a medium to lightweight and do 20, 25, 30 rep squats, it's it's a challenge. It's not necessary, but it's just one of those things I think as lifters, especially those of us that don't really have any like really specific goals. We're not competing for championships or money or anything else. It's like you can afford to have those little kind of deviations from the, you know, your ultimate goal is you're going here. But hey, today I just feel like doing this too crazy thing, so I'm gonna do it. You know, I think it's kind of the it's just kind of the fun part sometimes of being a lifter. I wouldn't recommend doing it all the time, but sometimes people like to do that. They they want to see, you know, after the NFL combine, they they want to go, oh, I saw so and so 40 reps at 225. Let's see how many I can do at 225.

Philip Pape 1:01:34

Yeah, yeah.

Andy Baker 1:01:35

You know, so it's it's not, it's just one of those things where that's the only time I would ever really do it. It's just those, you know, kind of one-off challenges of just seeing it if you can do it or working around injury, but I wouldn't make it a part of my structured day-to-day, week to week type of programming.

Philip Pape 1:01:50

Yeah, and I doubt I doubt few people would and stick to it because man, when I did CrossFit, like they did the the squat wads and they do, you know, they'd have a five by five day, but then they'd have a 10 by 10, and man, 10 by 10 was just brutal, right?

Andy Baker 1:02:03

Yeah, it's not, I mean, that's the old German volume thing. That was the German volume training was 10 sets of 10. And I I mean that was really popular for a while, but why did it, I mean, why did it fade? Because it's not it's not really progressible over time. I mean, it's not it's not a protocol you can do. It's like the 20 rep squat program is kind of that way. Like a lot of lifters have done the old 20 rep squat program before. And what they find is that it worked, kind of, you know, I got maybe I got a little bigger. I don't know, but it's not what they find is it's not a training protocol that you can really do day in and day out, week in and week out for months at a time. And I always I always tell people, like, I tell my clients, like, if it's not really a sustainable solution, then it's not really a solution. You know, it has to be like your training program has to be something that you can do sustainably over long periods of time, where you can measure the results of it, you know, week one versus week 10 versus week 20 versus week 30, like you have to be able to accumulate long periods of training doing more or less the same thing so that you can measure progression or not. That's why you want to, that's why you want to keep your, you know, like I said, if you had to pick a rep range like that five to eight rep range, like you want to measure your strength kind of in that somewhat narrow rep range to make sure that you're progressing, or as if you're jumping around to different rep ranges all the time. Uh it's kind of like what the problem that CrossFit has is it's so random that you can't ever really improve on anything or measure progress.

Philip Pape 1:03:26

You know, so yeah, and I I think that's a great way to put a bow on it, honestly, because you you sent the email to try to clear up confusion, right? And you said like avoid paralysis analysis. And you know, people can go online, they can buy a program, they can follow a program from a coach, but until you've kind of stuck with something for eight, twelve, sixteen weeks and seen. Because I I've done programs that I thought on day one this is gonna be fantastic,

The "80% at 80%" programming rule

Philip Pape 1:03:48

and I get two weeks in and I'm like, man, this is not right for me. There's something about it. It's either it could be as simple as like the days of the you know, number of days a week doesn't work, but it could also be the volume, it could be the the movements, and you're just like, no, yeah, yeah. Versus doing hard. I mean, some in some cases you just got to do the hard thing and like push through, but yeah.

Andy Baker 1:04:07

So I a good way to think about rep ranges is 80% of the time train at 80%. And that has always stuck with me with programming design. In other words, 80% of the time, you're you're it doesn't, and that's again, that's a heuristic. It's not a that's not a don't get your calculator out and figure out what's going on. Am I doing exactly 6.5 of my work at exactly 80%? What he's saying is the bulk of your training, the vast work of your training, if you're trying to get stronger, get bigger even, should be in about that 80% rep range. So what is that? That's probably that's like that four to eight rep range for most people, you know, kind of depending on where your proximity to failure is. But that's gonna be that meat and potatoes, that's gonna be the middle zone. Let's say that's the 80% is gonna be that middle rep range. So let's say it's let's just call it four to eight with some variability in there. But 80% of your training should probably be in that rep range for you know most of your lifts. And then, you know, there's gonna be a small percentage, you know, another 10, 15% might be in those lower rep ranges, that one to four percent. So a very small portion of it's gonna be in there. And then another small portion of it is gonna be in that above eight reps, those higher rep sets, let's say eight to 20, something like that. So that's a good way to think about it. Again, for the guys that take everything literally, you don't have to get out your calculator and ensure that you're doing exactly 80% here, exactly 10 here, and exactly 10 here. It's just a rough way to think about it is the bulk of my work should probably be done with exercises that fit well into that four to eight rep range and you and applying that four to eight rep range to most of the things that I'm doing where applicable. And then occasionally maybe venturing in a little heavier, doing a small volume of work, you know, in that absolute strength training zone of that one to four rep range. And then on the exercise, the isolation work, the things that I'm doing outside of that, that eight to 20 rep range, you know, where it where it makes sense on exercises to do, you know, to go for higher reps or whatever, where it just you're based on preference or you know, exercise selection or whatever. So that's a that's a good way to think about it as well.

Philip Pape 1:06:09

That's really like I think we should end on that. 80% of your work around 80% of your one rep max is really good. I'm gonna be thinking about that when I look at programs too, because that that comports really well with like my experience of if it's too shifted toward one direction, away from that, yeah. Something is off, you know, like it's too much of one thing.

Andy Baker 1:06:28

Like you said, the old flex magazine programs where every single exercise was eight to 12 reps, or every single exercise was 10 to 15 reps. That's not gonna work for most people, not for most natural guys, anyway. You're gonna have to do some heavier work in there. And I think you know, the bulk the bulk of it should be shifted down a little bit into those more medium rep ranges and then a smaller percentage up at the higher rep ranges.

Philip Pape 1:06:48

All right.

Andy Baker 1:06:49

Andy, where do we want to send folks? Everything is at andybaker.com. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, you can do that at andybaker.com. If you want to purchase a program, Andybaker. You know, sign up for coaching, online barbell club. Everything is there. So just anything if you want to get in contact with me through a contact form or whatever, everything's at andybaker.com.

Philip Pape 1:07:08

Definitely. Send him to andybaker.com. If you didn't get that, guys, send him some love, reach out, check out his stuff. He's the man. And it's great knowing you, great talking to you. And we'll have to do it again. Always. Cool, man. Well, thanks so much for coming on, Andy.

Andy Baker 1:07:20

All right, appreciate it. Thanks.