In the world of the gym there are issues that divide the community and that always reappear even if they have been raised for decades. One of these questions is whether it is better to do more repetitions with little weight or vice versa to gain muscle mass.
In this article we are going to deal with this dilemma and answer whether it is better to do one thing or the other, more weight and fewer repetitions or the other way around.
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The importance of having an effort reference when doing a series
The first thing to say to answer this question is that we need a reference value to establish what is a lot and what is a little weight.
It is clear that the fewer reps we do the more weight we can or should use, and vice versa, but a lot of weight compared to what?
This is where the self-regulation tools have to come in to provide a reference value such as the effort we make in each series or how close to failure we finish it. It is useless to do fewer repetitions and increase the weight if we do not know the effort to which we should aspire.
It may seem obvious but you still see many people who when they hear that with fewer repetitions you have to increase the weight, they choose a load that far exceeds their capabilities and therefore they need the help of a partner. This makes no sense, but it happens very often.
To avoid things like these we must know in advance the degree of effort that we want to print in the series such as finishing it to one repetition of muscle failure.
Tools such as the RIR or RPE can help us in this task, but it does require practice to know where our limits are.
High weight and low reps or low weight and high reps?
Science really tells us that to gain muscle mass the most optimal is to move in a range between 6 and 20 repetitions at a high degree of effort. By “high degree of effort” we must understand finishing the series at most four repetitions from muscle failure, that is, at RIR 4 or RPE 6, which is the same.
That being said, questions may arise as to whether to perform the full rep range for each exercise, muscle group, or session, or whether I can move in a lower range one day and a higher range another.
The science here can’t give us precise answers but rest assured that either option can work, i.e. it can be just as good to move through the range in one session or to do a different thing in two different sessions.
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