Building Muscle?

Question

Based on past experience, How many reps to exhustion are ideal to build muscle? Also, how many sets should I do.

Answer 1

Going to failure is actually what you DON'T want to do (at least in one set). It's very taxing on your nervous system and is actually counter-productive for gains, despite what bodybuilding magazines will tell you. Do as many as you can until moderately tired.

Set-wise, you should do as many as you have the time and energy for on each exercise.

Answer 2

Ok there are two popular schools of thought on this issue and based on plenty of research.

The most widely accepted school is that the best range is between 8 to 12 reps the last being that to failure. Anything less and you do not get effective muscle wear and tear and anything more, is merely building muscle strength not size.

There is also the school that advocates light weights and many reps for muscle toning and muscle building for some body parts.

I believe, based on my experience that 2 things really work. One is to work with heavy weights and with right form performing between 4 to 5 sets ot pyramid repetition. I mean by putting weights that you can do about 12 reps the most, then adding more weight the next set and doing 10, 8 the third set and back to 12 the last set. What also works is the amount to rest time in between. Personally I find the shorter the better. about 30 sec to a minute at most. Y?? One, it saves a lot of time and you finsih faster. Two, the high intensity also provides a good cardio like effect of raised metabolism for longer period of time anad this is impertant for fat loss. Third, the intensity and range youa re working with is ideal for muscle hyperthrophy.

SO there u go. Try this out but be warned that is you are jsut strating out go easy as this really can exhaust you if you do it right. I forgot to mention. For each body part do about 2 excercises. So that is 2 excersices with each about 4 to 5 sets and 8 to 12 reps. All done with rest periods of about 30 to 1min.

Answer 3

On any free weight workout or machine etc it is recommend to do like 6 sets of 12 - 15 and taking a break in between no longer than 1 min. Note if the weight seem to be to light than add more, you want to stress the muscle so it can grow also you should take a Good whey protein to promote muscle growth and recovery, I would recommend such as the following > http://www.bodybuilding.com/store/opt/whey.html

also check out Bodybuilding.com they have great information and many article, also they sell many products cheap

Answer 4

resistance training only provides the neccessary stimulus to the muscles and to the central nervous system. the diet determines the size of the muscles not the load used to stimulate them. to gain muscle mass you need to use progressively higher and higher training loads while keeping a caloric excess in the diet.

you don't need to go to failure to stimulate hypertrophy. when you can achieve your final working set on a exercise and hit the target number of reps while keeping good form it's time to increase the weight by 10%. 8-10 reps using a temp of 6 secs to complete each rep will provide a time under tension of 45-60 seconds which is optimum to stimulate hypertrophy