Name: How to Perform Reps for Most Muscle Growth
Uploaded: 2020-03-04T16:01:12.000Z
Duration: 13 min 9 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The superlative

JESSE: You know, one of the best things that Jeff’s taught me since I’ve been working

for him has been, it’s not just the exercises you choose, but it’s how you do them. [mechanical

JESSE: All right. So, remember when you told me that it’s not just doing the exercises,

it’s about how you do them? Going from point A to point B?

JESSE: Well, dude. You were 100% right. For example: take the robot curl.

JEFF: That’s a good exercise. It works your biceps and-

JESSE: Yeah, but the problem is, if I do it like this…I don’t feel anything. Literally,

nothing. However, when I become the robot – ready?

[mechanical noises] Biceps. [mechanical noises] Forearms. [mechanical noises] Biceps and forearms.

Dude! It's incredible! You’ve got to be the robot to feel the robot curl. [mechanical

JEFF: Okay. Someone’s got to turn you off, man. Can I take these? Thanks, man.

JESSE: System failure. [power down noise] You know, I just wish you’d try it. Without

noise, with noise. Without noise, with noise.

JEFF: What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.

JEFF: Today I want to try and help you determine how you should be performing your reps on

whatever exercise you’re performing. It’s a big question.

There are a lot of different ways we could lift a weight. We could just get it from A

to Z. We could try to get it from A to Z focusing on a lot of details. We could push it fast.

All this stuff, guys, we know we need to focus on it. But what’s the right answer? I have

to answer that by first asking you a question. That question is: what are you training for?

Because if you’re training for strength or hypertrophy the answer could be different.

If you’re training for strength there’s one thing you should always be seeking. The

first thing you should be seeking is efficiency.

What I mean by that is, you want to try – let’s say you’re doing a bench-press. We realize

that the bench-press is going to recruit our chest, our shoulders, our triceps. We’re

not trying to isolate on a bench-press if we’re trying to improve strength.

We’re trying to get those muscles to perform the work together. I’m not trying to, in

this instance, say “Hey, get those shoulders back” – yes, to protect the shoulder,

but not for the sake of trying to get the chest to drive the momentum.

Really, really squeeze. Get that hard contraction the chest as much as you can, squeeze your

hands together at the top. No, it’s about moving the bar and maintaining a proper bar

Actually, moving with a velocity so you can increase your power as well, because we know

strength and power go hand in hand. So, it’s not about being specific about trying to isolate

However, if you’re trying to train for hypertrophy – meaning, increase the size of a muscle

– you should not be looking for efficiency, but inefficiency. How can you introduce new

The more we can do that, the more stress we can deliver to a muscle and therefore, help

it to feel more overload, and adapt in response by growing bigger. So, we have to look at

I’m going to use a lat pulldown here and we’re going to take a few examples where

we train to a certain rep range for failure. We already know that training to failure is

not always essential. Especially depending upon the volume of your training.

But to make this example very easy to understand we’re going to say, ‘train to failure’.

The first example would be, let’s say I’m using a rep range of – I’ll actually write

it down here – let’s say I’m training with my 10-rep max on a lat pulldown and I’m

But in this one here, I’m taking a similar approach to the one when I was training for

strength, and I’m just worried about going from A to Z. Moving the bar from A to Z here.

That’s the first scenario. The second scenario is, I use a little bit lighter weight.

Not much. Let’s say 12, 13 rep max and I’m training to 10 rep max failure. 10 rep failure.

So, in these two scenarios – in this one here I’m really trying to be focused on

increasing tension in a specific area of that lift.

So, if I’m trying to grow my lats from an underhand lat pulldown I’m really trying

to squeeze. So, let’s take a look at what these look like. If I’m doing the first

example here and I go to pull down, I realize I have the biceps as my friends here.

I realize that I have my upper back as my friend. I realize that I have my lats as a

friend. I realize that what I’m trying to do is get this bar down to my chest as efficiently

as I can, with multiple muscles participating. That’s scenario one.

What happens is, when I get around rep number 10, I’m trying to pull and I can’t get

anymore because I’ve fatigued the overall movement. Not necessarily one, specific muscle

that participates in that movement. That’s scenario one. Scenario two is this one here.

Where I’m like “Now I’ve got to lighten this one up a little bit because what I’m

going to do is, I’m going to focus on making this much more of an inefficient movement.”

For my lats, specifically. So, I don’t want an overactivation and contribution from my

I don’t want my biceps pulling too much here. I want to get my elbows down into my

sides, adducted hard, and back into extension so I can maximally activate the lats. So,

it looks more like this. I come down, squeeze, I hang out there for a second, I come up a

I’m down, squeeze, and come up, squeeze, and come up. Squeeze and come up. Squeeze

and come up. So, let’s say on the last rep I fail at 10. That is a weight that I can

normally handle if I didn’t do all those extra things for a few more reps. 12 to 13

But I stopped at 10 because I couldn’t do anymore. Those extra intensifying techniques

level me out. So now what’s that do? If we look at a graph here, if this is intensity

and this is my reps from one, to six, to ten – or one, to five, to ten – halfway, if

we start on this graph with those two types of training what do we have?

Well, we know the first one – the true 10 rep, the 10 done for 10 and not worrying about

the journey so much – that’s going to be an intensity level around here. Now the

one that was at a 12 to 13 rep max, where would that fall on this intensity curve, in

JEFF: Oh, Jesse! Kind of chiming in. That’s good to know you don’t just appear on the

intros. So now – below it. He’s right because it’s a lighter weight. The intensity

driven by that rep is a little bit lighter.

However, you know – I hope – that I could take this and, depending upon how I performed

that rep in the journey I took to get from A to Z – I could take this way the hell

down below this. If you need to see an example of that all you’ve got to do is look at

If I have some weight on here, just because it’s a heavier weight doesn’t mean when

I get under here and start doing this – which you see a lot of guys do – that does absolutely