How many times?
It amazes me that people still ask this question since one of my first training clients asked me back in the day. At the time, one of the biggest hurdles for new personal trainers, who were mostly broke bodybuilders at the beginning of the fitness boom, was when we all started training as “regular people” who suddenly started going to the gym, knowing that they knew something very important for us. Because it was so “normal” for us, it never dawned on any of us that when we entered, these real normal people don’t know what foods are carbohydrates, proteins or fats, or a set or repetitions, let alone how and how many they do. In a sense, it was about teaching people how to run that you’d think weren’t in wheelchairs.
So in this example, I just explained and demonstrated how to do a specific exercise to my new client. As she got into position and was ready to start her set, she asked me, “how many reps?” I looked at him confused, as if he had just asked what color orange was. So I told him “all of them” in an insulting tone. This response was met with a happy face. Was I rude? angry? Guess what? Ugh… I felt like I needed a translator.
As it turned out, during peak fitness “how many reps?” has become almost a battle cry in the trainer/trainer paradigm. I’ve seen this happen a million times. The client asks, “how many times?” and the coach yells “give me 10!” And the unfortunate client was trying to reach their goal, and no matter how much help was applied, the trainer made sure they got all 10. But why 10? Why not 11? Why not nine? No one asked.
Is there anything wrong with 10 reps? Well, it all depends on how you make them. And here’s the rub: It’s not how many reps you do, it’s how you do your reps. In fact, what is the goal?? You have to make a decision – repeat or build muscle? They are mutually exclusive.
The real work of getting stronger
Now, to a 38-year-old soccer mom who hasn’t been inside a gym since college, 10 reps should be fine, right? He’s in the same position as anyone who’s modeled for Botero, 10 reps of anything better than the status quo. But significant improvements in your body with the concept that “at least I’m moving” will not be enough. It won’t happen. You need to build muscle!
Now, the knee-jerk reaction needs to work heavy training to build muscle is “I don’t want to look masculine”. Trust me, there’s a wide margin to hit the brakes until someone accuses you of something manly. That Boterismo you carry on doesn’t fade lightly. You didn’t become this way overnight; you will not recover overnight. It’s a long, slow process that requires discipline and commitment, with plenty of exit ramps if you think you’re going too far. So there is no downside. The only thing at stake is the flaps on the back of your hands waving as you board the buses.
While we’re at it, let’s talk about that back arm as an example, because it comes up all the time. No one likes a back arm – or forearm, or lower arm, or legs, or anywhere else. But you can’t isolate the areas that bother you the most. You can not reduce. It should be everything. And in most cases, it should be everything. Backhands are never alone. If you have a back arm, you are upside down everywhere. And there is no surgery or spa method that can fix the flap. And if you think Ozempic is the answer, you’re going to have even more flips, and most of them will be in your face. The real truth is that you have to do it.
Why building muscle is the only way out
So, the simple solution to all your body woes is this: change your diet and start weight training. I know it’s easier said than done, but I swear on one book of the Bible that this works 100% of the time for 100% of people – men and women. IF they do it right. Doing it right means focusing on several things at once. One of those things is “how many repetitions?” and what do i mean by “all of them”? That’s what this debate is all about. I will cover other things in future articles.
So why lift weights? Because you need to build muscle! What did I just say? You read that right. Building muscles. It almost sounds bad, doesn’t it? And you have to do it with iron, in the gym – another word that conjures up dark images. These days, hardcore gyms are often referred to as “dungeons” and there are probably a few Harleys parked outside – the black ones… with the high pipes.
Of course, there are more “health club” environments if that makes you feel better. They sell themselves as “judgment free zones”. You can bring your support dog with you. But it’s all the same. Regardless of how you feel about the etymology of building muscle, if you’re fat and out of shape, your first order of business is to start building muscle immediately. Join a gym, hire a trainer or watch YouTube videos, whatever it takes – you need to build muscle. You do for two reasons:
First, you cannot change the fat. All body parts you want to “tone”, “sculpt”, “firm”, “shave” and anything that needs to be done with muscles. Muscle is the marble you sculpt with. But you have to know what is going to happen in the beginning if you are going to take it seriously. When you first start working out a skinny, lean, loose, and gnarly body part, the underlying muscles first get tighter and tighter long before they get bigger. Many times, those who for the first time notice an increase in strength, which indicates that the muscles are being built – but they complain that they are worse – slower, softer … “Oh, it doesn’t work, let’s go to Ben and Jerry’s instead of the gym.”
Sorry, it works. If you get stronger, you build muscle. The reason you’re leaner is twofold: first, there’s a marble of fat in the muscle – just like a steak. As the muscles get stronger and when you follow your diet, this marble will decrease. Because of the activation of muscle fibers from your exercises, the muscles become tighter and leaner. When you remove the fat from the muscle, it will shrink a little at first. Furthermore, fat and muscle do not occupy the same volume. A pound of fat takes up about two and a half times more space than a pound of muscle. Because you lose fat more than you gain muscle, both conditions create more skin than the substructure needs. Eventually your skin will become tighter. But in the beginning it takes time to catch up with your fat loss. If you really stretch it. I’m talking about severe cases of stetopygia that require weight loss of 100 pounds or more to resolve. In such extreme cases, you can look at the abdomen, thighs and hips, etc., to deal with the extra skin that you are exposed to, after you lose fat, not fat. It’s just the way it is.
You have to look at it this way, and if you didn’t think I already was, I’ll be blunt – if you have to lose 100 pounds or more to get the body that Mother Nature gave you, then you’ve abused your body to get there. And generally, this comes at a price. And there is no charge for it.
The second reason for building muscle is that muscle is the furnace in which fat is burned. The more muscle you build, the bigger your butt will be. The bigger the oven, the more oil can be burned. So the recipe is simple – you can’t cut fat; you are sculpting muscle and muscle is where fat is burned. It’s an axiom: build muscle, burn fat. The more muscle you build, the more fat you burn.
Why is the correct number of repetitions “all of them”.
So now that you believe you need to build muscle, how do you get the body to build it?
By doing all the reps!
But why don’t I tell you how much it is?
The question is confusing because the answer is an action, not a number. What I mean by this is that the rep range for each set depends on your ability to complete the reps. So the goal is not a number – the goal is to fail. However, many repetitions depend on how much weight you use and how much tension you can generate. You can literally do all the reps with any weight or even no weight at all. You start a set with the intention of doing all the repetitions you can do on your own, plus with the help of a trainer or training partner, until your brain tells the muscles to pull, pull, squeeze – and the muscle says no, sorry, I’m going to drop the weights. It can be after five repetitions, 12 repetitions, 15, 22, 39, 56 … it doesn’t matter. As soon as that happens, you’ve just defined what “all of them” means. And each set will be different.
By doing all of them, what you’ve done is triggering the body’s adaptive response, which is basically the brain telling the body that it’s not strong enough to survive in its environment and needs to adapt to survive. Adaptation, in this case, is to strengthen the body. It does this by building muscle—which, by the way, is the only way to get your body to grow muscle. If the body is not threatened, it will not adapt. That’s how you got fat in the first place! You were threatening your body by overeating. It was adapted by transferring your excess calories and not burning them into fat cells and making them bigger. So now you have to start another adaptive response. And you do this by doing all the repetitions.
Arnold Schwarzenegger always said, “Never waste a set.” If you don’t do all the reps, you’re wasting a set. Listen to Arnold, don’t do it.
