W_UMmyc/0.jpg' alt='Body By Science Mcguff Pdf File' title='Body By Science Mcguff Pdf File' />High Reps vs Low Reps For Muscle Gain Roundtable With The Experts. Do high reps build more muscle than low reps This is the first hot topic up for discussion in this upcoming series of roundtables where I bring together the brightest minds in nutrition and weight training science. Some of you might not be familiar with Borge but thats just because I, Lyle and Alan prefer to keep him a secret and use him for fun and profit. Just kidding. Borge is the CEO of My. Revolution, a Norwegian supplement company and fitness community. He is also a respected fitness and bodybuilding coach with a tremendous amount of real world experience and many interesting ideas. Body By Science Mcguff Pdf File' title='Body By Science Mcguff Pdf File' />If youre looking for a new and effective way to approach weight training, check out his Myo reps protocol. Today well discuss a study that has been causing quite a stir in the fitness and bodybuilding community since it was published two weeks ago. My reflections and summary of the study, and questions to the attendees, follows below. A recent study showed that 4 sets of leg extensions to failure at 3. RM was superior to 4 sets to failure at 9. RM. In practical terms, this seems to suggest that youd get more muscle growth from squatting with 1. RM squat is 4. 00 lbs. High Intensity Training HIT is a form of strength training popularized in the 1970s by Arthur Jones, the founder of Nautilus. The training focuses on performing. This was not a perfect study by any means. For example, there was a tremendous gap in terms of work volume between the 3. It would also have been more interesting to see a middle group in the 7. Still, I think the results came as a surprise to many, including me. Various theories and explanations for the results has been voiced, such as the lower body being more responsive to higher reps, as well as problems with the study methodology itself sample size being too small. Nevertheless, at a first glance this study seems to suggest that the pump n tone routines we so often poke fun at are more effective than lower reps at least when it comes to leg training. Anecdotally, Ive actually had my best results from leg training with 2. However, breathing squats are a different animal in the sense that you are not performing reps in a continuous motion. Rather it basically ends up being a rest pause protocol with your 1. Body By Science Mcguff Pdf File' title='Body By Science Mcguff Pdf File' />RM weight. Not quite the same as working with your 3. RM weight. In recent years, I have shied away from high rep leg training since I require a long time to recover from it. The DOMS is infernal and going over 1. Questions. 1. Given the issues with this study, do you think the authors conclusion, that high rep leg training is more effective than low rep leg training, may be right What are your own experiences regarding leg training Do you think that legs should be trained in a different fashion than the upper body for optimal muscle growthThis study looked at leg extensions, which target the quads. Alucard In The Tokyo Game Show Trailer. How about glutes, calves and hamstrings I dont think the authors can make such a broad conclusion, given the study design. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that 4 sets of failure at 3. RM stimulates more protein synthesis than 4 sets of failure at 9. J0_wQEe37s/hqdefault.jpg' alt='Body By Science Mcguff Pdf File' title='Body By Science Mcguff Pdf File' />Uitleg en mijmeringen over gezondheid, levensstijl, sporten, voeding, wetenschap, slaapritme, koudetherapie, barefoot, vasten en alles wat daar vagelijk mee verbonden is. The FDA has just notified one pharmacy that it will no longer be allowed to manufacture or distribute injectable vitamin Cdespite its remarkable power to heal. RM. This result doesnt surprise me given the much greater volume of work in the 3. RM group. I know Stu Phillips personally and worked with him on a protein advisory committee. He does very good work, but Im surprised they did this study in the way they did. Kumar et al 2. 00. They also did leg extensions, and they found an increasing protein synthesis response as you went from 2. RM to 6. 0 1. RM, with no further increase beyond that. However, when you look at Kumars data, the young subjects showed a trend for increases up to 7. RM until a plateau was finally reached I think the lack of significance in the 6. So that data would indicate that the middle range that is so popular likely is optimal for hypertrophy. Another problem with this particular paper is they only looked at protein synthesis. However, hypertrophy is the result of protein synthesis exceeding protein degradation. Really you need to look at net protein accretion and not just the synthesis response in isolation. Without protein degradation data its really hard to say which one did better. I think this paper does indicate that there is value to light days, and you can obviously stimulate protein synthesis even if youre not using heavy weights. I think too many people are caught up in the notion that every work out must be heavy to get benefit out of it. In terms of legs, there certainly is a lot of anecdotal evidence that people tend to do better with slightly higher repetitions and volumes for the legs. However, I dont know if anyone has truly put this to the test experimentally. Intuitively, it makes sense. Like you, Martin, Ive tended to do better with legs in the 1. Borge Fagerli. 1. There are a few caveats with this study. The first and most obvious one is that it was a short term study only looking at markers for protein synthesis, to conclude anything at all you would need a longer term study showing actual muscle accretion. There are studies showing how endurance training can lead to rebound MPS muscle protein synthesis or myofibrillar protein synthesis, but you dont really see any crazy hypertrophy in these protocols over time, do you Another one is the mode of exercise. Leg extensions are quite a different animal than e. I would like to see someone surviving 4 true sets to muscular failure with squats at 3. RM. With leg extensions, you can keep constant tension on the muscle, and thus reach a hypoxic state from the occlusion effect. We know that the occlusion effect leads to higher fiber recruitment and more metabolicoxidative stress. So you really have to look at effective reps in this protocol. The first reps of the first set are essentially just work needed to reach this state of higher recruitment, the latter sets will reach higher recruitment levels earlier. This is exactly what my Myo reps protocol is based on, and you would probably need do a lot less total reps to achieve the same effect, if the rest periods between sets were 1. The 3. 0FAIL condition probably ended up around 5. All in all, the study shows that there is value in metabolic type training, but with the lack of actual long term measurements of hypertrophy, I wouldnt disregard the heavy stuff we all know works for getting big and strong. And remember the Goto et al study where the combination group of heavy light had even better results than the heavy or light group. So do both. 2. Yes and no. You still need heavy progressive loading with sufficient volume and frequency to get a muscle to grow. The problem with legs is that its painful to push yourself closer to failure, and most people yes, me too will usually chicken out just when it begins to hurt, way before hitting true failure. And be rewarded with chicken legs for the effort. For safety reasons, I wouldnt want people to get stuck with their knees behind their ears in the bottom position of a leg press or at the bottom of a squat with their spines sticking out of their back, either. So while you can argue that legs probably need more work since you walk around on them all day, its also a matter of doing more reps and sets to compensate for the inability to get enough effective or quality reps in any given set. Alan Aragon. 1. Ill echo Borges mentioning that this was an acute study whose long term effects are strictly speculative. Additionally, Im baffled about the load intensities the authors chose to compare 3.