Strength Repetition Ranges for Bench Press

1-5 Repetitions

Hypertrophy Repetition Ranges For Bench Press

10-30 Repetitions

Goal Setting

Setting a goal for a resistance training session is crucial to setting the correct repetition ranges. If you do not chose what your goal is you will not be able to pick coherent repetitions. When it comes to resistance training, you can either be trying to gain strength or gain muscle. Obviously there is a lot of overlap between the two, especially for beginners. Lets have a deeper look at these two goals and discuss the appropriate repetition ranges for each goal.

What is Strength

Strength is all about the contractile ability of the muscle. How much force can a muscle contraction create, that is what strength is. We can train our muscles to be strong through improving contractile efficiency by improving neuromuscular ability.

Repetition Ranges for Strength

Getting strong is all about lifting heavy weights. Heavy weights stress the body in such a way that it improves contractile strength. This is important to understand because this is what dictates the repetition ranges for strength. When you lift heavy weights, which is defined as anything above 80% of your 1RM, the repetition ranges will be very limited due to the amount of weight. This means that the repetition ranges for strength training are between 1-5 repetitions.

What is Hypertrophy

Hypertrophy training is all about growing the actual size of the muscle. This is what bodybuilders do. They grow the muscle through performing very high amounts of volumes. Hypertrophy training is very different from strength training and will create a different adaptation, it will increase the size of the muscle rather than increasing its contractile strength.

Hypertrophy Repetition Ranges

Hypertrophy repetition ranges are all about sending signals of fatigue and creating large amounts of volume. This means performing high amounts of repetitions, anything from 10+ repetitions to 30 repetitions will be effective at creating a muscle growth stimulus. More important than the repetitions themselves is the proximity to failure. If we perform 30 repetitions on a light weight and we find it easy, we will not create any adaptation. If we perform 10 repetitions but the 10th is very close to failure, we will create a potent stimulus for adaptation. Understanding the concept of RIR (repetitions in reserve) is crucial to good hypertrophy. The aim should be to perform sets where you have 1-2 repetitions in reserve.