Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1827: The 3 Best Rep Ranges to Build Muscle & Burn Fat

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin discuss the most effective rep ranges to achieve strength, aesthetics and endurance and to maximize fat loss. ALL rep ranges build muscle and burn body fat. The key is WHEN to use the rep ranges, HOW to use them, and WHAT they do for your body. (2:18) Addressing two myths regarding rep ranges. (8:22) The 3 Best Rep Ranges to Build Muscle & Burn Fat.  #1 - 1-5 Powerlifter / Olympic Lifter: The mindset, what it feels like, pros, cons, and false beliefs. (10:54) #2 - 6-12 Bodybuilder: The mindset, what it feels like, pros, cons, and false beliefs. (26:09) #3 - 15-20 Athlete / Endurance / Conditioning: The mindset, what it feels like, pros, cons, and false beliefs. (36:59) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code MINDPUMP at checkout** Memorial Day Special! 50% OFF ALL MAPS PROGRAMS! ENDS JUNE 1ST – **Promo Code MD2022 at checkout** Which Is Better: Low Reps Or High Reps? - Mind Pump Blog Will Lifting Weights Make Women Look Bulky? - Mind Pump Blog Why You Need to Mix Rep Ranges After Periods of Training – Mind Pump Blog How Phasing Your Workouts Leads to Consistent Plateau Free Workouts The Importance of Time Under Tension for Building Muscle Why Your Tempo Matters When You Workout! – Mind Pump TV Mind Pump #1745: How To Pack On Muscle To Your Lagging/Stubborn Body Parts Cardio Sucks for Fat Loss – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #865: Stan Efferding- The World’s Strongest Bodybuilder Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Stan “Rhino” Efferding (@stanefferding)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, pop, mind, pop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we talk about rep ranges.

And we highlight the three best rep ranges to build muscle and burn body fat. We talk about the value of each one, therefore who they're not for. We know you're going to enjoy this episode. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Legion. Legion makes incredible performance enhancing supplements. In fact, they have one of the top selling pre workout supplements out there. Pulse. It's got the right amount of caffeine, it's got the beta aline, the citralline, and more. It's one of the only pre-workouts that I use

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you got a little bit of time to take advantage of this. Go to mapsfitnessproducts.com, click on the maps program you want, use the code MD2022. Again, it's MD2022 for the 50% off any maps program, sale. All right, here comes the show. All right, so check this out. All rep ranges, build muscle and burn body fat. Now, the key is knowing when to use the rep ranges,

how to use the rep ranges, and what they do for your body, but they all work. Coming in with the controversial heat. Yeah, there's always the highway, the highway, so. I know, there's always discussion around this. Like what's the best rep range for burning body fat and for building muscle? And we will get into the kind of general breakdown

strength training rep ranges. And I wanna say that because, of course, at some point a rep range can get so high that it no longer really strength training. It's like just straight endurance training. So we're talking about the strength training rep ranges, which are like one rep to like 20 reps, maybe a little more. Well, it doesn't this fit into those avatars of like I identify as a power lifter

I identify as a bodybuilder I identify as like an endurance athlete and like we can Almost like completely shuttle them into these rep ranges and that's the only place they stay. It does it all It's also a great conversation to follow up You recently addressing the forum and how people love to attach themselves to a study. And so, and that's how we got to these like rep ranges that like this is what it's for. Right. This rep range, this rep range is for this and for these type of people.

But the truth is how you open this is that all of these rep ranges burn body fat and build muscle. And whichever one that you've been doing for a significant amount of time, it starts to lose its value for whatever reason that you are doing it. So, and I fell into this trap. I remember as a young kid, like, I mean, I was all about building muscle,

I cared about how I looked, that was what I was. So you did the mass building rep ranges, right? Yeah, it was either mass building or hypertrophy is all I would never consider high-up because at that time, especially back then, there was so much information on like magazines and stuff that were gearing. If you were 15 to 20 rep range, that was for girls. That was for someone who wanted to tone or lean out. Right.

And that was a skinny kid. So the node desire, like I would never think to do the 15 to 20 rep range. That's ridiculous. Like I have to put on all this muscle. And so, and this is what all the studies say. Studies are showing that this rep range builds the most amount of mass or puts on the most amount of muscle. So I would stay in that, not realizing that my body had gotten

so adapted to training in that rep range that the returns I was seeing were very minimal. Yeah, all rep ranges build muscle and burn body fat, but they all also become stale at some point. And there's some crossover, by the way. We're going to give some kind of ranges, but it's not as specific as we're kind of laid out.

But for the sake of this show, we had to be a bit specific. But they all have value. You just kind of know when to use them. And in my opinion, more importantly, understand the mindset going into each rep range and how you approach the rep range when you work out because they feel different and they do require a different mindset.

You have to have a bit of a different, the way you go into your workouts different when you train, for example, for three reps then then when you train for let's say 15 reps, and that makes a big difference. And of course, knowing when to do one or the other. I think that's such a great point because the first trap we fall into is identifying with a type of group and this is how they train. So therefore, I train this way.

So I stay in this rep range. And then I come across some information where somebody educates me a little further on it goes like you really should move out of that rep range, even if this is your specific goal. And then you do that, but you've done that other rep range and identified with that group of people for so long, would it be a power lifter, a body builder, an athlete, whatever. And so you train like them still in the new rep range. So there's kind of two things that you have to figure out here. Not only do you have to figure out like, oh, I don't want to get stuck in this this way

of training all the time, even if my goal is specifically to look like a bodybuilder or be a powerlifter or be an athlete, just because that's what this research says is this is the best area for me to be in. I want to move out of that. But I also need to know that when I move out of that, the, to your point, that my mindset needs to change because the adaptation is different, and the focus is different, everything from the tempo to the intent that I move the weight should get. And that was going to feel. That was hard. So I was trapped first for a really long time in

what we were talking about in this like putting size on, then I finally move into the higher rep range, but I'm still thinking, you know, lifting the same way that I would for even a rest. I mean, in between, right? That's a really hard concept for people that are in, you know, more than the endurance mindset. So to speak, and we'd have to kind of talk our way through that a lot of times

as coaches and trainers, you know, the value of that. Like each one of these acute variables have their own specific value for each one of these rep ranges and it needs to be applied appropriately. That's such a great point. What you're saying right now, so reminds me of my experience training like at Orange Theory, right? And you that attracts the, you know, short, rest periods, high rep ranges, get a sweat on, make the muscle burn,

get the heart rate up, burn a lot of calories. And even when I would get through to those people that were working out in there that listen, it's so important that you guys take rest and you guys strength training the one to six rep range because you're so used to doing this 15 to 20 and super set type workouts who get get massive benefits by lifting heavy or weight and going lower reps.

They would do that, but then they would still do it like a circuit. Hustle through it. Yeah, so they really weren't lifting closer to their max like they could. They were lifting a weight that they could rest for 30 seconds. It was like the dip they're toeing the water.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, they at least moved from the weight that was so light, they could move it 15 to 20 times. Now, they just picked a little bit heavier weight that they could do five or eight times, but they still were only resting 15 seconds or not at all. And so they weren't actually pushing their bodies the way they needed to to get the real benefits of that lower reparation. Totally. Now, before we get into this two myths that I think we need to address. One is that looking at an athlete and then looking at the training methodology that if you train that way, you'll look like that athlete.

Now, there's a little bit of truth to this, right? Bodybuilders train a particular way. And part of the reason why they looked the way they do is because of the way they train, same thing with power lifters and Olympic lifters. But there's also something that we don't consider. When you're looking at the top level of athletes, which is typically we would look at, that they were genetically born to perform well

at that sport. So to give you an easier example, it would be like me looking at Michael Phelps, who's easily the greatest swimmer of all time. He's the most decorated, most winning, a swimmer of all time and saying, you know what, if I swim a lot, I'm gonna get long arms, short legs, and a flat rib cage

because that's what swimming does. No, he was born that way. And then of course, he trained to get really good. So looking at like a power lifter and saying, well, if I train like a power lifter, I'm not gonna get that lean, I'm gonna get really wide hips and wide waist. Well, no, that's not really how it works.

Power lifters will kind of build that way naturally, and then of course they built on top of it with their training methodology. The second myth is that there's fat burning rep ranges and rep ranges that aren't fat burning. And this is built on the myth of calorie burn during the workout. So they say, okay, if I do 20 reps, I'm gonna burn more calories than if I do five reps.

Well, although that's true, the calorie burn difference is very small, it's not that big of a difference. And really, when you're looking at exercise, and I made this argument in many, many other podcasts, especially with strain training, forget about the calories that you burn while you work out, you want to consider the adaptations. And the reason why strength training is such a great long-term fat loss approach is not because it burns a lot of calories, rather because it helps speed up the metabolism. It teaches your body to burn the most calories on its own. So the best, the, the rep range that burns the most body fat is the one that builds the

most muscle. Bottom line. Doesn't matter what that rep range looks like. Not to mention, if you're somebody who does the, the high rep range for the calorie thing, maybe in that workout, it may burn a few more calories. But if you always train that way and you never train five to six rep range, you're not building the same muscle. And then you go and you train in the lower rep range,

I would make the case that, okay, maybe you burn a few more calories by all the extra movement in the higher reps in that workout, but the next 24 to 48 hours, the amount of calories that your body is gonna need in order to recover and repair the damage that you've done in the low rep range would probably counter the amount of calories. And the muscle that you build because the novelty is right absolutely. see bodybuilders training this because this is a strength training, you know, strength athlete rep range, right? This is like power lifters.

Yeah. Olympic lifters like to train in this rep range. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to say there's also a level of risk factor between all these rep ranges in terms of like once weight is something that our focus is on increasing the weight and lowering the reps. Now that demand is a bit more intense on the joints, on the body. I can see where a little bit of, if you're in a bodybuilder type of mentality where hypertrophy

is definitely something you're always seeking, it's not as appealing because now there's a lot more demand on the joints, the achiness that goes with that when, you know, maybe I could do some of these moves in a different way that's not going to feel the same. Yeah, and this was me. I didn't, I didn't lift. You guys know that I don't know if I've ever expressed this on the podcast or not, but you know that I never lifted anything less than five reps before all of us got together. Yeah. Never, even knowing all this stuff, right? That's what's crazy. I knew this, but I was like, so, I don't identify with a power lifter.

I don't care about my max rep. All I care about is how I look. I can manipulate the other rep ranges to continue to build muscle. And so I avoided it, even knowing all what we're talking about. So I had the knowledge now and experience of this, knew it, but even I was sucked into that,

like, I never have a desire to be a power lifter. I never care about what my maxes on any of these things. I have enough rep ranges to manipulate between five all the way up to 20 that I can continually to manipulate those enough to have novelty and stimulate the muscle growth. And I did, and I had a lot of success with that, but I tell you, when I started to play with the one to five rep range that I never did until I was 30, boy, it's so much muscle pack on in my body. And it blew my mind. It blew my mind at what I was missing out on by not including that into my repertoire.

Yeah, and now consider this, if you are an athlete competing in these sports, most of the time that you train will be in these rep ranges. It doesn't mean you don't train in the other ones because the other ones still have value, but most of the time you'll spend, if you're a power lifter, is going to be in this one to five. But I will say this, most people listening to this are not in that category. Most people listening to this podcast want to build muscle burn body fat, look good, feel good, and they want good, consistent results all the time.

Not necessarily to compete in one specific sport. So that's kind of who we're talking to. But mindset is everything, and you mentioned the kind of joint pain and you got to be careful with heavyweight. A big part of that is mindset. Now, of course, once you get to extreme levels, you get so strong, then it kind of, you know, you got to be careful. But for most people, the injuries that happen in the one to five rep ranges, because they have the wrong mindset going into the exercise

because it's different than when you're doing like a set of 15 reps, for example. So the mindset going into, and I just did this today, I haven't lifted heavy in a long time, I'm going into a heavy lifting phase, and I've been training the bodybuilder kind of mentality for so long, that it was wonderful switch of mindset. Like I'm going into the workout and I'm focusing on activating my CNS. I'm focusing on like angry intensity or really focused intensity with my left.

It's low reps, it's heavy weight, so I have to summon strength differently. It's heavy on that initial first part of the movement. So it's that concentric focused left where all of your force that you generate initially is what the goal is to really get into with that central nervous system, put all that demand there, and then find a way to not spend so much time on the negative. Most importantly, I would say this is when you're training the low rep ranges, you're not

focusing on mind and muscle connection. You're focusing on the movement. If I'm bench pressing for four reps or deadlifting for three reps or overhead pressing for four reps, I'm not thinking chest, shoulders, lats. I'm thinking perfect, my biomechanics stay tight and move my body in a way to maximize force generation. I don't care about the muscles that I'm trying to feel

because it's kind of a waste of time in this low rep range anyway, when the goal is a lift as much way as possible with the safest form possible. Which is different than like having these warm-up sets where like you're feeling the muscle. Totally. So this is really one of those things

where set up and focus is at the higher priority going into the lift. So even taking that extra bit of time to get rid of any loose part of the body and really start to be able to tighten everything and get everything in perfect alignment before it. Yeah, I'm priming at the same time trying to conserve energy, right? Because you want max amount of energy to go to your point with warm upsets. When you're kind of in a bodybuilder mindset, you can do a couple warm upsets with moderately

little... You're a little bit of a palm. Yeah, a little bit of a palm feeling it because you're not trying to max out. You're not going for one to three reps because you're not worried about it. You can fatigue a little bit, right? Or you can, when you're getting ready to move a max load, you want to conserve as much energy and keep in mind too, your tempo changes, right? So when you're moving like a body builder

and you're thinking about mind muscle connection, you got that four second negative. And that's where a lot of that mental focus is happening. And I'm lowering the bar on a bench press. I'm really thinking about my chest resisting the weight as it comes down. When I'm bench pressing in a like a power phase like this, I'm just I'm trying to explode. Even if you know it's funny, even if you go down slow, because you'll see power numbers is too, they'll lower slowly, but they're not thinking chest resets the weight. They're thinking, stay in the groove and stay tight.

Yeah, yeah. Stay tight, keep it on track and get rid of it. Yeah. And then explode out of it as hard as you possibly can. Right, and that's the feel, the feel that you're looking for with this. It's strong, tight and stable. You want to think of your body as a unit when you're training in this rep range. Not individual muscle groups trying to feel, you know, what's going on. Like if I'm doing a squat in this rep range, I am muscle groups trying to feel, what's going on, like if I'm doing a squat

in this rep range, I am not thinking, feel my quads, feel my glutes, feel my hamstrings. I'm thinking, I wanna feel as tight and stable as possible. I wanna maximize my biomechanics, make this as safe and explosive and as strong as possible. And then the muscles that I feel is a consequence. It's not the primary goal.

This is why one of the more challenging still to this day for me is actually activating my entire body when bench pressing. I trained like a body builder for so many years of my life that it didn't, I didn't need driving force from the ground. It was, I wanted my chest to take all of it. I know what my legs to help me with the bench press.

I wanted my chest to do all the work because that's what I'm trying to build. So when I had to switch over to this, still to this day, I really have to focus on getting myself really tight and driving my legs in the ground. It's not natural for me. You can always tell which way somebody trains all the time based off of things like that. You'll see they'll have a really hard time connecting their legs in an exercise like a bench press. Now you think someone may be watching,

but what does a leg have to do with a bench press? It doesn't lift the weight, okay? So you're not pushing with your legs to lift your back and create some weird terrible form. What you're doing is you're activating your central nervous system. You are staying tight to the ground. I like to squeeze the bench with my knees,

I tuck my feet back. Everything stays real tight. And that adds force because it makes your CNS fire. You're anchoring your body down. So now you don't have any leak in performance as well. So anytime if you notice a loose part of your body, it's gonna shift based off of the demand of where the bar path is going. Yeah, it's literally stable and tight.

Super stable tight, rocks all. Yeah, it's literally stable and tight. Super stable tight rock salt. Yeah, if I'm benching heavy like this, nothing's gonna move me off that bench. Now, if I'm trying to feel the chest, I mean, you can push me to the side and then I follow up. But when I'm doing it like, I am tight, I'm glued to the bench and the floor and the barbell. And again, I don't care what muscles I feel.

In fact, I'd rather feel all the muscles when I'm doing this particular one. Now, I mean, to address Olympic lifting is in this category as well. It's a little bit different because it's super, super. It's all about the acceleration of the weight. And I think there's a misconception because we watch the Olympics

and we see a lot of these lifters like with a lot of weight, you'd probably see power lifters do. But like for your average person, you're gonna have to lighten the load quite substantially to be able to get that kind of velocity and explosive movement. Oh my God, the last thing you wanna do as a power, when you're doing this rep range, if you're especially if you're a competitive powerlifter,

Olympic lifter, is feel the muscles, the individual muscles working. If you do an, especially an Olympic lift, you do a clean or a snatch, and you think I gotta feel my biceps or my back, you're not gonna lift the weight very effectively. No, it's more similar to like someone throwing a baseball. Yes, like, did you imagine throwing a baseball

and trying to think of like, I wanna, my shoulder in my back. Swees, you know, the shoulder in my back. Maybe the worst or the worst or the worst. I was like five feet extension. No, you, it's strong, stable, fire, everything's this tight. I wanna stay, I to focus and perfect them. I am not thinking about the muscles.

I'm thinking about the movement. Okay, so what are some of the pros of training this way? Well, this is all speculative, but your body, when you train in a phase for three to five weeks of this, you feel really strong and solid. It's a very different feel from other rep ranges. I literally feel like my body is made out of granite when I start to train this way. And bodybuilders will even talk about this because you see some bodybuilders.

Obviously, they don't care how much they lift, they care how they look, but you'll even hear it's your bodybuilder say, train this rep range gives them a granite look to their muscle versus the big bubbly, you know kind of pumped look That a lot of people know from like an athletic perspective It just it trains the muscle in that fast twitch response type of way so your reactivity Is is much improved by being able to train with that type of explosive? Initial movement. Yep. Yeah, this is something that I've talked about on the podcast before.

So if you're a kid who, you know, identifies with like similar to like how I felt as a kid where I was skinny, I just wanted to build muscle, I trained like a body builder and trained hypertrophy all the time. One of the things that I struggle with that you should drive me crazy

and I can't, I don't think I'm alone on this, is I get all aired up in the gym. The pump? Yeah, the pump and I liked the way I looked and then I would leave and then within an hour I would all deflate and then I'd feel like I looked like a kid who didn't lift weights, you know? In the gym I looked great, I felt great,

walked out and then I would lose that look. That was like for years and years. It wasn't until I started to train like this where I started to build this physique that it didn't get aired up as much in the gym, because I'm not doing 15, 20 rep ranges. I'm not resting for short rest periods. I'm getting these long rest periods.

I'm lifting really, really heavy. So the pumps weren't as massive, but as I started to put on muscle, my body looked different. It was solid. Yeah, now what I feel like I look today is like, oh, you can tell I work out, even though I didn't just get aired up in the gym.

I cannot work out for a week, and I still look like I train and I lift weights, where I didn't feel like that in my 20s. In my 20s, I felt like a kid that had to have just gone to the gym a couple hours ago for me to have looked like I lifted. It wasn't until I started training this way. And it's so hard to...

Yeah, there's really no studies. I know there's nothing that I can point to you to prove my point. A lot of anecdotes, right? You hear this from a lot of people. Yeah. And that's one of the, that's why we say mindset's so important.

If your mindset is about getting the pump, you're gonna be sorely disappointed with the one to five rep range. I mean, you do five sets of a bench press for three reps and you might get a little bit of a bench press for three reps and you might get a little bit of a pump, but it's not going to compare to the pump you get when you do more of a body building workout, but that doesn't mean you're not building muscle. And that's why the mindset's so important. So some of the cons of training this way are

just the lack of pump and the lack of burn. That's another one. A lot of, especially my female clients, fall in love with the feeling of the burn. And mainly because they were told that the burn is what gives them the fat loss. burn. And mainly because they were told that the burn is what gives them the fat loss. Yeah. And so we would do a heavy set of five reps or four reps. They'd be like, I don't feel a burn. It's hard.

I'm straining, but I don't feel the muscle burn. Is it really working? Yes. So, but that's one of the cons, right? Is that if you fall in love with those feelings, you're not gonna get this crazy pump or this crazy burn. You're just your reps are too low.

And you may not be sweating because it's anaerobic. So there's another factor, it's like a lot of the... Yeah, my waist is my time. Yeah, exactly, a lot of the preconceived ideas of what a workout should consist of, right? This doesn't really fit in that way. Combine the lack of sweating and the lack of burn with the fact that top level power lifters

tend to not be super lean. And you can now see where that... I don't know, look like that. Yes. So then they avoid this whole way of doing it. So then the myth is, oh, if I train this way, I'm going to get bulky. Or the people, or people will do it for a little while and then they'll bail on it really quick because they're not feeling the same way that they felt from the other workouts. Right. But it's a big myth, right? Oh, if I train this way, I'm going to get boxy. I'm going to get bulky. You even see this in powerlifting, excuse me, in bodybuilding circles.

Oh, you train this way. Your waist is going to get real big in square. No, it just so happens to be that people with big waist tend to squat the most weight. So that's why you see that. Which is physics, by the way. That's why that happened. I mean, I know we rail on CrossFit a lot, but we, you know, in their defense, like, that's something that I critique effort.

Oh, I don't want to do CrossFit because all the girls have these boxy hips. It's like, no, those girls had boxy hips and that's why they're good at CrossFit. That's one of the reasons what made them real. Yeah, it's physics. It gives them better leverage for when they're squatting and deadlifting and doing these moves. Host having obliques helps to stabilize your spine. Yeah, like, let's not, look, if you have a small ink of those muscles.

If you have narrow hips and you build some obliques, you're not gonna get a bigger waist. What are you gonna get? Not even a quarter inch around your waistbear. You'll have developed obliques and you'll just look way better. So I wouldn't, don't worry about the omnibank me bulky or boxy, not true.

This was my favorite rep range to train female clients and because they were the ones that were most likely to neglect this. My male clients, I'd say 25% of them had messed with this rep range. My female clients never trained this rep range because they never thought this was a good fat burning one.

It made a monkey. It was game changer. I throw them in this rep range and it was like life changing for them. Oh my God, I'm finally building. Oh my God, I'm getting so lean. Wow, look at my butt. I mean, it's part of why mind pump happened.

I mean, when you sent over the first program, I sent a ball at, and I remember reading it, that's exactly what I was thinking when I read it. That was... So I put that first. I was like, okay, I know that 70% of my clientele's female, I know that 90% of them rarely ever strength train or never have strength train before. Like, I learned that 90% of them rarely ever strength train or never have strength train before.

Like I learned that in my career, that that became like the go to move whenever I got a female client, I was like I would always put them on a strength phase because nine times at a 10, they've never trained that way. And of course, I want to show them the most results I can possibly to build value in myself. It's the best way to train too, it was novel for that. So that's what would happen.

And so I remember when I opened that up, I was just like, oh, this is perfect. Totally. All right, let's talk about the popular, what people would consider hypertrophy, muscle building, rep range. Now, again, there's some carry over here. We could have broken this up into five different rep ranges, but it'd be silly. This rep range is six to 12. This is the body building rep range.

More commonly, you'll hear people referred to as eight to 12, fine, same thing, or whatever. The mindset of this is totally different. Okay, the mindset that I was doing when I was doing three reps is not the same as the mindset is when I'm doing, you know, eight reps or 12 reps. With this, I'm looking for smooth intensity. Okay, if I get that same rage focus, tighten everything intensity that I'm doing three reps and I do 12 reps with that, I'm gonna pass out on the floor. It's not gonna be as effective. With this, I want smooth intensity.

And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to connect to the muscle. I'm trying to feel my lats. I'm trying to feel my glutes. I'm trying to feel my delts and my pecs when I'm doing a specific exercise. Totally different. Like if you bench press for three reps, you bench press for 12 reps. One, it's the movement.

The other one is let me feel this muscle working. Let me feel this connection. Yeah, this is the time and retention phase, right? This is where you were thinking about the entire set, you know, if you're whether you're moving at six reps or 12 reps, but the entire time, I just want to feel it in that muscle group. Yes. All the way from the bottom to the top of the movement all the way through it. So time and attention, moving slower, tempo wise, really resisting the negative and thinking about where you feel it, stuff like that, squeezing at the top.

Like, this is where all those techniques, I think have a lot, that's another thing that we haven't touched really on, too, is there's a lot of Techniques that I think apply to certain rep ranges. Yes. Yes. Yeah Just like we said with the low rep range of like tightening up your legs in your core when you're benching With something like this you're like you're focusing on the squeeze Yeah, you're focusing on the stretch Yeah, you're focusing on different parts of the rep that make you feel the muscle more You're trying to direct that contraction and really connect to where you're feeling

that muscle's involvement. And if it's not involved, how can I highlight that a bit more and intensify? In fact, it often means you have to go lighter. So with the other rep range, if you can adjust your technique and your form so you can lift more weight and increase your improved your biomechanics in your leverage in a safe way, that's the direction that you go. In weight and increase your, improve your biomechanics and your leverage in a safe way.

That's the direction that you go. In this particular rep range, it's better to feel the muscle. And if it's, if I'm lifting in a way that where I can't feel the muscle, lighten the weight up, change my technique a little bit. Now I can feel the muscle. I'm so glad you said that because that's another thing that, we talked about tempo and the mistake

that people stay in a rep range when they move out of it, they make, that's the other thing that they make, a mistake. It's not changing that. You have to change that when you go into the other phase. Oh yeah, I mean, if I'm benching to three reps, I'm not trying to feel my chest. I'm trying to maximize the leverage. When I'm training for 10 reps,

if I don't feel the chest, I'll lighten the load and change my technique a little bit, so I can feel the chest. But the tendency that a power lifter guy has who now finally you'd convince him to move into a body full face, he wants to still lift the most weight that he can. Yes. Six to 12 rep range. And that's no longer the desired outcome anymore.

No. I would rather see you reduce the weight by 20, 30% and slow down the tempo even more and focus more on the squeeze and all the things that we're talking about. But it's the mindset that's hard to get out of that ego issue. I mean, right away, like, you have to really kind of let that go and realize the intent is a completely different focus. Well, I, so again, I was the bodybuilder guy going powerlifting. So I even had that hard time too. I was so focused on muscle guy and tempo and healing everything that I had a hard time actually letting go of that. I mean, I wanna just move as much weight

as I can right now in this phase. You ever watch a body builder go to deadlifting? Yes, and it becomes like a weird flexed elbow. Yes, and they're trying to really pull. Yeah, and really, no. It's like they're doing it. It's like a row deadlift and you can tell, oh, that's not. You need to anchor this and get your whole body

Steff totally and move quickly or see a power lift to go to bodybuilding Yeah, no, no, I know you're doing a rear fly, but that looks more like a row like elbows out feel this muscle work limit this particular range of motion increase this range of motion Yeah, total different mindset. That's why so it's so important now. What does this feel like? Bodybuilding or body sculpting? What do I mean by that? When I'm training this way, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to think of my body rather than with the lower rep range,

where I'm trying to think of my body as one unit that's generating strength, here I'm trying to think of the different components of that unit. How can I sculpt and shape my body like a sculptor? So when I go in there and I think I want more upper chest, I want more rear delt, I want this part of my quad or this part of my glue.

As silly as some of the sounds, and I know some of it's almost in futility, doesn't matter, makes a big difference. I'm going and I'm sculpting and shaping my body. In fact, I like to use the pump as a way to do this. How can I make my body look the way I want with the way that I target my pump in the gym? And really, you really do feel

like you're sculpting your body. No, you absolutely, I mean, you could take a movement, okay? The average person would look at, like let's say like a seated cable row. And because a seated cable row so unique, the back muscles so big and there's so many different muscles in your back, I can literally, and if you had like this,

if you had a machine hooked up to all my muscles when they're supposed to your chain, I could do five different reps, and I could light up different areas way more. Upper back, mid back, lats, rear delts. Yeah, totally. So, and that is the difference when you're training like this, is when I'm doing this exercise,

I'm now thinking about the muscles that I'm trying to develop. This is also where the tempo and the squeeze, this is why they have so much value, of slowing down, because it's easy for us to sit here and just say, oh, do a seated row, but now do it thinking about your rear delts. Like the average person here is anger,

what the fuck does that mean? How do I do that? We'll slow down the tempo. It's lighten the load up, real light. Now what I want you to do is let the shoulders kind of roll forward, so you feel the stretch on your rear delt. Okay, now you feel that? Now try and engage that and then squeeze at the end and think about that.

Maybe I'm touching the rear delt so they can feel it. That's where all these techniques really come into play when you're training this way to try and learn how to activate all those different muscles. Totally. Now, some of the pros of this are, it's fun. There's a lot of variety. When you train this way, you're looking for angles, different angles of hitting different muscle groups, right?

Rather than just doing press for overhead press for delts, I'm doing a press, but then I'm like, do I do it behind the neck? Do I do it in front of my body? Here's the part of shoulder I want to work. Let me try some laterals. What about with cables versus the dumbbells? Maybe do some rear flies. So I can hit this part of my rear delt.

It's a fun type of workout. There's a lot of variety. And the pump is amazing with this. The really is. You can really target a specific muscle training this way and maximize the pump you get in that workout. There's a lot of value in that, especially if you have a lagging body part.

If you have a body part that just doesn't seem to respond like other body parts, this is where you can target it and then start to feel it for the first time. And I'm going to tell you something right now, there's definitely muscle building effects to the pump, but I like the psychological benefits. When I take a client who's like, you know, I never my shoulders just don't respond and I can show them a pump in their shoulders The psychological effect of feeling that muscle, you know, grow temporarily seeing it in the mirror that pays off big time Yeah, and the person's motivation Consistency and just how they how they train that body part now some of the cons your strength gains are not gonna be as prominent

So if you're like strength focused, you love lifting more weight. You got to get that out of your head when you're training this way. Now I could get stuck in that. I like both bodybuilding and strength training, but if I had to pick one, I'd pick the strength. And if I get stuck in a strength phase for too long, which I have a tendency to do, and I get into this type of training, I have to really work on the mental aspect of, okay, the weight doesn't matter anymore, even though I know I, you know, if I do it in my power of lifestyle. I've been doing this for years, just doing strength training.

It's like I did not want to do any kind of hypertrophy training, anything over like, you know, five to six reps. And, man, but really the value of it was so substantial because to be able to connect to other muscles and have those to contribute back when I get into a strength phase again, was tremendous. And so it's a different shift in mentality, ego check because the weight goes down substantially,

but in terms of like the overall feel of my body and also just muscles to help in, again, with stabilizing and contributing around the joints as well, you can address a lot of issues that you don't even see a lot of times when you're in a bi-loaded position where it's like everything is all about movement and I'm not highlighting the individual muscles and not realizing they're not really contributing

like they should. The other con about this rep range is this is where most of the studies are done to prove, you know, this is the best for building muscle and hypergis. There's a lot of people get stuck in this range. A lot of people that want to build muscle have seen enough of these studies being touted that this is the best place to train for building muscle and they're missing the rest of the story. They're missing the rest of the elephant, you know,

I'm saying all their reading right now is the trunk or the feet right now. And don't realize there's way more to this puzzle than just that. And they get stuck in this phase for a very long time, and they don't get the benefits of the other ones. I don't realize how much it contributes to their main goals. Yeah, if you did a study, and they don't really do studies like this, but if you did a study that followed someone, not for 12 weeks or 16 weeks, but for a year or two years.

And you compared people who did just eight to 10 reps, right? Versus people that went through different phases of all of these reps. What you would find is the person that trained for four weeks in a rep range and four weeks and other one, whatever, over time, got better, more consistent results in both strength and in muscle. Now, if you just do head to head short study, yes, some will build a little more muscle, some build a little more stamina, some build a little bit more strength, but over time, they all contribute. And you always, and look, anybody who's ever done this knows this.

You stay in one thing for six to eight weeks, you switch over, it's like, boom, my body is responding again. Oh my God, this is amazing. And that's the beauty, that's the thing you might take advantage of. Now, there's a myth with this rep range, and that is that, and you touched on this,

it's the only rep range that builds muscle. That's completely false, 100% false. Thankfully, we have studies now that totally prove this. Studies will show they all build muscle, so it's not the only one that builds muscle. The other ones don't burn more body fat or build, you know, okay, working body stuff. All right, next, let's get to the high rep ranges,

15 to 20. Now, I do wanna say that you can have the low rep range mindset into the body building one or into this one right here and vice versa. You can do that, and I mean, is there value to it? I don't know, maybe. We're trying to explain the best way to utilize these rep ranges and this 15 to 20,

and yes, there's value in going higher than 20 reps, but we stopped at 20 because at some point it just starts to become endurance training. It's no longer strength training. And you know, some people can get up to 30 reps and keep it strength training. So, you know, again, this isn't an exact science here, but 15 to 20 is a good range here for what we're talking about. This is an endurance stamina, you know, type of mindset. Like goal, when you're doing 20 reps of squats versus two reps of squats, like if I do two reps of squats, I'm like maximizing tension, staying tight,

holding my breath, you know, focused and drive. When I'm doing 20 reps of squats, I'm like, I need to endure. Like I need to make it through the set. I'm gonna stay focused on keeping my breathing going. If I do all the first 10 reps like I power lifter, I'm screwed, right? I'm not going to make it through this whole thing. So it's a kind of a consistent, smooth, enduring type of mindset when you're doing reps. You want to conserve energy a bit or be efficient with your energy management.

Yes. And to be able to maintain good posture and good mechanics is paramount in this phase, which is something that is not promoted enough. It's really about how many you can do and how quickly you can get it done and what you can literally endure, but they still need to be...

There still needs to be a high focus on quality. Well, this is one of the rep... You have to go really light, especially at first. Like, if you don't train this way, and you're used to being a strength train. Dude, you're going to 20 reps, the first 10 reps are easy, and people are like, I can add way. Yeah. No, dude. I every time I move into this phase, because this is probably a phase I stay in the least, because it's the least favorite of mine,

especially when you start pushing 20 reps. Like I frequently am training 15 reps, but rarely do I push 20, but when I do, I always know that whatever weight I think I can move, I always gotta go lower than that, because when you rarely train in that, this to the stamina point, like you end up gassing before you,

and it's not a lot of times it's your cardiovascular endurance. You know, it's like a lot of times it's just my heart, my heart's pounding so fast from doing 16, 17, 18 reps that I'm having a hard time recovering there in order to even be able to lift the weight. But that's also what makes this such a great contributed to the other phases. Like you get really good, you do,

you can get 20 reps squats down and go through a phase of 20 reps squats, and then you go back to like 10, like oh my God, 10 feels like nothing. And you can generate your force with this. Yes, yes, yeah, cause yeah, fatigue in those other settings is the killer of your progress. And so to address that in this phase,

makes you stronger going back in to where that's not as much of a factor. So funny, I used to train this couple, right you stronger going back into where that's not as much of a factor. So funny, I used to train this couple, right? Husband and wife, and they both worked out, and the husband loved, you know, six to eight reps, and the wife loved 15 to 20, 25 reps, right? This is how they trained before.

They met me and they used to work out separately. Well, then I worked out with them together. They flipped them. When we would do low rep workouts, the wife was terrified. Oh, I don't like lifting this heavy. I feel like I'm gonna hurt myself. When we go to the higher reps, the husband was terrified. I hate this.

Makes me feel like I want to throw up. I want to die. It's so hard. It's so funny. It's so stereotypical of a true man. It's so funny. Yeah, this rep range terrifies me because it's just, if I do a set of 20 reps in the squat, if I, my intensity is too high with this,

or if my weight is too high with this, one set, and I'm done, like the workout's over, I'm not gonna be able to move or do anything else anymore. So you have to be very smart with this type of rep range, you have to have the right mindset and know that the second and third set are gonna be way harder than the first. So if you did the first set, you're like,

wow, that was hard, you know, I'm kind of breathing hard. You wait till the second and third set because that muscle stamina, that strength stamina is a whole different monster. Now, what does this feel like? It feels like conditioning. Feels like the burn. Feels like it's sweat.

This is like cardio. Yes, yes, yes. This is why I love to make the case though for the people that, you know, give us a hard time because we rail on so many people that love to just run, run, run, run, and then they try and attach that to the benefits of cardio. I'm like, if you ain't never done 20 reps squats before,

and if you don't think that gives you great cardio and turns, you're tripping because 20 reps squats for multiple sets is all day long. You do that. And you never run, but you get on there and run a mile really really well I'm serious like you could the amount of time it takes to run a mile You're talking about you know anywhere from six to ten minutes for most people like your set of squats It's gonna take you that long to get through 20 rep squats for three or four sets

And if you can do that with something on your back like then go run a mile But you could run a mile. No problem. That's how powerful that is. Yeah. This is the stereotypical, what people think of workouts supposed to feel like. You can take the average person and you say, what is a good workout? It's supposed to feel like, burn. And you sweat and you breathe hard.

This is the rep range that you feel like. This is what has been sold forever in every DVD series and infomercial and you know and then again to the earlier point where you're talking about what what a game changer it was for female clients to go in the low rep range. I mean this is just what was promoted for so long that like let's not get you big and bulky with the big weights. And let's stick with this rep range in small ways. I'll tell you guys a personal story. So, you know, I can get, I can, and we all have our tendency,

we all have our tendency, we can get stuck in the low rep ranges and I love this strength feel and all that stuff, and I love lower, especially lower body low rep stuff, mainly because I like the feeling of lifting something heavy off my back and also because I hate the feeling of high rep, lower body stuff, it's just, like I said, it's just, I dread it, right?

So I was doing, you know doing sets of five reps with, this was recent, this was like over the last year. I'm doing like three 75, I even did it at some point. I got up to 405 for five, which was a lot for me, right? I'm doing this and I'm like, you know what? I'm starting to feel my joints a little bit. I've been staying in this for a little too long. I'm starting to need to put knee wraps on.

I better follow my own advice. Let me go and try some 20 rep squats. I went down to 225 and I did one set. The next set I went down to 185 and that was it. And you know what happened? My legs grew. My legs grew, they got bigger. They got, and I stuck to that for,

I think it was like three or four weeks. And then for fun, I went, let me go see what the 405 feels like on my back. I felt stronger and more stable. I did I think another rep or two with that weight. So even, and I remember we had Stan Effardine on the show years ago, he talked about how he trained in this rep range when he went from powerlifting to bodybuilding and he built all this extra muscle.

Do you think if you're a strength athlete, you could benefit from all the extra muscle? Absolutely. So not saying a power lift, there could benefit from all the extra muscle. Absolutely. So not saying a power lift or should always train their SREP range, but if you neglect it, you're missing out on some of those incredible benefits that you can get from it because of the novelty. Well, if you're listening to this,

and you either follow your own program or just follow your own, do your own thing, right? And everybody has a tendency, even us in this room, right? So we have all this information and knowledge and we've seen here, but each one of us has a tendency to gravitate to a rep range, right? If you were to, if we had asked everybody, honestly, okay, in the last two years, what rep range did you grab? We'd all have a rep range. We wouldn't say, oh, I have evenly split it between these, it's just

a truth, right? So you have to ask yourself, who are you? You know, which one of these? And then the people that I think sees huge benefits are the ones that migrate to the top of the bottom of this list, cause then you can go the opposite and it'll just blow your mind. Yeah. If you're someone who always is like one to five cause you wanna be a power lifter so bad

or an Olympic lifter and you identify with that group so much, and maybe everyone's while you flirt with six to 10, but you never do no 20 rep anything, like go do 20 rep exercises and see what happens. Now I like to recommend people do a step ladder of it. Not because it's not better, because what you said I think is amazing, but because it's shocking and they don't fully grasp

the change in weight. They just don't. You go from, you're always doing four reps, you go to 20 reps, you will miscalculate how much weight needs to be in the bar, and it will mess with your head. You're used to squat in four plates, you go down to one and a half plates on there, you know, you're looking around, anybody watching me in the gym, nobody's in your cool,

I'm gonna lift this weight because I normally lift so much more. So I typically have people do a step ladder for the psychological effects myself included. Some of the pros of this, you build incredible stamina and work capacity. Like you do five or six weeks of 15 to 20 reps. You find yourself having this incredible stamina on your workout. After about the third or fourth week, you feel like you have this engine that just runs forever.

And you go through the workout and you just feel unstoppable and you don't need to rest long and everything feels great. You get an incredible pump from this just like you do from the bodybuilding phase. Although I will say the bodybuilding phase, I actually get a better pump that lasts longer.

With this, as the stamina builds, the pump starts to fade a little bit, but the stamina continues to grow up. And then the last, this is still, I would consider a great pump pump. That's actually interesting and a very good point. That's such a good point that you just made right there. Because you know that too.

Yeah, no, absolutely. It becomes closer and closer and more, a stamina building thing that it is, like a muscle pumping or building thing. So that's a really good point. The first time you do it, you'll get a massive pump. If you've never done 20 reps squats, your legs will be pumped more than you've ever felt them before.

Keep doing it though, it just becomes a stamina. Yeah, yeah. Because eventually you condition yourself, the stamina builds, and then now you're moving away that's relatively light for those muscles and so they just don't pump as much. Totally, that's why I would say this is not the best pump one, but at first it is.

At first it's like the pump is ridiculous. Yeah. Some of the cons, you're not gonna lift as much weight. Now some people don't care about that. Some people do. It's definitely an ego check. It is for me, even now, after I've been training so many years, putting a light weight on the bar for me,

doing all these reps, there's always, I always gotta check my ego and be like, all right, we're gonna do 20 reps, I'll sell 10 pounds on the bar or whatever. It's all good. Now, you list that as a calm. And I would also make the case for it as as a pro because this is a case and I've had these clients.

I trained obviously less male than I did female, but the males that I train that love to move the way all time, like one of the best things for their body would be to just dramatically reduce the weight and work on technical. Yeah, you're right. one of the best things for their body would be to just dramatically reduce the weight and work on technique. You're right. And so there's a lot of pros to lifting a lot lighter weight, especially for my men out there that are listening that ego lift a lot.

Love to push the weight as much as possible and love to do all the wraps and the wrist stuff and everything like that because they've got achy joints, achy neck, achy shoulders, achy knees and it's because they just, they wanna move weight all the time. It's like one of the best things that client can do is move into this really high rep range and start moving much lighter weight.

Yeah, another con, and maybe someone likes this, I don't. It's exhausting. This is the kind of workout where I'm just like, as I'm going through it, I'm like, man, I need to like, I'm pushing myself through this workout. This is not like, I'm feeling the pump, I'm like, man, I need to like, I'm pushing myself through this workout. This is not like, I'm feeling the pump and then resting in between sets and, you know, this is great.

It's like, this is more endurance than I tend to like. It's a lot more mentally taxing, yes. I would say, just because you have to endure, you have to stay in that same mindset for a pretty long period of time versus, you know, being able to get in that same mindset for a pretty long period of time versus being able to get in that one to five rep range where you're just super focused and then it's over.

Yeah, so it's totally different mindset. Now, myth around this, it burns the most body fat. It doesn't burn the most body fat. Yes, it does burn more calories, but again, that's inconsequential. It's not a huge difference in calorie burn. And remember, we've talked about this many times. The fat burning benefits of strength training has nothing to do with the calories you burn

while you were, I don't want to say nothing, it has very little to do with the calories you burn while you work out, it has much more, much more to do with the muscle building effects and then what that does for your body. So if this rep range builds the most muscle for you, then it will be the most the best fat burning rep range. If one to five builds the most muscle for you, that's the best fat burning rep range. If six to 12 builds the most muscle for you, that's the best rep range for you.

So consider that with all of these. Don't worry about the calories burn during the workout. That really only lasts for a very short period of time. It's okay, which rep range for me me, is going to build the most muscle. That's the best fat burning rep range. And for most people, unless you're a specific type of athlete, you want to look your best, you want to have continual consistent progress, the idea, it's to spend between three to six weeks in each of these rep ranges and then move to the next one.

And if you do that all year long, you'll get more consistent results, less injuries, you'll feel better, you'll be more well rounded with your fitness than you would be had you stuck in just one rep range. Look, if you like our information, head over to MindPumpFree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. You can find Adam on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam

and you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sound. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically

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