Q: I want to be lean and defined, should I be training with higher reps?
Congratulations, dear reader, you have just taken us down the dusty rabbit hole with a rusted old sign reading: “Rep ranges: Enter at own risk.”
When Alice went down her rabbit hole she encountered a world where logic and reason were flipped upside down. If you want to be lean, assuming you aren’t, there is little point going to the gym every day for the next year and doing nothing other than 20 reps if the weight you’re using is wrong, your diet is unchanged and you hate cardio.
If you are eating properly and doing enough cardio you will lose fat and have a defined appearance while training with high reps. However, you would also cut fat training heavier for fewer reps, combined with a good diet, and high-intensity interval training or cardio, or both. If you eat too much bad food no magic number will help.
Let’s exit Wonderland and look at the rep ranges. Lower reps, one to five, fall into the strength range. Training in this range, with enough resistance, builds strength and functional muscle — assuming the diet and sleep are on point. Powerlifters love this range, for good reason.
If the weight being moved is lowered somewhat but is still heavy enough to require explosive power to move it, this range can be used to develop the kind of power a rugby player or fighter would need. But this doesn’t mean they would only train in this range, it is just that this range would be ideal for power development, whereas endurance and cardiovascular fitness would be trained differently.
Medium rep ranges, from about six or eight to 12 reps, fall into the muscle-building range. With all other factors on point, and by training with the right amount of resistance to get near to failure without losing form, this type of training can build muscle size and, naturally, strength. This is the bodybuilder range. It’s also the range you see all sorts of people using in commercial gyms, when perhaps another mode of training would yield results more closely aligned with their goals.
Performing better
More than 12 reps, up to 20, or even 40, or even as many as you can do, fall into the range where you build endurance and tax your cardiovascular system. Because it is still resistance training, you will either build some muscle or maintain muscle. This is the range used by bodybuilders as “finishers”, or by high-intensity trainers because that’s just what they do.
You can’t argue with the physical transformations this type of high-rep training can deliver, but ask yourself: would you be performing better if you were stronger and more explosive (lower rep ranges)? If you agree that you would, you’d appreciate that a well-rounded programme should periodise not just the exercises, but also the resistance and rep ranges.
If you want to be lean and defined, consider incorporating all the rep ranges into your training so that you become significantly stronger, more explosive, carry enough muscle to have the appearance you want, and have the endurance to tolerate more taxing workouts.
Readers of the Watercooler are not (always) Mad Hatters, so here’s the truth. Rep ranges don’t build strength, muscle or endurance by themselves. They’re used to describe the type of training you are doing.
The range refers to how many times you can move sufficient weight with correct form. If you train heavy enough, you literally can’t do more than five reps — and that just happens to build strength. If you are doing body-weight exercises, or lifting weights, in the eight to 12 rep range and the last rep is difficult to finish, you’re training in a manner that will help you build muscle, if you’re eating correctly. Note all the caveats — muscle magazines and Instagram hate those.
Your question specifically referred to being lean and defined. Yes, the training you do will have a big impact on your shape but nothing is more important than what you eat. Fix your diet, and then programme different rep ranges into your exercise regimen to spice up your training ... and your results.
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