Hey guys,

right now, I´m changing routine and I am now aiming mostly at mass gain. Take for example chest (or other body part) - what would be the ideal set/ rep split for achieving mass gain (I´ve done 6 months of mostly strenght training so now I´d like to switch things around a little bit)? I know for getting greater mass gains, you need to reach hypetrophy - but I´ve known people doing 4x8, 3x10, but I´ve also heard of people doing up to 20 reps (Brendan Fokken eg.). What would you recommend?

Thanks to you all!

It's going to depend on your TUT(time under tension) Generally the higher the reps the more TUT and yes you can still definately pump that blood to your muscles and swell up your muscle size but your strength will suffer but you will have better muscle endurance. Higher TUT will be more of your slow twitch muscle fibers being called into play when fast twitch muscle fibers have a higher potential for growth and are much bigger muscle fibers. TUT will be how long 1 set lasts depending on your tempo which will also depend on the amount of weight you use. I like to stick with 80%-85% of my 1RM and as long as your set lasts between 20-45 secs you will be recruiting all your fast twitch muscle fibers for growth so you will get size and strength. I am doing 4 sets of 6 reps on my workouts right now and 1 set lasts me 22 secs so I still fall into that range. Alot of guys like the 3-4 sets of 8-10 rep range which I myself enjoy as well and your TUT may fall in between 45-70 secs there which is more borderline fast and slow twitch muscle fibers. If you can do 3-4 sets of 8-10 reps and keep under 45 secs you would still be doing good. You want to lift more weight, more sets. Doing 20 reps you may only be able to lift 40%-50% of your 1RM and all though you can still activate muscle growth your strength will suffer because you are recruiting more slow twitch muscle fibers and lifting heavier imo is better for mass and strength gains but it is still a good idea to play with all ranges. If all you want is to swell up and don't care about too much strength gains you could always do 3-4 sets of 12-15 reps with a slow tempo. I don't care for that way to much because if I end up looking like Jay Cutler and can only bench 225llbs...well just think about it. Your nutrition is gonna be very important as well so make sure you are getting plenty of what you need, protein, fat and carbs.

for mass gain I like to do 4 sets of 8-15 reps but use a heavier weight. Meaning when you go for a 10 rep set choose a weight you can only get 10 reps with.

This is another topic that is open to debate and one that really can only be determined for each individual through lifting experimentation. Let's first remember a couple of things:

1) Not all people who are big are strong and not all strong people are big. If this wasn't true, then every bodybuilder would be the strongest men in the world since they tend to be the biggest or power lifters would be the biggest people in the world because they tend to be the strongest. Lou Ferigno and Franco Columbu both competed in the World's Strongest Man competition in the 70's and while they were the biggest from a muscular perspective and were quite strong they didn't beat the top finishers who weren't as big muscular wise but were extremely strong.

2) All muscle fibers grow - Type 1 slow twitch and type 2 fast twitch. Type 2 muscle fibers just have the potential to grow much bigger than Type 1 muscle fibers. To get maximum muscular size, you need to make both grow. This is why bodybuilders, on average, are much larger and more muscular than most power lifters because their training focuses on both muscle fiber types whereas power lifters mostly focus on Type 2 fibers as their only concern is strength.

Rep ranges, volume, and amount of weight all need to be determined individually to see what works best for you. The general rule of thumb is reps in the 4-8 range with heavy weights builds mass and reps in the 8-15 range with moderate weights builds more endurance. What needs to be remembered is it is not as cut and dry as that. I have known people who have gotten huge and strong just doing reps of 4-6. I have also known people who have gotten huge and strong doing reps in the 8-12 range. I knew one guy who was enormous and very strong and he just did one set of 100 reps (10 sets of 10) per body part. Granted he was chemically enhanced, but that is all he did for his workouts. He was done in 35 minutes each training session.

What affects muscle growth more than the number of reps are things like the amount of weight, the TUT, the volume, negatives, etc. For instance, the eccentric (negative) part of a rep tears more muscle fibers than the concentric (contraction) part. TUT tears more fibers than if you speed thru a set regardless of the weight used. You need to experiment and find what rep ranges work for you. It could be a "catch all" like pyramid sets where you do reps of 10-8-6-4 raising the weight with each decreasing rep range. It could be drop sets where the first set is the heaviest weight you can do for 10 reps followed immediately by reps of 10 with weight that is 30-50% lighter than the first set. Once you find a rep range that works with you, you will grow and get strong as long as you try to increase the weight at least 5% as it is this progressive overload that builds size and strength.

John