How fast should my reps be

Both slow- and fast-twitch muscle fibers are recruited, imparting gains on both. At the start of a slow-rep set, slow-twitch muscle fibers are predominantly used. As fatigue sets in, more fast-twitch fibers are called in for support. When you reach failure, you have successfully hit all the muscle fibers you can in that exercise.

Depending on how slow your reps go and how many reps you do, some sets can last up to three minutes, extending the time the muscle is under tension. This will fatigue the muscle far beyond anything you are used to. Muscle fatigue is important for stimulating size adaptations, increasing growth hormone and IGF-I growth factor levels. In addition, research has found that training with slow reps can increase strength gains better than normal rep training.

Start the positive portion of the rep slowly and methodically. It should take approximately 10 seconds to complete just the positive. Hold the weight in the contracted position for about two seconds. You should reach muscle failure by five reps. If you can do six or more reps, increase the weight for the next set.

Support TrainHeroic. Access the latest articles, reviews, and case studies from the top strength and conditioning minds in the TH Training Lab. Your email address will not be published. Andy Galpin. Skill Development. So you do need to also practice motor patterns at speed. Speed and Power. Fat Loss. What type of endurance are we talking about? Aerobic or anaerobic? Lastly, lowering your weight back down at the end of your exercise is referred to as an eccentric movement.

Workouts with slower reps cause your muscles to experience more time under tension, much more than with faster reps. The amount of time your muscles stay strained beneath a certain amount of weight will lead to an increase in muscle size. This leads to greater overall activation of the target muscle.

And this was seen despite both protocols being taken to failure, indicating that very slow lifting fails to sufficiently stimulate or activate the higher threshold type II muscle fibers. So as you can see, a slower tempo results in less overall muscle activation and presumably less growth of the target muscle.

So we know that faster reps are probably better in terms of muscle growth. But exactly how fast should you be aiming for? Well a recent meta-analysis by Schoenfeld and colleagues provides some insight. They found that based on all of the studies currently published on lifting tempo which to be honest is quite limited a lifting tempo between 2 to 6 seconds per rep seems to maximize growth.

They also found that tempos closer to 2 seconds are slightly more favourable than 6 seconds. Anything slower than 6 seconds and especially past 10 seconds seems to be suboptimal in terms of muscle growth. We know based on experience, anecdotal accounts, AND research that a solid mind to muscle connection plays an important role in muscle growth. We also know that controlling the eccentric portion of the lift seems to lead to greater muscle and strength gains while decreasing the risk of injury when compared to simply letting gravity do the work for you.