Low Reps for More Mass?

In a recent newsletter, I mentioned that Mr. America and biomechanics expert Doug Brignole found higher reps to be much more productive than lower reps: the ideal exercise for three sets: 30, 20, 12 reps.

That goes against the bodybuilding grain, but Doug’s observations were about himself after decades of training experience, not a blanket recommendation for everyone…

Doug considered himself a thin ectomorph type. And I’m even more in the twig camp…

Luckily, my persistence, research and training experimentation paid off. I looked mesomorphic-y in my prime—and even now at 65. I credit sensible training using variations of the Positions-of-Flexion protocol: midrange, stretch, contracted…

I also have found higher reps to be more productive at stimulating hypertrophy; however, my former training partner at Iron Man magazine, Jonathan Lawson, is a muscular mesomorph with some endomorphic tendencies. He disliked higher reps, whining like a newborn whenever I’d put them in our routine (kidding, JL)…

You can see his thickness contrasted with my rail-like tendencies. The first two shots of Jonathan above were taken 10 weeks apart. Yes, he was regaining some of that muscle, but still impressive. He used the 10-Week Size Surge program, basic-exercise, lower-rep, low-volume workouts for 5 weeks followed by 3-way Positions-of-Flexion training, also with lower reps, for another 5 weeks…

The last shot was take a few years later after various POF programs (see Old Man Young Muscle and OMYM2 for updated POF exercises and protocols).

And, by the way, we were never on any drugs whatsoever and there are no filters or Photoshop in the above pics…

The point is that Jonathan got huge with lower-reps training while I needed higher-rep work—at least on a few sets for each muscle. Why?

In a 2005 study in the European Journal of Applied Physiology (Colakoglu, M., et al. 95(1):20-26), researchers found that subjects who had the ACE-2 variant, or endurance gene (skinny), responded best to training using 12 to 15 reps. When those thinner subjects used heavier weight that limited their reps to around eight, they showed close to zero gains…

On the other hand, subjects who were more anaerobic with the ACE-DD variant (more muscularly inclined), showed similar gains from both types of loads; however, they made slightly better gains from heavier lower-rep training.

Could there be a fiber-type/nervous-system correlation in why this is the case—low reps work for bigs, high reps are better for twigs?…

Perhaps those with more fast-twitch fibers (mesomorphs like Jonathan) can grind out more stimulating end reps on heavier lower-rep sets. It was always easier for Jonathan to eek out three or four slower reps at the end of a set. I usually didn’t get more than one or two…

So maybe trainees with an even mix of fiber types (like Doug) or those who lean more slow-twitch (like me) need SOME higher-rep sets to get to the high-end motor units via a more complete fiber cascade:

Type-1 (endurance) —> 2a (endurance/power) —> 2b (power)

Higher reps extend the overload on all fiber types above, while lower-rep sets get to the 2b fibers quickly without that extended fiber-array cascade….

If you’re a more muscular mesomorph, you may want to try the STX protocol in OMYM and OMYM2 with a STRICT 10-rep first set instead of 15 to 20. Remember, experimentation for more mass creation.

You may see more gains—with less whining.