weights

john davies

When you are tying to find the right weight to lift, to get you started. Do you pick a weight that you can do 3 sets of reps and start to struggle on number 8 out of 12. Or do you go for the gut busting all hard...

Ali M

it will vary from person to person, however i will do a lightish set as warm up and not to failure, then ill do an heavier set again not to failure, then ill do another set again not to failure. Then my fourth and last set will be my heaviest and to failure. On your heaviest set you should only be able to do around 8 to 10 reps.

john davies

so am i best to 3 sets or 4 sers of reps

Ali M

John, depending on your objective here ok, if your loosing weight and looking to tone up then rep range will be from 12 to 15 reps ok... If your looking to add muscle then rep range from 8 to 12, ok. (my opinion only)

As your a biginner i'd suggest you do an all over workout as bulldozer sugested, ok. Now if i were you id do max 4 sets per bodypart for now, ok.

At a later stage i'd add more sets into your workout.

So mate chose your rep range and then just stick to the 4 sets per bodypart and you can't go wrong for now then in a month come back and then learn about splitting the body into a few workouts i.e. chest, biseps, triceps in one workout and so on.

Young Gun

Not to start yet another MC argument but leave cutting out of the weights room. Ie don't try to cut doing high rep stuff it makes very little sense and comes from that absurd toning argument. Weights and cardio should be left seperate.

Circuits/treadmill/sports etc are fair better cutters than weights
On a cut your aim is to preserve your muscle mass whilst loosing bodyfat. The best way to do this is definitely not to change your rep range. This is neither optimal for loosing bodyfat or for preserving muscle mass so it makes no sense to do this on a cut.

Cut down on your training days maybe switch to a full body workout. Cal and Bulldozer's way of training I think would work pretty well on a cut. ie HIT stuff. Then do cardio 3 days a week. Thats my opinion there are other ways that will work but toning is an absurd word that doesn't exist.

A muscle is usually considered 'toned' (I have a serious vendetta against this word) the more defined it is, ie the more striations you can see etc. This is simply bodyfat relative. The lower your bodyfat the more toned you are, or to put it slightly differently the more defined you are. You want to tone lower your BF.

Young Gun

In response to your initial question no one unfortunately can answer that for you only make suggestions as to what we do. I do three working sets the first two to failure and the final a forced rep added. This is usually 12, 10 - 8, 6 as I vary the weight (by increasing it). This is a general rule for more exercises but certainly not all.

john davies

omg its hard to understand it all. basicly i need to build my chest muscles up, cause my chest is flat. Im a littel over weight cause iv got a bit of a spare tire. i just dont want to get 3 months down the road and see that iv been doing it wrong...lol

mrhulahoop

Maybe like Ali M said, do a full body work out at first, and then after a few weeks split it up. Dont worry about rep range for the first few weeks, just concentrate on lifting the weights correctly, ie with proper form. After the first few weeks split it up into a two week or three week split.

There are different ways of training, for chest I do 5 sets of 5 reps at the same weight, with a warm up set first. In your case I would probably do maybe three sets, first on a lightish weight and second two on a heavy weight, nice and slow concentrating on form and not so much on the weight you lift.

Dont worry about it being complicated mate, its simple enough for a beginner. Maybe read through the progress journals to get an idea of how different people train.

My main piece of advice would be to concentrate on compound exercises (ie ones that work more than one muscle group) and keep away from isolations. Eat well, sleep well.

Good luck mate.

Tall

Just to back up YG - Nick500 asked this before:

http://www.musclechat.co.uk/bodybuil...ining-cut.html

From memory different rep ranges promote use of different muscle fibres as opposed to having a more aerobic / anaerobic response.
Sadly I can't find any "proof" / "opinions" / "studies" which back this up as I'm still working.

bulldozer

Nobody can really say that 8/12 reps is for size and 1/5 reps is for strength etc. It depends on the individual. Everybody has a different makeup of fast and slow twitch muscle fibres so will respond differently.

I dont like high reps (except for squats ) i like to lift as heavy ass a weights as i can shift! So normally stick to sets of approx 5 reps. But thats just me

its trial and error im afraid, just like most stuff in this game!