Stewart20

I know the goal of training is to make improvements, whether it be more reps from last time, more weight, or more volume. At what point does a rep progression become less than optimal?

if you were to do a program where all you did was pick a set weight and just aim to add more reps from week to week, what does this do for you as far as size and strength are concerned? And when does this become counterproductive?

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mike456

well if your training for size i would start with something you do for sets of 6 and than when you get to 12 add more weight.

and for strength the same thing as above but from sets of 3 and than add weight at 5.

This is a way of training but I think it is more benficial to just train in a ep range for your goal and add weight as you get stronger.

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ab2al2

as soon as i started doing this (i use rep range from 6 to 10) i saw progress fast- like small but notable changes every week in physical appearance and especially strength

Yanick

It really depends on what you are working towards. Read my new signature, that dude has the right idea.

Depending on what rep range (and therefore, intensity) you are working in your body will adapt differently. High intensity workouts will force your body to adapt neurologically (muscular coordination [intra/inter], rate coding, etc) to the stimulus of a very high load, as one moves down the intensity ladder the adaptations that will occur will be mostly metabolic (substrate storage, utilization efficiency etc). Now i'm pretty sure that these are not mutually exclusive, and is a lot of gray area in between but as per the SAID principle you need to toward whatever goal you are looking for.

"...we have to remember that training is a complicated dance of stimuli and response. Our goal is to understand how to manipulate the stimuli in order to evoke the responses we desire." -Nathan J. Polenchek

Gazhole

I think adding more weight and adding more total work in a given time period are both viable methods of training, but i dont think either should be used exclusively.

Obviously everybody wants to gradually lift more and more weight, but the last year or so i've also been gradually trying to build up my work capacity by increasing the volume per workout, and adding things in like supersets, varying rest intervals/rep ranges etc.

My ultimate goal is greater strength, but i also want to improve my conditioning. Its possible to do both, but not in the same time frames as eachother.

Like Yanick said, it's all to do with your goals.

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