Muscle growth in higher rep ranges

[tkav1980]

for me personally i consider anything over 9 reps to be high. i notice my best growth in the 5-9 rep range. however, since tearing a muscle in my back roughly 6 weeks ago i am staying in the 315 to 350lb range while doing declines. and for widegrip pull ups bw+60lbs, dumbell rows, 150lbs. and keeping all the reps at 12. 12 being the last rep i can possibly perform. 13 cannot happen unless the weight is reduced. my question is will i be able to produce gains in this range if the muscle is still worked to failure. i will take the weight back up to the 385-405 mark but want to give it a few more weeks to make sure the muscle is healed before putting that kind of stress on it.

 

[marshallmadman]

In my opinion, you are in the best rep range for growth and ability to avoid injury. Watch all the pro's. I think 12-15 is a pretty darned good rep range to hit. I was stuck in the 6-8 zone for the longest time, and the toughest thing I ever did to myself was move to 12 reps. It is very taxing, and takes a good degree of mental toughness to get those last few reps on those sets...if you do it right.

 

[BEASTZ6]

You can definitely grow with less weight and more reps. Its the intensity that counts. Grinding out 12-15 reps to failure is much harder in my book than doing 6-8 reps to failure.

 

[notsobig32]

TKAV,

I gotta say i usually drop down to around ten for my heavy set but i have been doing that FST-7 for a few weeks now and the difference in my lagging bodyparts is rather dramatic. I read BBoy talking about incorporating it at the end of a heavy DC type workout so i have been doing that and it really seems to be working. Like i said this is all anecdotal. My arms are the biggest they have been in a long long long time.