low rep bench?

G

genius

0
Hey, I'm an experienced lifter, 20 years of age, 5'9, 170 lbs, 6% bf. I want to increase my bench press amount, and I'm looking for even more growth in my chest. It's already at 43", and I have the fairly, big developed chest, but i want it even bigger! I've been trying a chest routine as follow for the past few weeks:
Twice a week
Bench pressx3 sets w/5 reps, decreasing pyramid to keep my reps constant
Incline Bench pressx3 sets w/7 reps, decreasing pyramid once again

I'm a big believer in compound lifts for major overall gains, but my question is, will 5 reps have anything to do with muscle growth? I have already seen strength gains, but I have heard from some that doing under 6 reps simply increases strength and does make muscles "bigger". That's the reason why i did around 7 reps on incline just in case...I thought maybe it would balance everything out well. Just looking for some feedback, suggestions, comments, whatever ya got for me.
gracias
Scott :cool:
 
Bigger muscles are stronger muscles and stronger muscles are bigger muscles. There really is no ability to get stronger without getting bigger or bigger without getting stronger. I agree with you that the most effective chest building exercise is bench press, or some variation on it.

I can think of 3 good ways to accelerte your chest development:
1. do higher reps (12-15 reps), at least part of the time. Either one workout per week, or one set of each workout, or 1 week high reps, 1 week low reps, etc. I recall reading somewhere a study that concluded that for maximum muscle development you need to keep the muscle under load for at least 60 seconds. Joe Weider called it the "Weider continuous tension principle". A set of 12 reps should take about 60 seconds if you are raising and lowering the weight at a steady pace and not jerking or bouncing it.
2. add some assistance exercises for both chest and triceps after your bench press workout. Flyes for 2 sets of 12 reps, followed by 2 sets of 12 reps of lying tricepts extensions and 2 sets of 12 reps of dips will really burn out your pecs and tri's, without adding a lot of extra sets.
3. try some compound sets, like flyes follow by bench presses without any rest once a week or once every other week instead of your normal bench press routine.
 
Definitely change your reps....the typical range for muscle hypertrophy is 8-12....
Also try:

Compound sets:
1-isolation exercise followed by a compound exercise (pre-exhaust)
2-compound exercise followed by an isolation exercise (post-exhaust)
3-two isolation exercises
4-two compound exercises

or try drop sets:
doing a certain # of reps, taking some weight off, and an additonal # of reps
 
sorry :eek:

isolation exercise = one joint motion (example: bicep curls, tricep extensions, leg curl, etc)
compound exercise = 2 or more joint motions (example: chin-ups, bench press, leg press, etc)

compound sets are where you perform 2 exercises back to back to target the same muscle group...
1-you can pair up two isolation exercises (ex cable crossover+pec deck)
2-you can pair up two compound exercises (ex bench press+dips)
3-you can pair up one isolation followed by a compound (ex db flyes+bench) this is called a pre-exhaust set
4-you can pair up one compound followed by an isolation (ex bench+db flyes) this is called a post-exhaust set

all of these will help you achieve muscle hypertrophy

and, agreed with dswithers, time under tension is important, so keep your tempo (speed of contraction) low....

hope this is clearer, good luck :)
 
training and Hypertrophy

Two mechanisms in increasing muscle size:
1. Increase in sarcoplasmic volume (volume of non-contractile stuff in muscle cells) which can be achieved by moderate - high reps with short rests (bodybuilder approach). Secondary benefit - tends to result in decreased fat storeage. Does not increase strength very much.
2. Increase in volume and mass of contractile fibers (stuff that actually makes you stronger) whcih is achieved by doing sets at relatively high loads (above 85% of your max) with high rest intervals. Secondary benfit of this type of training - it improves your intra-musclualr and inter-musclualr coordination by making your nervous system more efficient. Does not affect fat storeage noticeably.
 
"if you do areboics as well as weghts it can help you balance yourself out. Keeping you sleek as well as mucly without being too bulky"

????????? Dude! No **** man. I did not even ask about that. I was asking about low reps and the inducement of hypertrophy. I do sprints to lower my bf% to make my muscles look "sleek", and "mucly". Lol, you really need to learn how to spell.
scott
 
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