Lifting
The idea behind this is that high reps help you lose fat and make muscle more “toned”. On the other hand, low reps can help you build muscle and increase strength.
If you're looking to build muscle quickly, whether you've been training for years or are just starting out, then doing slower reps is the way to go. Workouts with slower reps cause your muscles to experience more time under tension, much more than with faster reps.
Summary: Lifting weights with a fast tempo is superior to lifting weights with a slow tempo because this leads to a larger increase in strength, which ultimately leads to more muscle gain over time. As a general rule, aim for a 1—1—1 weightlifting tempo for all of your exercises.
In general: For fat loss: One to 3 sets of 10 to 12 reps using enough weight that you can only complete the desired reps. To gain muscle: Three or more sets of 6 to 8 reps to fatigue. For beginners, give yourself several weeks of conditioning before going to this level.
Running is the winner for most calories burned per hour. Stationary bicycling, jogging, and swimming are excellent options as well. HIIT exercises are also great for burning calories. After a HIIT workout, your body will continue to burn calories for up to 24 hours.
So, in general, low reps with heavy weight tends to increase muscle mass, while high reps with light weight increases muscle endurance. This doesn't mean that you have to rely on one method exclusively. Alternating between the two may be the best approach for long-term success.
But how fast should you go and what's the ideal rep speed? Based on Schoenfeld's meta-analysis, between 2 seconds to 6 seconds per rep seems optimal for muscle growth.”
Training at a fast rep speed increases the pace at which your muscles can move a given weight. The faster you can move a given weight, the more power you have. Power is important for overall muscle strength because it helps you accelerate a weight, so increasing power will successfully increase your strength.
The lowering of the weight, slowly or just under control, causes muscle trauma, which in turn leads to the birth or recruitment of nascent muscle cells known as satellite cells. Bring enough of them on line, and you've reconstructed your muscles to be bigger and badder.
Sets & Reps: Rules To Follow To Get Ripped
Ideally, you would train each muscle group with both lower and high rep training: Performing 2-5 sets of 5-10 reps per muscle group with heavier loads, per week, may be enough to help retain strength during the diet phase.
For weight loss, research has found that that lifting between 60-80% of your 1 rep max (the heaviest amount of weight you can lift for one repetition of an exercise) is the best way to stimulate muscle growth, which is what helps you lose fat by burning more calories.
Lifting weights requires more supervision and instruction for maximum benefit and avoidance of injuries than cardio exercise. Using weights alone without cardio, you will most likely develop bulk instead of a toned and streamlined body.
Hypertrophy. If you're trying to build muscle, then normal to slow speeds are what you'll typically want to focus on.
They found that based on all of the studies currently published on lifting tempo (which to be honest is quite limited) a lifting tempo between 2 to 6 seconds per rep seems to maximize growth.
You could end up putting on fat instead of muscle – Because of the change required in your diet to build muscle mass quickly, you'll need to take in more calories and many people who try to build muscles too fast have a difficult time adapting their diets to take in the increased amount of calories in a healthy way.
Your muscles will benefit most from a variety of rep tempos rather than being subjected to the same rep speed every time you train. Slow training, using slow rep speeds, may be the most advantageous for hypertrophy, but fast and explosive rep speeds are most effective for developing power and strength.
To clarify, a "high-rep range" typically means 15-20 reps per set; a "low-rep" range is usually anything between 2-6 reps per set; and a "moderate-rep" range is 8-12 reps per set.
In terms of weight loss, both lifting heavier and lifting lighter can help you burn fat and lose weight. In fact, one study showed that after 8 weeks of strength training, those who lifted heavier weights with less reps had more strength.
Lifting for pure strength is best partnered with heavy weights. "If you're trying for strength, or your max force output, the heavier the weight, the more strength gains you'll have, along with size gains," Tuminello says. It's also super time efficient.
High-intensity interval training (HIIT): It is probably one of the fastest and most efficient ways to lose stomach fat and reduce the overall body fat percentage. HIIT is a high-intensity short period of exercise that usually doesn't exceed 30 minutes, with short breaks of recovery periods of 30-60 seconds.
As against areas such as legs, face and arms, our stomach and abdominal regions possess beta cells that makes it difficult to reduce the fats easily and lose weight in these areas. However, as per research, belly fat is the most difficult to lose as the fat there is so much harder to break down.
Relying on cardio to burn calories is the biggest mistake people make when trying to lose fat, trainer Ben Carpenter told Insider. It can ramp up your appetite, which can lead to more eating, he said. Cardio is important for health, but eating in a calorie deficit is most important for fat loss.