Best Number Of Sets & Reps For Getting TONED | E12

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Train Like a Girl. My name is Abby. I am an online coach, and I'm here to give you the no BS health and fitness advice, basically, for all of your needs: fat loss, strength training, toning, whatever it is. And today's episode is going to be so integral to your fitness journey wherever you are at, and something that creeps up a lot with clients of mine. But I wanted to start today's podcast by saying why I've been a little bit MIA in the last few weeks and why the podcast took a bit of a pause, which most of you may not have even noticed. I realize this is not exactly the most famous podcast in the world, but you know, we might get there one day. So it's worth mentioning. In the last few weeks, I have basically started a new job. I'm still online coaching, so you can absolutely still work with me, and I will put details about that in the show notes. But I'm now, I decided to just shoot for bigger and better and basically applied for an online coaching position for a bigger company, the Fitness Unicorn. So I am now a unicorn coach. Um, but it's very similar to what I was doing before. I just hopefully will have a bit more reach and can help more of you guys out. But for today's episode, because we do have a big risk of me going off on a spiel about my life otherwise, today's episode is all about the best number of sets and reps for getting toned or getting stronger or getting muscular or whatever. Um, because you know, lots of us that are maybe beginners to the gym, or even those of us that are not can quite easily fall into a trap of either not understanding what sets and reps even are, or just, you know, sticking to three sets of ten reps for everything. And so I wanted to really break down reps and sets, what they're for, what the best rep range is if there is one, um, and so on. So I'm gonna, yeah, talk about all of that today. So this episode is really about what you should actually be doing in the gym if your goal is to build muscle, to get stronger, and to ultimately achieve that kind of toned. I say that in quotation quotation marks because obviously that is subjective, you know, everyone's got their opinion on what toned actually looks like, but it's that appearance that so many people seem to be chasing. And I want to start with a bit of context, as always, because these things are always a bit more nuanced than just sort of saying this is the best range. Um, but yeah, I want to give context because there is a lot of noise around this topic. And so I wanted to start by saying that there is no single exercise that is gonna magically make you build muscle. There isn't a specific movement that will tone you or sculpt you in a certain area, you know, social media is full of this kind of stuff, like do this and your glutes will blow up and things like that. If you see that, just please take it with not even with a grain of salt, but just know that from consistent research that it is resistance training, you know, so strength training as a whole, that is the most effective way to build muscle. But that doesn't mean that it's a single exercise that is kind of the best or anything like that. That being said, it's not just as simple as turning up to the gym, picking up some weights and doing a bit of a random workout or doing a circuit class that happens to include some dumbbells or, you know, I think strength training amongst beginners especially, and sadly, still to this day, I think more among women than men. We think about some people think about, oh well, I do body pump, so therefore I'm lifting weights, therefore I'm doing strength training. But actually, for hypertrophy, for for muscle building and strength building, there does need to be a bit more structure than that. And I also want to clear up a really big misconception early on, which is this idea of toning or bulking. So toning versus bulking. Because, and I want to set this really straight because this is again another myth that is just quite loud in some areas of the internet still, especially with like the boom of Pilates and that kind of thing. You cannot lengthen a muscle and you cannot tone a muscle. So you can't like change, I I don't know, this word toning has this con, and I know I've used it in the title as a bit of a clickbait, but uh I I use that because sadly, so many women are still under the guise that or under the impression, false impression, that toning is different somehow to building, and it isn't. We can't tone, we can't change the shape of a muscle. A muscle can only grow or shrink. So when you see, for example, I'll go back to the Pilates example. When you see online a Pilates style training being marketed as grow long uh or get long, lean toned muscle, and then you see the video accompanying that with really light weights and high reps, or on the other side of the spectrum, seeing a video of somebody lifting really, really, really heavy weights and like grunting and and maybe they look really super muscular, you see that video and you automatically associate that with like getting bulky, right? But unfortunately, those videos are very clickbaity and that's not how it works. So, again, I'll reiterate a muscle can only grow or shrink. We can't do a certain workout to change the way that muscle grows. Like it's not like lifting heavier for smaller reps is gonna inherently make you bulkier, just like lifting lighter for many, many, many, many reps isn't gonna kind of make you more toned. You can only grow or shrink a muscle, which is quite good news, really, because that simplifies things, doesn't it? We can either grow or shrink a muscle. But to build muscle, regardless of the outcome you want aesthetically, you have to be lifting weights. But not only lifting weights, we need to repeatedly be lifting weights and applying a progressive overload over time. So whether someone's goal is to look toned, leaned, sculpted, more muscular, bulky, the actual training required is very, very similar. The main difference is how in how someone looks is gonna come from their body fat levels. So nutrition, not from doing a completely different style of training, right? And this is where people get it so wrong. They think that doing Pilates will make me look leaner versus doing heavy, heavy, heavyweights will make me bulkier.

unknown 7:03

No.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

If your goal is the toned look, what you need to do is build muscle. And after building that muscle, you need to lose enough enough fat to reveal that muscle, right? So you need to build muscle and then you need to be a low enough body fat percentage to show that muscle. So with that in mind, and with that kind of out of the way, if you've got any more questions on that, please do let me know and I will clear it up for you. But I just think there's so much noise around that that really needs clearing up before we get into this episode because there is no other way. It's build or shrink a muscle. So with that in mind, I want to break down what good training actually looks like. And specifically, we're gonna talk about reps, sets, and maybe we'll touch a little bit as well on how hard you should be working because that is where most people go wrong. So let's start with reps. So muscle can actually be built across quite a few rep ranges. Most of the research suggests anywhere from six reps up to maybe 15 or 20 reps for an exercise. But the most important thing to understand here is that it's not really the number of reps that matters most, it's the intensity. And by intensity, what I mean is how close you're getting to actual technical muscular failure. So it's not just kind of stopping because your program says 10 reps or because it starts to feel a little bit hard or you know, it starts to burn or whatever, but it's actually getting to that point where the muscle physically cannot produce another rep. So just think about what that looks like. So it's not like, oh, my program says 10 reps, I get 10 reps, I stop. No, we should be aiming to get 10 reps, yes, but that tenth rep should really be pushing on muscular failure. So where you cannot physically lift another another rep. And this is where people get confused because they associate intensity sometimes with that burning feeling, or you know, maybe feeling out of breath or just generally feeling more tired, but that's not the same thing. Let's use this as an example. You could do a high rep circuit with light weights. Just imagine this. Something like let's think about a squat into a shoulder press, right? If you've got two weights in your arms and you're squatting and pressing overhead, squatting, pressing overhead, over and over and over, it will feel incredibly hard. That can be really, really difficult. But it's likely that you'd stop because you're out of breath or your muscles get that like burning sensation. That feels intense. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're training in a way that is optimal for muscle building. Because we're not in those instances, we're stopping because it burns. We're not stopping because the muscle has failed, right? There's a difference. So if we want the muscle to grow, and again, that's what's going to get us that toned look, we want to be pushing towards failure. So what we're actually looking for is that point where you go to lift the weight again and you physically can't. That is muscular failure. So if we think about reps, let's go back to reps in that context, you could take a heavier weight and do six reps, and by that sixth rep, you're at or very close to muscular failure. Or you could take a lighter weight and do 15 reps, for example. And again, if you reach failure at that final rep, you could also build muscle there, right? So you see my point. So again, it's not about the rep number itself as such, it's more about how close you can get to that muscular failure within that set. But if we think about this practically, there are some rep ranges that are gonna make this easier, right? So if you really want to go to muscular failure, let's think about if you're going really low reps. So let's say under five reps of one exercise. To reach muscular failure at five reps, we're probably gonna have to be working with really, really heavy weights. And that tends to be, we tend then to kind of fall more into the bracket of strength or power lifting. On the other end of the scale, if we're going super high reps, like let's think above 15, maybe even 20 plus reps, it then becomes way more mentally challenging to actually reach true failure because most people will stop due to discomfort or that like burning sensation, right? A little bit like if you did loads and loads of squat jumps, or just being tired rather than because the muscle has actually failed. So if we're too low on reps, sometimes you know that requires a heck of a lot of skill. You need to be super, super strong. And so reaching taculomuscular failure in that low rep range is gonna be exceptionally difficult because the weight would have to be really high. But if you're really, really doing lots and lots of reps, you're gonna be pushing to reach muscular failure because you're likely to be out of breath before you reach muscular failure, you know, like other things are gonna fail first. So, with that being said, from a practical standpoint, for most people, a really effective and practical range is somewhere from the sixth, six to I'd say 12 rep range. So that the weight that you're using to fail within that rep range, six to twelve, it's heavy enough to challenge you, but it's not it's not going the set isn't going on so long that you're likely to quit before you reach that true point of failure, right? So that is reps. Let's now move on to number of sets. So this is another area where people tend to think that more is better. So more sets, let's do, let's do four or five sets of an exercise. More sets, more exercises, longer workouts. It feels like you're doing more. So on paper, this must be more effective, right? But actually, if you're training with the right level of intensity, which we just talked about with the reps, if you're really training hard to that muscular failure, two to three working sets per exercise is more than enough. And you'll know this the more experienced you get. Because if you're truly pushing to the right level of effort, more than three sets, honestly, is gonna be very difficult. So I would suggest two to three working sets of an exercise, right? So we're thinking so now, recap. We're looking at two to three sets of an exercise, six to twelve reps range. And those two to three working sets, that's your working sets. That's not including your warm-up sets. So just bear that in mind. Because if you think about it, your first set, right, is always gonna be your strongest. That is when you can produce the most force, right? The most output and get the biggest, biggest stimulus. Because after that, fatigue will start to build, and every additional set, you're gonna get slightly less in return. That doesn't mean that they're not beneficial. Of course they are, sets two and three. But if you're doing like four, five, or even six, I've seen people do six sets of the same exercise, the likelihood is that those earlier sets weren't actually taken close enough to failure. So if ever I have a client that's like, oh, this isn't enough sets, the first thing I will do is question how hard were you pushing in those initial sets? Because if you are really pushing hard enough on those first, that first set or two, doing that many high-quality sets would be extremely difficult. So a really useful way to think about this is to ask yourself at the end of each set, why did I stop? Did I stop because it burned? Was I tired? Did I stop because it got a bit uncomfortable? Did I stop mentally because I just did not want to keep going? Or did I stop because I physically could not complete another rep? So again, we come back to that intensity, right? It's all this is what it's all about. Really pushing to your best with each set, each rep. Because that that is what we're aiming for, for muscle build and for strength build and for toning. I hate the word, but you know, for the sake of argument. And it's also worth saying that training like this, training close to failure, it is a skill. If you're newer to the gym, obviously it goes without saying that your priority in the early days, and it could be the first few months, the priority should be learning good technique. It should be feeling really confident with the movements and building from there. That is your foundation. Without that foundation, you're kind of screwed, honestly, because we don't want to be lifting with bad form over here. So I talk about all of this, like training to failure and all of that, but you need to know that obviously technique comes first. But over time, you will get better at understanding what true effort feels like and how far you can push yourself safely. And actually, as you become more advanced, you often need fewer sets. You know, I think a lot of beginners probably think, oh my gosh, I wonder, you know, it's it's not unheard of for people to say to me, somebody that's been gyming for years, oh, how long do you spend in the gym? And when I say 45 minutes or an hour, they're quite shocked. Because I think that there's this myth that more is better. But it's not, it's about effort. And as I say, over time, you will inevitably, as you become more accustomed to pushing, you'll push yourself harder within a safe realm, obviously. So, yeah, the more advanced you get, you might actually need fewer sets, fewer reps, because you're able to get so much more out of each set. So, I guess a final note to touch on is all of this that I'm talking about today sits under the umbrella of progressive overload, which essentially just means that over time you need to be asking more of your body. So if we went into the gym every week and we were pushing, but we didn't ever improve, like let's say you go in and you do three sets of six squats, but you stick to the same weight every week, you're then not asking more of your body, and therefore your body won't adapt. We need to give the body a reason to adapt. So outside of reps and sets each week, what we need to be looking for is progressive overload. So what that looks like is typically lifting heavier weights over time. So it might be that you did 60 kg last week and you attempt 65 kg this week, for example. But it's not always that. Sometimes it's doing more reps with the same weight, or sometimes it's even just improving your technique, improving control or execution or depth or temp slowing down the tempo. There's a lot of things that come under this umbrella, but it is really worth me noting that prog, you know, I can't ignore the fact that progressive overload is essential for uh muscle building. There needs to be progression because if nothing's changing, if the weight, the reps, the effort all stays the same, as I said, there's no reason for your body to adapt and therefore no reason for your muscle to grow. Muscle is such an expensive tissue, it's so hard to build. So we need to give it a reason to one, stick around, and two, build. So when you bring all of that together, building muscle is actually quite a simple, simple principle. You're training with resistance, you're working within a solid rep range, and you're pushing pushing close to muscular failure, keeping your sets focused and high quality, and progressively increasing the challenge over time. So on paper, it's simple, and that is what will drive results. But obviously, applying that can be very difficult. The more skilled you get, the more weight you've got to push. It's hard work. But that is why coaching is so bloody brilliant, right? As a coach myself, obviously I sound biased, but I've always had a coach myself for this reason. We get comfortable, we get, it's so easy to fall into, you know, the trap of being like, oh, this feels hard, therefore it must be doing something. Actually, having someone else's eyes on you can change the game with this kind of thing. So if you want more support around this, if you want to take out the guesswork with the programming, you know, I know you've I've kind of given you a bit of structure here, but this is the kind of stuff that I do. I would create a program based on every single client specific preferences one-to-one. You know, we've not even talked today about how many sessions should we be doing per week and all of that kind of thing. So that's where I take the guesswork out for my clients. But not only that, I will look at their technique so that I know whether they're pushing enough or if they could be pushing harder, when to progressive overload, if they could add some more reps, if they need to strip some reps back, whatever it is, that's where I come in with help. And obviously, I am working for the Fitness Unicorn now, but there is no reason why you can't work with me. It'll just be through the them. So if you want more uh information on that, please see the show notes. But I hope you enjoyed this episode, guys. I hope this helped you understand a bit more about how you should be approaching your sessions if you really truly want to reap the rewards of muscle building or if you really want to get that toned look. But for now, that is it, and I will speak to you again next week.