8-12 rep sets for strength and endurance

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Sports, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | (0) Comments

I really needed to change my workout around from the standard pyramid up, pyramid down routine, so I went back to my trusty 8-12 reps for 5 sets for each exercise. There is real benefit in training each way, but it is easy to fall into a rut and actually start to lose ground. So every few months, make a big change in your routine and you will see and feel a difference.

If you are going to do the 8-12 rep workout, what you need to do is warm up with a couple of light sets and then pick a weight that you can do for 12 reps on your first set with difficulty- ie. the 12th rep should be a real struggle. For each of the folloing 4 sets, try to stay within 1 rep of the previous set. So, that means that set 2 would be 11, set 3 would be 10, etc. Do 2 or 3 exercises like this depending on the body part. For example, I do flat bench dumbbell presses, cable flys and incline presses for chest. After that, my chest is pretty fried. Same with legs. Just doing 5 sets of squats with a weight you can barely get 10 of on average will pretty much kill your legs. Add in lunges and hack squats and you will be crawling out of there. Give it a try and see if your strength, size and stamina go up. I’m betting they will!