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Have you ever done a heavy set of bicep curls and noticed a nagging pain in your wrists when you’re done? Maybe you’ve even felt enough pain that you’ve had to cut your workout short.

This pain can affect some people more than others. The good news is that just like anything else, your bones and cartilage can grow stronger with time as they respond to resistance.

Causes

You may have noticed that doing bicep curls using a straight bar or dumbbells will especially give you some wrist pain. We’ll get to how to reduce this pain in just a moment, but first, let’s understand what’s leading to it.

There are two major factors of bicep curls that affect your wrist pain; the first is the angle of your wrists, and the second factor is the torque force on your wrists.

1. Your wrist angle – In order to help you understand why the angle of your wrist is part of the equation, I’d like you to think about one of those karate guys who breaks a stack of wooden boards or bricks. Think about what you would do if you were trying to break a few boards with your bare hands. How would you stack the boards to make them break most easily?

Well, obviously, you would lay to boards down flat, one on top of the other, and then you would strike the flat face of the board. Now, imagine what would happen if you stood the boards on their sides and then you hit the side of them. Chances are, you would have a broken hand and no broken boards.

I hope this is making sense to you.

Your wrists are similar to the board. When the force is placed on the flat inside of your wrists (as it is in a straight bar bicep curl with the palms facing up), your wrist feels more pain. When you point your thumbs towards the ceiling, as you would with hammer curls, the force is placed on the stronger side of your wrist.

That is why the EZ curl bar was invented, to reduce the pain on your wrists. It places your wrists at an angle where the palms aren’t facing straight up. Unfortunately, although the straight bar causes more wrist pain, the straight bar is also better for your biceps.

If you are feeling wrist pain, use the EZ curl bar for a while and ease up on the weight a little bit. Once your wrists have healed up, we’ll use a simple hack to make the straight bar easier on your wrists.

2. Reduce the torque on your wrists – Once you’re ready to begin using the straight bar or dumbbells again, you can use this simple tweak to your form to reduce the torque on your wrists.

It’s pretty simple, really. All you have to do is curl your wrists so that the bar you are holding in your hand is nearly directly over your wrist.

This works because your wrist is basically a hinge. More force is placed on that hinge when it has to move a weight that is further away from the hinge. Think of the concept of leverage… if you want to lift up a heavy rock using your body weight and a long stick, the longer the stick is, the more leverage you will have to help you lift the rock up.

Or maybe think of when you’re working on a car to loosen a tight bolt. If you use a very short wrench, you might have a pretty tough time getting that bolt loose. But, if you use a very long wrench, you’ll have a much easier time getting the bolt loose because you have more force.

Ok, now that you understand that placing the force (weight) further away increases the torque, you can understand why I am telling you to curl your wrists toward you. By curling your wrists in, you bring the weight closer to the wrist and the decreased force of the weight in your hands results in less torque or pressure on your wrists.

For me, I have approximately 3 inches if distance between my wrist and the weight in my hands. When I curl my wrists in, that distance becomes a little less than an inch, resulting in significantly less torque on my wrists.

As an added benefit, this flexes your forearms more, keeps them tight throughout the movement, and gives them a bit better workout.

But doesn’t all of this make curls easier?

Yes, curling your wrists in makes your curls easier to do. It reduces the force on your wrists, and it also shortens the overall length of your arm, making the curls easier on your muscles.

This is pretty easy to compensate for, though. Just add a little more weight to your exercise.

Now, since I can read your mind, I know what you are probably thinking. If I curl my wrists in to reduce the pressure on my wrists, then adding more weight will just put the pressure back on my wrists… right?

Well, the answer is yes, it does put some pressure back on your wrists, but not as much as you had to begin with. You see, you are able to lift more weight because your entire arm has been shortened maybe 10-15% (or somewhere close to that). So this will make the curls easier.

But the distance to your wrists has been reduced maybe somewhere around 60-70%. That means that your wrists are getting proportionately a much greater reduction in torque pressure than your arm as a whole gets.

Conclusion: Your wrists, just like anything else can become stronger through resistance training. The wrists need rest to heal, and using these small changes to your form can make a big difference in the amount of wrist pain that you’re feeling.

Getting a good warm up before you attempt any heavy lifting is an absolute necessity. The purpose of a warm up should be pretty obvious from its name. You need to get your body warm and the blood pumping before you start lifting heavy.

Another fact that should be pretty obvious is that your ability to get your body warm will depend on the temperature the place you’re exercising in. If it’s winter time, a cool evening, or if you life in a cold place, then your body will probably require more warm up than it would on a hot summer afternoon.

Why warm up:

Why you need to warm up is a matter of safety. Just to help you visualize what’s going on, I’d like you to think about a rubber band. This will represent your muscles and other tissues. What happens if you stretch a rubber band that has been sitting in the freezer?

The rubber band probably snaps before you are able to stretch it very far. A warm rubber band, on the other hand, can probably be stretched a long ways before it breaks. This is what rubber bands were designed to do, after all. They are designed to stretch, but they can’t do that job very well cold.

The same is true for your muscles. They can’t do their job nearly as well when they are cold, and starting out with a heavy weight before your muscles are nice and warm can lead to injury and muscle tears. Trust me, you don’t want to be like that rubber band that snaps when it’s cold.

Warm ups are even more important for the bigger exercises such as the squat, deadlift, and the bench press. These will require a more extensive warm up, while other exercises will likely only need a a set or two with a light weight to get warmed up.

How to warm up

1. Clothing: Let’s start off with the right clothing. Wearing a sweater or workout pants is a good idea in cold weather until you’re able to raise you body temperature. Consider wearing several small layers instead of one heavy layer. Smaller layers can be peeled off one at a time until your body temperature is high enough.

2. Do static stretches at the end: In case you don’t know what this means, static stretches are those done without movement. The traditional stretches that you are familiar with are probably mostly all static stretches, such as touching your toes.

Static stretches have not been shown to do anything to help prevent injuries when you lift. In fact, many believe that static stretches increase the number of injuries you have when you lift weights. This may be because weight lifting requires you to keep your muscles tight, and loose muscles holding heavy weights can sometimes move beyond their normal range of motion.

Again, think of the rubber band analogy. The best time to stretch your muscles is when they are already nice and warm after you are finished lifting weights. Take a few minutes at the end of your workout to do your static stretches and lengthen your tightened muscles back out.

3. General warm up: Do some running for five minutes just to warm up your body temperature. You can really pick which type of activity you’d like to do to get your temperature up. Five minutes on the treadmill works fine, so does 5 minutes on an exercise bike. Doing a set or two of fairly light weight squats will also warm up your body very quickly.

4. Dynamic warm ups: The word static means staying still, and dynamic basically means with movement, or motion. Do dynamic warmups and stretches before your workout instead of static stretches. You can check out a decent list of dynamic warm ups here. You don’t have to do all of these, but a few leg kicks, butt kicks, and maybe some high knees should be done before squats/deadlifts at the very least.

If you don’t want to look silly by marching around the gym doing your leg kicks, go ahead and hold onto something and just do one leg at a time as you swing your leg in front of you for 10-15 reps or more. If you’re ever in doubt about your warm ups, make the mistake of doing too much warm up instead of too little.

5. Exercise-specific warm ups: You will need to do 1-2 sets or more of warm ups specific to the muscle group you are about to start working. For example, if you’re going to do the bench press, you might start off with a light warm up set (or more) of 12 reps. Choose a weight that is light enough that you can easily get 12 reps.

Pyramid sets: The idea behind pyramid sets is that you start with a lighter weight doing more reps. Maybe you start with 12 reps on the first set. The second set uses a heavier weight for 10 reps, the next 8 reps, and then 6.

Pyramid rep schemes work best for compound movements like the bench press. They don’t work quite as well for single-joint movements like bicep curls. The point here is that pyramid sets help you to ease into a heavy weight more safely.

That doesn’t mean you have to use them all the time for every single workout you ever do, as sets across (the same number of reps on each set) are useful as well, but pyramid reps are good to keep in mind.

Stretching between sets: There is some disagreement out there as to whether this is helpful or not. If you feel like your muscle is getting a little bit too tight after a heavy set and you’d like to loosen it out a little bit, I see nothing wrong with doing a light stretch for a moment between sets. Others may disagree with me on that, but just don’t go crazy with a deep stretch between sets, and you should be just fine.

The key to training each of your muscles is to understand their function and how they work. Your chest is no different. Here, we’ll go over your pectoral muscles, how to train them, and we’ll even dispel a few myths along the way.

Chest Anatomy:

The pectorals are your chest muscles. They begin at your sternum and connect to a tendon that attaches to the humeris bone in your upper arm. Each time your chest muscles contract, they essentially pull your upper arm bone forward and in front of you.

To get a feel for the full range of motion of your chest muscles, straighten your arms out to each side of you. Move your arms forward in front of you until your forearms cross. This represents the full and complete range of motion for your chest muscles.

We’ll just skip the rest of the anatomy lesson and get to what you really need to know. For your training, your pecs are essentially trained as a whole using exercises like the bench press, or you can use exercises that focus on your upper chest such as the incline bench press.

Aside from the upper chest exercises, there isn’t really as much specialization for the chest as one might think. Let’s take a look at the different chest specialization areas you might have heard of.

• General Pecs: You will train your chest muscle group as a whole using the flat level bench. This includes the flat bench press, flat bench flyes, dumbbell bench press, etc. Dips will also train your pecs with somewhat less emphasis on the upper chest.

• Upper Chest: You train the upper portion of your chest using an incline bench. Exercises such as the incline bench press, incline flyes, and incline dumbbell bench press will all emphasize the upper chest.

• Lower Chest: The lower chest muscle is a myth. It’s simply not there. The decline bench press will work your chest from a different angle, yes. But there is no such thing as a lower chest muscle that is distinct or separate from other chest muscles.

• Inner/ Outer Chest Muscles: Again, there’s no such thing as focusing on your inner or outer chest muscles. Many people believe that flat bench flyes will work your outer chest while the peck deck flyes work your inner chest. This is more of an illusion that comes from the fact that each exercise places greater stress on your chest at different points in the range of motion.

The whole idea of working the inner/outer chest is flawed because it assumes that you can flex one end of a strand of muscle and not the other end. When you muscles contract, the whole entire muscle contracts, not just one end or the other. You cannot contract the bottom of your bicep without the entire bicep muscle getting shorter. It’s just not possible.

There are generally two main types of movements that work your chest muscles:

Pressing Movements: These include the bench press, incline bench press, and all of their variations and different angles. Dips are also included in the category. Pressing movements tend to directly involve the pecs, triceps, and deltoids in the movement. Secondary stabilizer muscles include your lats, posterior delts, and other back muscles.

Leverage Movements: This means chest flyes. Flyes can be done using dumbbells on a flat bench, using a peck deck machine, or using the crossover cables. Flyes are an isolation exercise. Do your pressing movements first in your workout, and add in flyes only when you’ve progressed to the point where you’re ready for more.

A training program that uses a flat bench pressing movement, an incline movement, and some dips will fulfill your chest training needs for quite a while. Stick to these basic movements before you get too carried away doing cable crossovers or other flye movements.

And of course, I know I probably don’t need to keep saying this to you, but don’t get too carried away with working only your chest and your arms. If you want to be a bodybuilder, train your whole body. Don’t be a boobie-builder.

Focusing only on your chest and arms is bad for your body’s balance and posture. Paying attention to building a strong back will balance you out and even give you greater stabilizing muscles that will increase your bench press and strengthen your pecs even more.

Alright, let’s be honest, we all have those days where it’s tough to get up and go to the gym. You can think of a thousand reasons not to do it, and of course it’s so easy to rationalize that skipping just one day won’t hurt anything.

Don’t get me wrong, you’re body needs plenty of rest for recovery, but plenty of rest can quickly turn into laziness if you let it go too far.

So let’s talk about the other side of things. There are also a million reasons for you to get into the gym. Everything in your life… literally everything can be improved by your workouts, either directly or indirectly. Yep, it’s all connected.

1. Confidence: Some studies have shown that heavy, compound lifts activate the endocrine system and release anabolic hormones into your body such as testosterone. This makes you feel strong and confident. It takes the fear out of you and makes you feel like a real man… no, actually, it does make you into a real man. We’re talking about natural testosterone and its benefits here… this is very different than the synthetic hormones/steroids and their negative side effects. This is ok for the ladies too, since testosterone will only be released in much smaller amounts.

2. Dating: You can tell yourself all day long that you’re not shallow and looks don’t matter… but the reality is that a good looking body is always a plus when it comes to dating. Always. Going from overweight to lean & muscular can dramatically alter your ability to attract the opposite sex. So, if a girl has rejected you recently… maybe it’s not that she was rude or didn’t like you… maybe you’re just too fat. Do something about it.

3. Sleep Better: Most people with sleeping disorders are leading sedentary lives. Studies have shown that the amount of time required to fall asleep is cut in half when you’re working out. Hitting the hay never felt as good as it does after a workout.

4. School: Your workouts will sharpen your brain’s function by increasing the flow of oxygen it can receive. That translates to better grades in school and better job performance. Besides, too much fat can clog your brain… ok, not really, but it is harder to have the clear mind and focus when you’re really out of shape.

5. Enjoy Food More: All this working out will help you to realize that you don’t like to eat crap food anymore. Your appetite will start to increase as your body recovers from heavy workouts, and all those lean meats, fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes… they suddenly start to taste a lot better. You body will demand real nourishment.

6. Look Better, Feel Better: This will help you with #2. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve the way you look. It’s not vain… it’s human. More people should try to do this through exercise.

7. Water: It never tasted so good as it does after a heavy set. This will help you to kick the soda/junk food habit.

8. Sex life: Increased strength, speed, endurance, stamina, flexibility… enough said.

9. Happiness: You just plain feel good when your body releases endorphins into your blood stream, so go out and get that natural high. You’re less likely to be moping around, sad about life or getting depressed about all the bad things that happened to you. You’ll become one of those positive people who are successful and driven.

10. Dedication: Speaking about success, the hard work ethic you develop in the gym doesn’t drop dead at the door when you leave. That tough guy that you built in the gym walks out of the gym with you, and he knows how to work hard in life. If you have the willpower to finish a tough set of 20-rep squats, you’ll have the willpower to do anything hard in life.

11. Progressive Overload: This term doesn’t apply to the gym only. Your muscles grow as you gradually increase the stress placed on them, and improvement in life follows the same pattern. You learn step-by-step, and you always improve just a little bit at a time. Instead of running from the tough things in life like most people do, you’ll know that these are what make you stronger. You will embrace the challenges in life.

12. Take the edge off: Those giant, juiced-up guys on steroids give us all a bad name with their attitude and bad temper. The truth is, a heavy weight lifting session will calm you down more than anything, and it’s the perfect outlet. Channel your anger and frustration into the bar, not the people around you.

13. Energy: You’re sleeping better and your workouts are giving you steady energy throughout the day. You won’t have to be cranking down coffee or riding the caffeine roller coaster to get through the morning. You’ll have a steady stream of consistent energy that will give you an advantage over the people around you.

14. Stop being a wuss: Once you toughen up the inner man, you won’t have to whine or complain about hard things in life anymore. In fact, you might even begin to volunteer for doing the tough things in life because you know that the only way to grow is by going heavy, whether it’s in the gym or anywhere else.

And you thought you were only making your muscles bigger…

I’d love to hear how training has improved your life as well.

Image Credit: Petranek

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the more rest you take between sets, the more weight you’ll be able to lift when you do come back. This doesn’t mean that you should always take more rest between your sets… the right amount of rest for you will depend on your goals somewhat.

First off, let’s give little explanation on why you might choose longer or shorter rest periods between each workout. There are 3 different primary energy systems that your body uses to produce ATP, which is the primary fuel your muscles use for exercise.

These definitions come straight from this article on Wikipedia:

ATP-PC System (Phosphogen System) - This system is used only for very short durations of up to 10 seconds. The ATP-PC system neither uses oxygen nor produces lactic acid and is thus said to be alactic anaerobic. This is the primary system behind very short, powerful movements like a golf swing or a 100m sprint. Translation: Best for short bursts of intense lifts, like in power lifting or strength training.

Anaerobic System (Lactic Acid System) - Predominates in supplying energy for exercises lasting less than 2 min. Also known as the Gylcolytic System. An example of an activity of the intensity and duration that this system works under would be a 400m sprint. This is what you’ll partially use for bodybuilding and creating muscle mass, size.

Aerobic System - This is the long duration energy system. By 5 min of exercise the O2 system is clearly the dominant system. In a 1km run, this system is already providing approximately half the energy; in a marathon run it provides 98% or more. You use this when doing aerobic activity, so this system doesn’t really apply to our discussion here.

Now that you have a good idea what these three systems are used for, we can have a discussion about how much rest works best for each goal.

3-5 Minutes Rest: This is useful for trainees who are trying to improve their explosive activities of a short duration. That means that longer rest periods are generally better for people who are training for strength and power and should be used together with lower reps (3-5 reps).

This is because your body requires approximately 3 minutes for it to restore the phosphagen (Creatine Phosphate/ATP) stores for your next set. Once the ATP-PC energy system has been able to replenish the energy stores in your muscles, you’ll be to lift a heavier weight for more reps. So, you should rest longer to get the energy to go heavy.

45-60 Seconds: Taking a shorter rest works better for hypertrophy and building overall muscle mass. The point here is not to lift the most weight you can possibly lift. Your purpose is to keep the stress on your muscles and work them again before they have the chance to fully recover.

This gives your muscles intensity over a longer period of time and allows you to keep your muscle “pump” between sets. This is best for the 8-12 rep ranges used by bodybuilders, and is optimal for increasing muscular mass and hypertrophy.

What about the time in between?

You don’t necessarily have to stay exactly within these rep ranges for building muscle mass or strength. There’s no switch that suddenly gets flipped at 3 minutes where your body suddenly begins to use a different energy system. Your muscles recover gradually while you rest, and each energy system works together and has some overlap.

And as always, this is a highly individual thing. Some people swear by using 60-90 seconds rest while bodybuilding, which can be fine for some people. Each person is a little different, and just as one person can run faster than another, one person can also recover faster than another.

Your recovery time will be influenced by a number of factors:

• The intensity of the set
• How much sleep & rest you’ve had
• Your nutrition
• Your Age
• Any injuries you might have
• The temperature of the room
• If you have a cold or other minor illness
• How intense your day job is

You get the idea. I’m trying to show you that there are so many factors that go into this and that every person’s situation is slightly different. Start with the guides given up above, and adjust them over time as you get to know your body and its needs.

Image credit: cronfeld

Getting calluses while you lift weights is normal, but a lot can be done to reduce the number of calluses that form on your hands.

If you’re getting calluses while lifting, you’re doing some things right. You’re training hard, using a heavy weight, and doing plenty of pulling movements. Just a few changes will help to keep your calluses down to a minimal level.

Why You’re Getting Calluses:

Grip: The biggest reason for getting calluses on your hands is how you grip your bar on pulling movements. On a pulling movement, you are attempting to move the weight toward your body while gravity (or a cable) pulls the weight into your fingers. Gripping the bar in the wrong part of your hand will squeeze the skin beneath the bar.

• Wrong: Don’t place the bar in the palm of your hand directly above your knuckles on the other side. When you wrap your fingers around the bar, the skin below your fingers will fold around the bar.

• Right: Place the bar in the spot where your fingers connect to your hand. This helps to make sure that your skin isn’t folded beneath the bar. The weight in your hands will pull the bar to your fingers anyways, so it’s best just to start with the bar there. If this is your first time using this grip, it will feel a bit odd, but you’ll get the hang of it quickly.

This grip applies to the following pulling movements and their variations:

• Deadlifts (all variations)
• Rows (all variations)
• Lat Pulldowns
• Pull-ups/ chin-ups
• Powercleans
• Shoulder shrugs

Sweaty Palms: Hey, you’re really working up a sweat, I know. But moist hands aren’t the best for preventing calluses. If you’re wondering why this is, just think about what your skin is like after taking a shower. Wet skin is softer and forms calluses more easily.

• Dry: Wipe your hands before doing heavy pulling movements.
• Chalk: This helps to keep your skin dry and tight. Not all gyms will allow it, but chalk will also improve your grip on heavy lifts.

Sharp Knurl: Each bar has knurling (grips) to help you hold onto the weight better. Some bars have knurling that’s a little bit too strong and it feels like sandpaper on your hands. Choose a bar with decent knurling that’s not too sharp for you.

How to Treat Calluses:

Ok, so you’re doing everything right and you still get some calluses. That’s fine; it happens.

Just as your muscles adapt to increased resistance and become stronger, a callus is really just your skin becoming tough and hard because of the resistance you are placing on it. If you get a callus, keep it in good condition.

• Don’t peel, cut, or bite: Your callus is attached to the skin around it. Trying to remove the callus will also remove some of that skin and cause bleeding. Plus it’s disgusting.
• File: Use a regular nail file to thin it down if it’s becoming a problem. Keep it in place though, because calluses are a natural way for your skin to protect itself.

Not Bicep Curls:

The grip described above does not apply to bicep curls. At the top part of each curl, your forearms are close to vertical and gravity will pull the weight down toward your thumbs. There’s no avoiding this.

It’s ok though, because you’ll be doing much less weight on bicep curls than on heavy pulling movements, and the weight is only pulled toward your fingers for a moment at the bottom of the movement.

Image Credit: PrairieArt

Talking about the shoulder muscles can really get confusing.

Chances are, if you ask someone for a shoulder rub, they’ll grab the meat that sits close to the base of your neck. This part of your “shoulders” is referred to as the trapezius muscle, or your “traps”.

Your deltoids or “delts”, on the other hand, are the part of your “shoulder” that sits just above your biceps where the arm connects to the body. So let’s just clarify right now that “shoulders” in this article is referring to the deltoid muscles and not the trapezius that sits at the base of your neck.

The deltoids are important to both developing a well-balanced physique as well as improving your sports performance. Strong delts will give you a strong competitive advantage in sports like football, wrestling, and gymnastics, just to name a few.

Here are some reasons why you should strengthen your deltoids:

• Strength & Power: Deltoids are involved in functional movements that strengthen the upper body. They also play a large roll in athletic performance.
• Broad Shoulders: Your deltoids can be seen from all angles since they surround your shoulder on the front, side, and rear. Wide shoulders are visible regardless of what you wear (ok, maybe not if you’re wearing a snow jacket, but you get the point), and they will help increase the appearance having the V-shape… large shoulders that taper down to a small waist.

The deltoids are composed of 3 separate muscle heads. Not all heads of the deltoids are worked through the same motions.

• Anterior Deltoid: This is on the front portion of your delts. To get a feel for it, place your hand on the front of your delts and raise your arm up directly in front of you. You should feel the anterior deltoid flexing.
• Medial Deltoid: Located on the side of your delts. Place your hand on the outside of your shoulder and lift your arm directly out to the side to feel it flexing.
• Posterior Deltoid: This one’s on the back. Place your arm on the back of your shoulder and start moving your elbow backward… I bet you can guess what will happen.

Regardless of what your natural genetics are, a lot can be done to increase your shoulder width. If you train them intensely and with your head on straight, you can widen your shoulders as much as several inches over time. This all depends on your natural frame, of course, but everybody can improve what they were given.

Even just widening your shoulders by a quarter to a half-inch on either side can make you look much broader. The best way to broaden up your delts is to train your medial deltoid on the side of your shoulders using pressing movements and side laterals.

There are 3 primary types of shoulder exercises that you will use in your training:

• Pressing Movements: Most pressing movements, such as the overhead shoulder press, focus on the anterior and medial portions of your deltoids. Think of movements such as the overhead press, dumbbell shoulder presses, Arnold presses, etc. Shoulders are also involved in other pressing movements such as bench presses and dips.
• Pulling movements: Exercises such as barbell rows, cable rows, T-bar rows… these tend to involve the posterior deltoids in the pulling movement. You’ll get these movements during your back workouts.
• Leverage Movements: Just like the exercise we practiced earlier, leverage movements involve raising your arm up directly to your front, side, or rear. Exercises such as front raises, side laterals, and bent-over laterals are all included in this category. These are isolation exercises, so use these a little more sparingly as a beginner and intermediate.

Like we mentioned above, the deltoids are a very complex and versatile muscle group. Because there are so many small muscle groups that give your shoulders this mobility, there is a larger potential for injury.

Be sure to always begin your deltoid exercises with plenty of warm-up. Work with weights you can handle and always use good form. Finally, working on your shoulder flexibility can also help you to avoid future complications.

If you’ve been going to a commercial gym regularly, you might have noticed that some guys will crank out a set of 15 reps for an exercise while another guy just does 3 reps on a different exercise. What’s up with that?

The reason you’ll see people using totally different rep ranges is that some people have different goals. Doing more reps in your weight lifting routine can serve a great purpose, and doing less reps can also be useful.

Which rep range you ultimately decide to use should be based on your goals and what you want to accomplish. Here, we’ll talk about a few points that will help you make the best decision.

Let’s take a look at what each rep range can be useful for:

• 1-3 Reps: Best suited to boosting your overall strength. The focus here is improving the maximum amount of weight possible for a single repetition. You’ll see powerlifters use these ranges frequently.
• 3-5 reps: Best for developing power, meaning that this rep range is good for the combination of both strength and speed. This is particularly useful for athletes training for sports performance. See stronglifts for more on strength training.
• 8-12 reps: This is the magic range touted by bodybuilders as being the most useful for adding lean muscle mass. Your muscles will enlarge the most in this range and feel a “pump” as you workout. Building muscle mass and looking/ feeling better is the focus of this site.
• 10-20 reps: Very useful for building mass in your legs. Your legs generally are able to handle more stress than your arms can handle.
• 20+ reps: Best for endurance. Not great for what you’re trying to accomplish if you’re like most readers of this site.

Big and Strong?

It’s not uncommon for a person to want to build both muscle mass and strength. These two qualities usually go together, but bodybuilders with massive muscles often can’t lift as much weight as a strength trainer with somewhat smaller muscles.

Using the lower rep ranges will make you stronger first, and your muscles will also grow as a side benefit. Staying in the 8-12 rep range will build larger, more massive muscles first, and you’ll get stronger as a side benefit.

You can see where I’m going with this. Bigger muscles aren’t always equal to stronger muscles. In general, your muscles will become bigger as they become stronger, but each rep range has a particular focus. Pick your rep ranges based on your goals.

Small Range Exercises: Your muscles get the most benefit from your workout when you use them through the full range of motion, but not every exercise you do will have the same range of motion.

Simple physics teaches us that moving an object through a greater distance requires more force. For example, when you squat, you move the weight a good distance throughout the movement. But what about when you do a set of wrist curls? How much does the weight move on a set of wrist curls? Probably not as much.

Since some exercises have such a small range of motion, they can benefit from higher repetitions. Exercises such as calf raises, wrist curls, shoulder shrugs, and ab crunches can all work well with a set of 15.

More for legs? Your legs will definitely tire out less quickly than your arms. Try a heavy set of bicep curls. You might feel fine after 7 reps and then totally die out by the tenth. Notice how your performance can fail very quickly with your arms. When you’re doing leg exercises, on the other hand, you might be surprised how many times you can crank out another rep after taking a few breaths.

Arnold recommends 6-9 reps for the upper body, and 12-16 reps for the legs. Experiment and see what works best for you.

Nothing is set in stone

Let me just say that none of this is set in stone. If you want to train 5 reps for your legs and it’s giving you good returns, then go ahead. If you want to try 15 reps on your arms, go ahead. The above rep schemes are just guides that most people agree work for certain goals.

But you definitely should experiment with different rep ranges. The goal of this site is to help you build muscle mass and lose fat first… strength is secondary here.

Still, even if you don’t care how much weight you’re lifting, try a good month with sets of 5 when your progress starts slowing down. Always training with the same number of repetitions can lead to staleness.

Image Credit: itsnickssister

WFN reader Richard asked the following question in the comments to a previous article:

Usually when I do situps/crunches, I would do like 3 sets and with each set I would do a different variation, like either crunches or legs in the air crunches etc etc. But which ab exercises do help burn that unwanted stomach fat?

This is a great question, because men tend to accumulate fat in the stomach area, whereas women get it more in the hips and thighs. Doing situps and crunches to work your abs seems like the logical choice to get rid of that gut.

Trying to take fat off of one part of your body only is called spot reduction of fat, and unfortunately, it doesn’t really work. You can decrease your overall body fat percentage, but there is no exercise that can help you take the fat just off your stomach.

But you know you want it

I understand the desire. The abdomen is the visual center of the body. Since the eye naturally draws first to the middle of the body, a big gut is like a bull’s-eye right on the center of you, while a tight stomach or six pack immediately shows an outstanding physique.

I get the feeling that if all of our fat cells were hanging out around our toes, we wouldn’t be too concerned… or maybe I’m just not realizing how nasty it would look…

But I know what the real question is: how do I really get that six pack?

Here’s the deal:

The rectus abdominus is a layer of muscle that is draped over your mid-section between the pelvis and the rib cage. Getting a six pack requires you to build up those muscles and strengthen them (I know you already know this part, but just in case). Your abs are worked especially in the stomach crunching movements and when they act as stabilizers for exercises like deadlifts.

The next step is to remove the fat that’s covering your six pack. Can you do this with ab-exercises? Well, kinda.

I won’t say that abdominal exercises don’t do anything to lower your body fat percentages. Each crunch you do does expend some energy and burn some fat, but not enough to really make a difference.

Also, each pound of muscle on your body requires more energy for you body to maintain it each day. Each pound is estimated to burn between 20-35 calories per day, depending on your activity levels and which studies you are basing the numbers on.

So, the fact that you are increasing the muscle mass in your abs will also amount to more calories expended. But the abs are a smaller muscle group, so again the results are negligible for fat loss.

A better way:

Here’s something that will do more: use those exercises that do work many of your large muscles together, burn many more calories, and create greater muscle mass to burn more fat. This will help to make the six pack more visible.

Yes, we are talking again about those nice, multi-joint, compound, YWWASWT exercises that I’m always ranting about. This means that one of the best weight lifting exercises for removing the belly fat is one of the exercises that you would expect the least: the squat. Use other big lifts in a similar manner.

From there, it’s a matter of taking the other steps to keep your fat levels in check:

• Six smaller meals a day
• The right foods in the right amounts
• Plenty of water
• Rest and recovery
• Thermic foods
• Cardio

Remember though, you are not a professional bodybuilder preparing for a competition. Your goal is to look good year-round, not just for a weekend or an event. There’s no need for complicated programs of severe carb restriction or extreme cutting programs. Do the simple things first, and worry about the complicated stuff if you ever really come to that point.

Summary:

Your six pack will require two things:

1. Strengthening of your abdominal muscles.

2. Lowering your body fat percentages so that your six pack is uncovered

How about you? What kinds of things were you doing when you were at your leanest?

All this time you thought those thousands of sit-ups were going to build you a six pack… only to have me tell you that you might have been wasting your time.

The truth is that sit-ups only work your abs indirectly. All that time that you spent doing those sit-ups was really a greater benefit to your hip flexors than for your abs. Were you not trying to build up tough hip flexors with your sit-ups? If not, I’m sorry to be the one to bring you the bad news. I’ll explain what all of this means.

How your abs work:

Muscles work through contraction. To put it simply, when a muscle contracts, it becomes shorter in length as the fibers pull together. So let’s think about what this means for your abdominals. What happens when your abdominals contract?

Again, when you abdominals contract, the muscles of your stomach area pull together and essentially become shorter, thereby moving the skeletal structure they are attached to. This contraction of the abdominals shortens your abdomen and pulls your rib cage and your shoulders toward your hips (see the picture up top).

Pulling your shoulders toward your hips is exactly the type of movement we see in the various types of stomach crunch exercises. A proper crunch will keep your lower back flat to the ground, and as your shoulders are pulled toward your hips, your spine will also inevitably bend and flex. This is what we call spinal flexion.

Crunches aren’t for sissies though. The range of motion for these is quite small, so they don’t look as impressive as a full sit-up, but a well-executed crunch will place intense stress on your abs and create a burn.

Focus on really pulling with the stomach muscles and squeezing them at the top of the movement for a moment. Like any other exercise, adding weight is important, but we’ll talk about ways to do that another day.

Why sit-ups don’t work (very well):

Here’s the bad news: all of that great spinal flexion and pulling with the abs doesn’t happen very much when you do sit-ups. Think about what’s happening when you do sit-ups. Your body is bending at the hips to pull your torso upward. This is called hip flexion, and it doesn’t use your abs nearly as much.

The beginning of the sit-up movement is the most effective part for your abs. The sit-up begins by pulling with the abs for about the first 30-45 degrees of the movement. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the rest of the movement is done by your hip flexors. The hip flexors are a little group of muscles that help connect your femur (leg bone) to your back bone/ pelvis (check out the picture on the left).

Once your abs have completed the first 30-45 degrees of movement in your sit-up, they then begin to act only as stabilizer muscles. They hold your upper body in that flexed position isometrically while your hip flexors do the dirty work to pull your body upward at the hips. So your abs are indirectly involved in the movement, and this explains why they can get a little sore when you do sit-ups, especially if you have weak abs.

Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself right now. Stand in a doorway and hold on with one hand for stability. Place your other hand on your abs to see how much they flex. Now, raise your leg straight up in front of you. You will feel tightness in the top of your thigh, but not your abs. Leg raises and sit-ups are essentially the same movement in reverse.

Unfortunately, studies have shown that our ab muscles do less and less work as we become more tired during a set of sit-ups. This makes perfect sense. Think about it for a moment… when you do a set of sit-ups, is every sit-up performed just like the first sit-up you did?

Do you lower your shoulders down all the way until they are flat, and then begin the next sit-up with spinal flexion and pull your shoulders towards the hips? Or are you like the rest of us who just kinda forget about the whole spinal flexion part and make the movement into a simple hip flexor exercise? You don’t have to answer that one out loud.

You’ll also notice that the hip flexors attach to the pelvis and lower back… and fast sit-ups with rapid movements can cause an unsafe jerking and bending on your lower spine. Hip flexors that are too tight can also pull your pelvis until it’s tilted at the wrong angle. This can lead to a whole host of back problems and other pains that we’ll address another day.

Conclusion:

Sit-ups suck. Maybe that was too strong of a statement, because they do work your abs somewhat at the beginning of the movement and use them for stabilization throughout the remainder of the movement. But working your hip flexors has its draw backs, and if you are trying to tighten up your abdominals, your best shot is to focus more on the crunch movements that create the spinal flexion.

If your goal is to strengthen your abs, then focus first on the movements that will get the job done right.

Image credit: Fitstep.com