Article By: John Fontana

We saw the likes of Arnold and other massive guys doing it, so we figured we might as well jump on board. You can catch eight time Mr. Olympia on You Tube performing rep after rep after rep. I mean the guy is absolutely massive, so following his techniques would for sure get us at least a decent amount of size right? Well sort of, but not really.

You’re Not A Body Builder

Put yourself in any of these body builders shoes. They have been at it for around 10+ years and it is literally their job. They train multiple times a day, take loads of supplements and count every single bit of food that they eat. You on the other had are lucky to make it in the gym 3 days a week for an hour and half the time you hit up happy hour after the gym. That was not meant as a put down to you, just more of a reality check. I will be the first to tell you those guys are maniacs and live an unrealistic lifestyle. So explain to me how following Ronnie’s 4 day split you found in a Flex magazine translates to you.

Just The Pump

The big idea is that if you do a ton of reps focusing on certain body parts, you will increase muscle size. The part you’re missing is that you will have accomplished “fake” muscle growth. That pump and burn you get while hitting the upper limits of repetitions is just a lactic acid build up from lack of oxygen to the muscles. Obviously 20 reps of just about anything will get you feeling “the pump” but it does not translate into real size. You will leave the gym happy because you feel “swoll,” but check yourself out in a few hours and you will be the same old you.

It’s All An Illusion

If you continue these workouts for a long period of time, the pump you get will start to stick around a bit longer. In fact, as long as you stay consistent with your workouts, you will be feeling like you have put on a good amount of size. You may have, but the majority of that will be fluid size by way of blood plasma. This type of hypertrophy (muscle growth) typically comes when you isolate muscles and do a ton of volume (overall reps). It’s cool and all but if you stop working out for two weeks you will shrink dramatically. I don’t know about you but I’m not the type who is cool with losing four months worth of gains in two weeks.

Build Muscle

The reason the big name body builders do these high-rep workouts is because a) It is near a competition so they will take the size in any way possible and b) they already have a solid base of muscle to build on. This muscle didn’t appear overnight, but rather took them years to develop. I can’t speak for all body builders because I am not one of them, but a true way to build mass is to lift heavy weight. Just to stick with the Ronnie Coleman example, if he never spent time building mass the right way, he wouldn’t be able to squat around 800 pounds. I guarantee you he didn’t work his way up to an 800-pound squat by doing 20 reps at 225 or a bunch of reps on a leg press.

Build Strength

If you are actually trying to put some real muscle on yourself, you will have to get started by lifting heavy weights for less reps. Build that strength up so that when it actually comes time to get into hypertrophy mode you are lifting legit weight for high reps. Sorry guys, but I laugh at those of you who are doing 30 reps of curls at 20 pounds. Do you really think you are going to put on some actual muscle by doing that?

Foundation

Just to get an idea, if you are in a true muscle-mass building phase you should be following some sort of set x rep scheme such as a 5×5. This will allow you to still get a good amount of volume while lifting heavier weights. Build a solid strength base and then start to mess with it by putting on more size and then leaning out. High reps are not your key to getting bigger, lifting heavy weight is. Plus it feels a lot better to walk out the gym hitting a new personal record (PR) for a given exercise with the weight you lifted than the amount of reps you did.

Myth Debunked: You will gain a lot of muscle mass from a high amount of repetitions.

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