By Pete Estabrooks

Working With Your 1 Rep Max.

This article is for two kinds of people those who don’t work out at all, my advice to you is easy, START, and those of you who hang out in the gym regularly but are kind of feeling your way through the whole process.

First off good for you, you’re where you should be. The fact you are in the gym is the coolest thing going, well, that and sex, but we’re not that kind of website.

Back to the subject at hand, because we think what your doing is such a good thing, this and of course, the fact that if you don’t see results you’ll quit going to the gym, never make it to an incredible TKO boxing class, never visit the site again, I’ll never make any money, someone will repossess my jeep and I’ll just be another mean old man on a bicycle looking for trouble. For those reasons we are going to make success much easier for you.

To start we need some layman definitions as to the theory of resistance work, just the highlights.

• Adaptation - is what happens to a muscle as a result of physical resistance. A muscle adapts like this, if you work it real hard a few times, it gets stronger-this is strength. Somewhat hard, more times, it gets bigger-this is hypertrophy. Work a muscle through a series of more repetitions it’s able to work longer-this is endurance.
• Reps - the consecutive number of times you perform an exercise.
• Sets - the number of times you do a series of consecutive repetitions.
• Resistance - that which resists the action, in these instances the moving of the weights.
• Progressive resistance - adding intensity to a program. Doing an exercise one way, against one resistance, forever does not work. Once a muscle has adapted the moving of a particular inanimate object, four to six weeks, continuing working with the same resistance or object results in no further adaptation.
• Progress - what you get with consistent training. Progress in a program can take several forms. Increasing the resistance/weight of your reps for strength and hypertrophy. Increasing the reps or decreasing the amount of rest between sets for endurance.
• One rep max - is the maximum amount of weight you can perform an exercise safely and with perfect form one time.

• 85 - 100% of your one rep max. Optimizes strength gains.
• 80 - 85% of your one rep max. Provides a good compromise of strength and hypertrophy gains.
• 70 - 80% of your one rep max is optimal for hypertrophy gains.
• 60 - 70% of your one rep max provides muscular endurance gains.

The resistance versus reps thing is relatively easy to figure out. You’ll not move a huge weight as many times as a tiny weight. So use high resistance/weight and low reps (1-5) to develop strength and low resistance/weight and high reps (12-20) to develop endurance. Developing muscular size lies somewhere in the middle using a resistance/weight that challenges you at 6-12 reps.

1. Figure out your goal, strength, hypertrophy or endurance.
2. Determine the amount of weight to lift, see above.
3. Use the proper amount of sets and reps.
   • 5 - 12 sets of 1 - 4 reps for strength.
   • 3 - 6 sets of 6 - 12 reps for muscle growth / hypertrophy.
   • 1 - 3 sets of 15 reps for muscular endurance.

It all hinges on one thing, how much do you need to lift? Weight that is. What’s your personal one rep max? Only you can find out and no program is as effective as it can be until you do the One Rep Max.

• Determining Your One Rep Max

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