If you listen closely you can hear the collective frustrated yelling of ‘old school’ strength coaches as each of the tenets that they have preached for years get taken down one by one. Examples include ingesting substantial protein directly after workouts (addressed in an upcoming blog), and if you can grow muscle using high rep ranges (you can).

This month an article came to our attention that challenged yet another long held strength belief: that to build most muscle and get strong like bull (insert Eastern European accent), you MUST adhere to an ascending pyramid routine meaning for each set of an exercise you increase the weight lifted and decrease your number of repetitions (think 3 sets: 12 reps with moderate weight, 10 reps with heavier weight, and 8 reps with still heavier weight). This is obviously superior because……..because we’ve always said it’s superior……..right?

Wrong. This clever study used older women as subjects (average age of 67) to look at 2 specific outcomes:

• differences in muscle mass, and
• strength increases

The study was conducted over an 8-week training protocol lifting heavy weights 3 times weekly. Half of the ladies completed 3 sets of 8 exercises each session using sets of 12, 10 and 8 reps (the narrow rep range) with increasing weights for each set, and the other half did the same 8 exercises for 3 sets using 15, 10 and 5 reps (the wide rep range).

Let me answer 2 questions you are likely wondering:

• Why older ladies? Well, as we age we get significant reductions in strength and skeletal muscle mass. This significant loss of muscle is related to an inordinate number of negative health outcomes. This is why all of our practitioner preach strength to our older clients. Also, it is more difficult to grow muscle mass with older folks so you would have to assume that any changes in muscle mass would caused by these workouts would also happen to younger folks.
• Why not just use a constant number of reps and the same weight instead of this fancy ‘ascending pyramid’ in the first place? There two reasons for this. First, the ascending pyramid is the most widely used strength method out there to increase muscle mass as well as strength so it makes sense to study it. Second, the same group of researchers already compared the ascending pyramid of 12, 10 and 8 reps versus the same weight and reps for 3 sets and showed that both had similar outcomes for strength and increase in muscle. Because there was no difference they wanted to see if a wider rep range would cause more or less muscle and strength increase as they thought maybe the 12, 10, and 8 rep pyramid was too narrow and too similar to just using the same weight/reps for all 3 sets.

The results? The increase in skeletal muscle mass for the wide rep range (15, 10, 5) was DOUBLE that of the narrow range. Let that sink in. Over the course of just 8 weeks of training three times weekly using the exact same exercises, the group that did the wide range added 1.5kg of lean muscle mass versus the narrow rep range adding 0.8kg. IN 67 YEAR OLD WOMEN!!!! As we age it is VERY difficult to add muscle at all so to us, these findings are fairly astounding.

So what’s the mechanism here? It’s likely to do with how ‘complete’ a workout these ladies went through. There are 2 types of muscle fibres…type 1 (think slow moving marathon style fibres) and type 2 (think sprinting fibres). Other studies have shown that to increase your type 2 fibre amount you need to lift a lot of weight and to increase your type 1 fibres you need lighter weight and higher reps. Using a wide rep range of 15, 10 and 5 hit both types of fibres and therefore you stimulate growth across your entire muscle, and not just one fibre type.

Food for thought for your next workouts. Also an FYI, in digging a little further, we found studies showing a wide rep range based on days, meaning 4-6 reps on day 1, 8-10 reps day 2, and 12-15 reps on day 3 showed significantly greater absolute increases in fat free mass in collegiate female tennis players and another study showed it in young men in their biceps. So yes, this does work in young folks also. In conclusion, our bodies like variety, so add some to your workouts!

Our take home points:

• We MUST try and maintain muscle mass as we age
• A WIDE rep range of 15, 10, 5 over 3 sets is superior to adding muscle when compared to current popular 12, 10, 8 reps.
• Go lift something heavy! You can’t go wrong getting strong.