Set And Rep Variations For Bulking
When it comes to bulking an athlete will most likely be training with heavier weights than usual due to the fact the heavier the weight the more muscle can be made, with this being said it will be very hard to do an exercise for example bench press and do 8 reps of your 1 rep max, its just impossible, that’s why athletes will tend to adopt a high sets low reps routine when bulking.
This allows for maximum effort when doing the set of the heavy weight, so you can get the most out of pushing that heavy weight and make the most gains.
As described in the previous paragraph when on a bulk the training changed to more compound movements which require heavier weights so by adopting a low reps and high sets it allows you to lift the highest weight possible while still working the muscle.
A rep range between 2-4 or 4-6 will be ideal when training on a bulk with compound movements and around 5 or 6 sets. The benefits of doing these low reps and high sets means that the athlete can perform to the best of their ability when it comes to each set, the rest times between each set will be longer than the usual 30 seconds to a minute. When doing big compound lifts such as a deadlift the more time you take to rest after the set means the more recovery your body has for the next set so therefore can lift the same heavy weight again.
This is the benefit of compound training during a bulk so you can take the rest times even after the 4 reps, it may not seem a lot but if you’re deadlifting 140 for 4 reps for 5 or 6 sets that’s a lot of heavy lifting, so the 2-3 minutes break in-between will be very beneficial to your lifting capability
Take Home Message
4-6 reps is the most ideal as it allows the muscles to be worked with a weight its not used to, while the high sets of around 6 will make sure that your muscles are getting enough work from the exercise.