---
title: 'How to Perform Reps for Maximum Muscle Growth'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=zHXfXaofaTk'
video_id: 'zHXfXaofaTk'
date: 2026-07-21
duration_sec: 619
channel: 'ATHLEAN-X™'
---

# How to Perform Reps for Maximum Muscle Growth

> Source: [How to Perform Reps for Maximum Muscle Growth](https://youtube.com/watch?v=zHXfXaofaTk)

## Summary

This video explains the optimal way to perform repetitions for muscle growth, distinguishing between training for strength and hypertrophy. The key insight is that for hypertrophy, you should intentionally make your reps 'inefficient' by using techniques like slower tempos, partial reps, and increased time under tension to maximize muscle tension throughout the set.

### Key Points

- **Training Goal Determines Rep Approach** [00:14] — The best way to perform reps depends on whether you're training for strength or hypertrophy. For strength, efficiency is key—all muscles work together to move heavy weight. For hypertrophy, you want to be inefficient, challenging muscles in new ways beyond just adding weight.
- **Inefficiency for Hypertrophy** [01:19] — Using a lat pulldown as an example, for hypertrophy you can use a lighter weight, overhand grip, slower pace, and focus on squeezing and stretching the lats. This makes the exercise 'inefficient' but creates more muscle tension and growth.
- **Intensity vs. Rep Count Graph** [03:25] — A graph shows intensity (effort) on the y-axis and rep count on the x-axis. A heavy set (8-10 rep max) starts at moderate intensity and spikes near failure. A lighter set with techniques (e.g., 1.5 reps) can start at higher intensity and maintain it throughout, leading to similar or greater cumulative tension.
- **Heavy Weight Without Muscle Tension Is Ineffective** [06:39] — Using very heavy weight but relying on momentum reduces muscular effort, resulting in poor growth. The weight must be challenging enough to register on the intensity scale, but technique matters more than absolute load.
- **Strength Training Benefits Hypertrophy** [08:14] — Strength training (e.g., 3-5 rep range) increases your absolute strength, which raises the baseline for all rep ranges. This means both heavy and lighter sets become more effective, so combining strength and hypertrophy work is optimal.

### Conclusion

The most effective rep approach for muscle growth involves using techniques that increase time under tension and muscle tension, even with lighter weights. However, strength training should not be ignored as it enhances overall progress.

## Transcript

Today I'm going to try to help you to understand the best way to perform your reps when you're trying to build muscle because there's a lot of variables that go into this. However, I have to start in answering this question by asking you
one and that is what are you training for? Because there's a difference between training for strength and training for hypertrophy or increased training for strength and we'll give an example like a barbell bench press,
right? If you're trying to get stronger here, then there's one thing that you should be looking for out of this exercise, and that is efficiency. In other words, when you're doing this exercise, you should not be caring about
how to isolate the chest from the triceps, from the shoulders. You want them all to work in concert because at the end of the day, your absolute level of strength or the output of how much you could actually lift is going to rely
on the fact of all those muscles contributing together to that lift. So, we're not trying to do anything but be very efficient at recruiting those. You You want to be able to accelerate that bar because power and strength will go
sure you're working both of those things. However, when we're talking about building bigger muscles, which is the subject of this video here, you want try to find ways that you can be inefficient. In other words, find new
ways to challenge your muscles so that they are forced to have to come back and doesn't always come in the form of just using heavier and heavier weights cuz at some point you wind up stalling out there. So let me use an example here of
a lat pull down. Right? If I was going to do a traditional lat pull down. If I was trying to do this for strength, I'd have weight on the bar here. Actually, enough weight on the bar here to challenge me. I wouldn't necessarily
care. I'll go underhand. I wouldn't care about isolating the biceps, right, from about isolating the biceps, right, from the back, the lats, the rhomboids. I'm trying to move this thing still with good form, right? But try to get strong
and let all those muscles that prefer to work together work together. That's one way to do this. If on the other hand I wanted to kind of introduce a different wanted to kind of introduce a different stimulus, I could take a lighter weight
and then try to become much more inefficient. And that means let's slow this thing down. Let's make this thing absolutely miserable for my lats if it's the lats I'm trying to grow here. So what I could do is firstly I'll go
overhand, right? To get the biceps out of it a little bit. Get into the lats. Get that narrow grip. Keep my elbows in front of my body. Go at a slower pace. Drive my elbows down. Really squeeze. Come up out of it.
Good stretch at the top. Again, this is all inefficient and it's not what you'd maximally test your strength. But we're trying to overload these lats. All of these individual stimuli are good, right? that good hard focus contraction,
that lengthened time that I'm in this stretch, right? Applying more tension here, still having good amount of weight on the bar. I didn't go super light. I'll talk about that in a second. I'm using a good amount of weight that still
challenges me. But all of these things would make anybody looking at this say, "Wow, that was pretty damn inefficient there, Jeff." And they'd be right because it is. But it creates growth. Let me take you here to the board for a
second. So, if we were looking at, let's say, those two examples, okay, this is, let's just say, intensity on this side, and this is the rep count. on this side, and this is the rep count. 0 1 2 3 4 5 all the way up to 10. That
does not look like a five, by the way. All the way up to 10. In that first example, I'll bring out different colors. I do these more than just drawing my body with these things. So, the first example, let's say it was my
10 rep max or 8 to 10 rep max here in blue and I was going to do it to 10 rep max failure or 8 to 10 rep max failure. Okay? Whatever I chose, that would be my failure point. What would happened is in terms of the effort level on the first
rep, you just imagine that the weight is heavy enough to kind of start a little bit higher on that intensity line here, right? because we know we're using in that 8 to 10 rep range. What happens
the first rep or necessarily the second rep or the third rep or the fourth rep. It starts to kind of catch up at the end where it really starts to skyrocket and difficult at the end. And we talk about this all the time, these being sort of
the effective reps, the ones that actually cause real muscle growth, but it kind of takes a while to get up there. Okay, if we took that lighter second round here, let's just say it's like my, I don't know, 13 rep max
weight, right? Odd number, but I just want to show you that it's lighter. But I'm going to perform it to 10 rep failure, right? Can we do that? We definitely can do that. We can do that by doing what I
something called one and a half reps where we come down halfway, go up, and come back. like we're using more range of motion, more time and tension, all that stuff. So, what happens here is you would think that this being a lighter
weight would start down here on that intensity line. But if from rep one I do that thing down, really squeeze, get the way up, I could actually theoretically jump that. I really could.
I could jump the intensity there cuz the difference in weight here can be made up I'm using. And by getting at a higher level here, we also know that rep two is too. Because again, we're using these techniques that intensify things. So,
rep two, rep three, rep four, it's really getting and staying at a higher level throughout. And then what happens is just the fatigue of the set alone is higher, higher, higher. So whether it finishes above or below, the idea though
is they're pretty close. And if anything, this set that was very inefficient actually took place with some of those techniques that made this more difficult from start to finish. So the tension that we got here, the
cumulative tension could actually be higher underneath that curve, the red lighter one, than it could be maybe in this one, even though it peaked out over here. And even if it peaked out at a higher level, right? Even if it peaked
out somewhat higher over here, it doesn't matter. Now, what's the benefit doesn't matter. Now, what's the benefit of that? The benefit is that you don't always have to lift super heavy weights to get things to work. I will actually
work. You want to make sure that you're understanding these things because absolutes, right? If I took a really heavy weight down here and now I grabbed that same weight and I got down and now my set looks like this.
I would argue that even though it was super heavy, do I have another color here? Even though it was super heavy, that's down here because those are not a muscle you were trying to build there. That was momentum. And momentum
dictated that there really wasn't a lot of muscular effort going on on that. So therefore, whatever that results in is not going to be what you were looking for. Same token. Do we go super light? If I went super light here, okay? And I
grabbed these and I went right for the lats. It doesn't matter how hard I'm squeezing here in that contracted position. And even if I wanted to and then come back down again, or if I
good stretch and then come down halfway and go back and get another stretch because we know those are good. Doesn't matter. the weight isn't enough. The amount of tension on that weight doesn't even qualify, right? It doesn't
even register on this line here because it's just too little. And again, no matter how much I'm doing here, unless I did extremely high rep counts. Nothing is going to overcome the fact that there just wasn't enough on that bar to begin
with. So the point is when you're trying to figure out which is best, it really depends on a your goal being strength or hypertrophy and from there the exercise depending upon the exercise, the intensity that you train at. That's
everything because again that determines where the the offramps are. If you're going really super intense with different techniques, you you'll be able to do shorter workouts and fewer repetitions and still reach failure and
still get a response. But if you're not doing those things, then you're not going to see that. One final benefit here to this blue line because I want important both of these approaches are in the big picture. But this blue line,
only build strength in, let's say, the three, four, five rep range. If you started out doing 10 of this weight that you had here, and then you could do 11, and then you can do 12, and you can do 13, you're increasing your strength.
getting stronger at that lift. When you get stronger here, what happens? It brings everything up. So, all of these lines here, this red dot, this blue dot has the strength of your blue dot here
goes up and starts out at a higher point. The red dot is going to go along rep range, but it's still your absolute level of strength. So, it's going to raise all boats. So, the idea is you don't want to eliminate one technique or
certainly don't want to avoid strength training. At some point, that matters, too. But you want to train for both strength and hypertrophy. And you do rep ranges because they're both going to matter as long as you know how to apply
program where we do this, I actually have a brand new one coming out where we intensity. It's called Athlete Express. Available December 13th. If you're we use all the different techniques, you can find them over at athletex.com. If
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