In the past, I have generally done most of my weight training in the 5-8 rep range, with pretty much full recovery between sets.
Recently though, at the end of my upper body workouts I have thrown in 3x15 on lateral raises, curls & shrugs, with the rest periods kept very short. I have noticed that my shoulders, biceps & traps/neck have grown way more than any other body part during this period.
As I am still lacking in overall development, this has got me thinking that maybe I should throw in a phase of high rep training on the more important exercises (ie squats etc).
For a tall skinny athlete looking to get stronger & faster, what do you guys think of the following routine? (to be done during a GPP phase):
Squats - 3x15
Bulgarian squats - 3x15
Hypers - 3x15
Ham Curls - 3x15
Abs / core - various exercises
This would be done twice per week after running work. This would be done for about 6-8 weeks, after which the reps would start to drop.
Stupid approach. A Combination of heavy and higher rep work is a good one since boht tension and fatigue are players in stimulating growth. Solely high rep work is muscular endurance.
Your training effect has to match your desired goals so make sure they are inline. Slightly higher reps can be used if your training age is low since you are at the bottom of your strength potential and thus neurologically inefficient. 8-15 reps are sometimes recommended during the first year of training.
This said the thing you have to figure is what your doing agreeing with your goals?
Yeah, but that doesn’t really explain why those muscle groups mentioned above have been growing quite well from only doing higher rep work.
I suppose you could argue that part of the growth has been due to indirect stimulation from other excercises that have remained in the 6-8 rep range (bench, rows etc).
In stead of raising the number of reps, would not be better raising the number of sets?
I am thinking about something like squat 10 x 5 starting with 50% of 1RM, recoverying 1 - 2 minutes and adding 5 pounds every workout.
After 3- 4 weeks this should allow to use heavy weights with a great volume. Do you think it can be substained during the GPP?
Yep!! You only have so much time per day with college athletes. That much volume could hurt track workouts. Also I feel you can get the same effect with lower volume, for example 5x5 with a 3 sec pause rest 90sec.
