Okay…hypothetical situation follows: We accept that hypertrophy usually only will accompany reps in the 8 or more range at the proper %'s of max. Assume that I train at 80% of max all the time at 6 or fewer reps continuously increasing the weight so that I am always at 80% or higher…but never doing 8 reps or more. My strength increases continuously. Assume it goes from say, a squat of 300 pounds to 600 pounds in 2 years. (I wish). Will I incur little hypertrophy since I did not go into the high rep (8 or more) portion of the spectrum? Or will I gain a little muscle size but not as much as I would have if I had gone into the 8 rep or more range? {NOTE: If my assumptions and their subsequent conclusions are faulty, please feel free to point them out…They are based, I think, on some things which I believe are accepted as fact by most of the strength experts on this forum.} “Please help me Obi Wan(s)…you’re my only hope.”
Hypertrophy can occur even training only with singles - see Bulgarian weightlifters. The important distinction is functional hypertrophy, i.e of the sarcoplasm not of connective tissue.
Right on David W 
The thing is, if you keep the reps low, you are more likely to have a more optimal level of hypertrophy. Some of the strength gain will probably come from the increase in muscle size (this may depend on what kind of muscle mass you currently have) and the rest will come from neural factors (which is probably most significant in improving power:weight ratios)
xlr8
It took me a long to learn …
David is dead right the key term is -
FUNCTIONAL HYPERTROPHY.
It’s not about big biceps and looking good on the beach … it’s about speed.
I’ll spacifically look at strength and size factors. By doing lots of sets at say, 5 reps, you’ll be getting both myofibrillar AND sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. How much of each contributes to what is probably not perfectly direct but needless to say, you would get both size AND strength gains, lots of hypertrophy without going in to high reps. Apparantly it’s best to do 1 or 2 reps less than what you’re capable of per set, with only a few mins 2-3, rest between them, for tons of sets for high strength and size gains.
Here’s a trick though that I used once, to suddenly boost my squat which had stayed put for 3 months:
I put the amount of weight on the bar that I was allways getting 5 reps with. I set out to do 20 reps with it by resting as much as was needed between each rep with the bar still on my shoulders. (so that I could still call it one set.) I got out the 20 reps and my shoulders and back were more fatigued than my thighs but here comes the good bit:
In the next sessios I got 12 reps without resting between the reps. I finally busted the plateu and went from 5 reps to 12 reps within a weak. I was ready to jack the weight up again and go back to 4 to 5 reps. I stopped weight training a few weaks later becuase of other reasons so I’ve yet to find out if those “tricks” would have longer term benefits.
Goose - WOW - but that seems a bit extreme. Do you think doing 7x3 or 10x2 on that same weight would have had similar effects?
Originally posted by Goose1
I’ll spacifically look at strength and size factors. By doing lots of sets at say, 5 reps, you’ll be getting both myofibrillar AND sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. How much of each contributes to what is probably not perfectly direct but needless to say, you would get both size AND strength gains, lots of hypertrophy without going in to high reps. Apparantly it’s best to do 1 or 2 reps less than what you’re capable of per set, with only a few mins 2-3, rest between them, for tons of sets for high strength and size gains.
Here’s a trick though that I used once, to suddenly boost my squat which had stayed put for 3 months:
I put the amount of weight on the bar that I was allways getting 5 reps with. I set out to do 20 reps with it by resting as much as was needed between each rep with the bar still on my shoulders. (so that I could still call it one set.) I got out the 20 reps and my shoulders and back were more fatigued than my thighs but here comes the good bit:
In the next sessios I got 12 reps without resting between the reps. I finally busted the plateu and went from 5 reps to 12 reps within a weak. I was ready to jack the weight up again and go back to 4 to 5 reps. I stopped weight training a few weaks later becuase of other reasons so I’ve yet to find out if those “tricks” would have longer term benefits.
This is basicly rest pausing or kinda like a high rep cluster training 
“The important distinction is functional hypertrophy, i.e of the sarcoplasm not of connective tissue.”
why is hypertrophy of the sarcoplasm more functional than hypertrophy of the conective tissue? I would have thought that sarcomeric hypertrophy would be the most functional…
Wouldnt conective tissue (tendons, ligaments etc) hypertrophy be important for injury prevention???
Correct. The distinction is between sarcomere/myofibrillar hypertrophy, or hypertrophy of the contractile units of the muscle (funtional hypertrophy), and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, or hypertrophy of the fluid like sarcoplasm and non contractile proteins (non functional hypertrophy).
Originally posted by Richard Hand
Goose - WOW - but that seems a bit extreme. Do you think doing 7x3 or 10x2 on that same weight would have had similar effects?
I don’t know about with the same weight, but i have experianced v.slight gians in dropping the weight, doing slightly less than 5 reps, and 8 sets all done as explosively as possible, though the gains were not comparable to what that 20 rep wacko set did for me.
I’d like to add that I rested about half a minute between 1 of the reps and as much as 15 or 20 seconds between 1 or 2 others. The other reps had about 2 to 3secs rest between and the first 4 reps had no rest between. It certainly wasn’t a “classical” scheme of any kind becuase of the unsymmetrical “shape” of the set. Though the closest type of principles are the “20rep squat”, and the “rest/puase” as mentioned by CoolColJ.
Added muscle that contributes to your sprinting ability.