Training at “low reps”

Low rep ranges - improve strength. Duh.

Let’s say you’re ten years old and your older brother tells you that if you can lift this huge boulder in the yard, he’ll give you $100. What would you do? Well, I would go out every day and try my hardest to lift that 500 lb boulder until I could do it. It’s a no brainer. To learn to lift that boulder, I’d strain as hard as I could, give maximal effort, every day, probably several times a day, until I could lift it.

This, my friends, is actual low-rep training. It’s not picking a weight that you can lift and stopping after a few reps. It’s picking a fucking heavy load that you can barely do once and doing it maybe 3 times.

Rep ranges are not about when you stop. It’s about when you fail.

And that’s the funny thing about the body and the brain. If you go into a lift, like a squat, for example, thinking that you’re only going to do 3-5 reps, by the 3rd rep you’re already thinking, “hey, this hurts enough, I’m gonna quit.”

Whereas, 10 year old you would push and strain until you were exhausted trying to move that boulder.

Don’t put a limit on the number of reps you are going to do. After you pick the weight, fucking rep it out until you can’t move it, and once in a while, pick a weight that you don’t think you could possibly move and lift it.

Or, pick a weight you think you can only rep 5 times and bet your friend $100 that you can rep it 10 times in a row.

I promise if you train like you’re gonna make $100 by lifting more weight more times than you or anyone else thinks you can, you’ll be so happy with the results, the size, speed, and strength gains, you’d gladly give me back that $100 bill.

You’re welcome my friend. Now go earn $100.