Right reps

Flex, May, 2008 by Ronnie Coleman

Q | You distinguish between your power workouts and your bodybuilding workouts, with reps for both mostly in the 10-12 range. You're also known for world-class lifts of one or two reps. What's going on?

A | For me, there is no difference between high reps and low reps. I use numerical reps only for a vague standard, or baseline, when I start my sets. Any weightlifter--bodybuilder, powerlifter, Olympic lifter, strongman--understands that counting reps should be one of the last things on your mind while you train.

More important are the sensations of strength, muscle pump, and cognizance of how the muscle is working while it's under maximum stress. A muscle grows from that stress. I focus on maximizing the stress, not how many reps I am completing.

The explanation for the disparity you've noticed in my rep schemes can be explained by my progress. In the beginning, I simply needed to gain mass and strength--everywhere. Every muscle in my body needed to get bigger. For that, I had to do "compound" exercises that forced all of them to work together, systemically, and brought all of them to fatigue at approximately the same moment. Had I tried to develop one muscle at a time, I would have had to do about 135 separate exercises, but that still would not have made me as strong as I am, because strength comes from each muscle being trained to stabilize and support others.

When I started lifting, it was as a powerlifter, not because I wanted to powerlift, but because I wanted to get strong. I knew that strength would mean muscles, and from muscles come size. So every day I went to the gym and tried to lift a heavier weight than the previous day. The rep concept was a way to get a run at my max lift. Because the weight was so heavy, every rep seemed to make my body tighter, stronger and bigger, and my determination more intense than it was for the preceding rep. If you don't feel stronger and more intense as you go, then you've done too much, or you have poor focus.

The crucial principle, of course, was that every muscle in my body worked in concert to lift that weight, and I did however many reps it took to build that intensity. Sometimes it was four or five, at other times three or four, and sometimes only two. There was nothing complicated about it; I simply lifted heavy all the time, but that style of training built my body bigger and more powerful than any other regimen.

Once I had strength and size, I could concentrate on bodybuilding, or shaping individual muscles and the aesthetics of my physique to the classical mold. That entailed using weights that could be lifted by individual muscles. However, since those weights were now lighter, I needed more of them to develop the same degree of fatigue, or pump: 10-12, or eight, or 15 or 30; whatever it took to build a great pump.

Visit Ronnie's Web site at bigroncoleman.com.

By Ronnie Coleman

EIGHT-TIME MR. OLYMPIA

COLEMAN'S REPETITION COMPARISONS

EXERCISE                  REPS           REPS

                          AS A BEGINNER  AS MR. OLYMPIA

Deadlifts                  2-5            2-12
Barbell curls              2-5            8-12
Close-grip bench presses   2-5           12
Bench presses              2-5            8-12
Military presses           2-5           12
Squats                     2-5            2-12
Calf raises               10             30