Muscle Building Tip

The question of how many reps you should use to gain the most amount of muscle keeps on being a major issue for most people.

The fact is that everybody has a mixed amount of fast and slow twitch muscle fibers. This differs from person to person. Depending on if you have more slow or fast twitch muscle fibers you should adjust your training accordingly.

Don't get me wrong. You should train for fast and slow twitch muscle fibers, however depending on which type you have the most, you should train for that type predominantly.

The question of course is how to determine which kind of fiber type is dominant in your body?

The problem is that muscle fiber types are not spread evenly through your body. Your biceps for instance might have mostly fast twitch muscle fibers while your hamstring might have a fair percentage of slow twitch fibers.

Another problem is that you need sophisticated equipment to determine your distribution of muscle fibers throughout your body.

There is however a simple but not nearly as accurate method to determine your muscle composition in your body. You will also only be able to do this for muscles that you can exercise in isolation.

Examples are your biceps, calves and hamstrings. On these body parts you can use isolation exercises for this experiment.

In the abovementioned body parts you might for example use barbell bicep curls, standing calve raises and leg curls.

This is how to do it. Make sure that you have not exercised these muscles for at least two days. Then determine your one rep maximum on them. It's of course best to determine your one rep maximum for the different muscle groups on different days.

When you're completely rested, drop the weight to 80% of your one rep maximum and see how many repetitions you can perform. If you can manage 1-6 reps you probably predominantly have fast twitch fibers in that specific muscle group. 7-12 reps indicates a mixture of muscle fibers and more than 12 reps indicates that you mostly have slow twitch fibers in that muscle group.

Remember that this is far from absolutely correct and is just a simple way to help you.

The abovementioned technique will not work with exercises like the bench press or the squat, simply because many different muscle groups work together while performing these exercises. Which is a pity, since these exercises form the bread and meat of your training program.

Hope this has ignited a spark in your head.

How To Build Muscle