The 10 Rep maximum, your ability to lift a given load, repeatedly, for a sum total of 10 repetitions, this number has a well established place within the coda of training knowledge.
Anyone that commits their self to hoisting iron, repeatedly, and for the sake of strength, muscle or some combination thereof, they know what a 10 rep max is.
There are, arguably, two numbers which every trainee comes to know:
- Your 1 rep max, which is the easiest to grasp. What is the heaviest weight you can lift? A simple concept, and there are entire sports built around this.
- Your 10 rep max, which many people never actually truly test out. But the concept of a “rep max”, of being able to repeat an effort, this is an easily understood idea.
“What’s the heaviest weight you can lift? What is a weight you can lift a bunch of times?”
While the 1 Rep max is the most esteemed, I would assert that for pure muscular growth, the 10 rep max is the most objective assessment.
Why so? Read on.
HYPERTROPHY – WHAT WE KNOW
Some basics of muscle building are worth reviewing:
-We know that muscle is the means by which we move our skeleton against gravity.
-We know that muscular development is prompted by increasing gravitational/resistance based demands.
-We know that resistance training, whether it be my mechanical damage, metabolic stress, mechanical tension, or some combination thereof, resistance training prompts adaptation in the way of increased cross sectional area of a muscle (along with density of said tissue).
-We know that based larger muscles can exert more force than smaller muscles. This we do know, yet there does exist a fair amount of argument over the “best” way to build muscle.
I have no interest in wading into that debate. The “best” of anything is too context dependent to ever make a blanket statement, and objectivity requires context.
Anyone that commits their self to hoisting iron, repeatedly, and for the sake of strength, muscle or some combination thereof, they know what a 10 rep max is.
That said however, this setup leads to an interesting question:
“How do you personally determine progression in muscular size, beyond measuring the muscle itself?’
Now, one could say “if the muscle got bigger, it got bigger”, but that does not answer the question. I ask this question, because for all the debate and argument that exists over the so called “best” way to train for muscle,
No one has ever proposed a objective TRAINING BASED marker.
THE 10 REP MAX = BIGGER MUSCLES
What is an assessment that can be used to in the training environment to determine whether hypertrophy is taking place?
Answer=The 10 Rep Max.
If your 10 rep max can be used to determine your 1 rep max, and your 1 rep max is fundamentally supported by how large your muscles are (removing the increased neurological coordination factor that comes with lower rep training)
Then it should follow that the elevation of your 10 rep max would be a fair assessment of increases in cross sectional muscle area.
Simplified, if your 10 rep max goes up, your muscles should be getting bigger.
Now, the protests against this could very well be, “but two people can rep the same amount of weight, and one can be way bigger than other.”
Yeah, no kidding. But then by that line of reasoning, but that is also why powerlifting and Olympic lifting have weight classes. You cannot account for individual differences in anthropometrics past a certain point.
But you can alway assess gravity.
The 10RM assessment is an objective “n=1” training metric.
You are only using it to assess yourself.
Ironically, most bodybuilders already are attuned to the 10RM being a method of progression, even if they’ve never clarified it this way.
A true 10RM will leave you completely drained afterwards. That said, if one loves to train, and dedication to physique development is total, then the challenge should be a welcome one.
Consider statements like:
“He can rep with 150s on chest press!”
“I could finally do reps with the 100lbs on shoulder press.”
Or
“He squatting 405 ass to grass for sets of 10 like it was nothing.”
These idioms exist everywhere in the bodybuilding world, but they all have the same root.
Lifting a “heavy” weight for a lot of reps, we recognize that that requires A LOT of muscle
The 10 RM as a progression marker also aligns quite well with the body of research on hypertrophy rep ranges. Depending on the organization, the recommended rep range for muscle growth could be any one of the following; 6-12, 8-12, 6-15, 8-20.
What do all of these have in common?
They all contain the 10RM.
The only objection I could see to the 10RM is that testing it is actually very difficult. Truly hitting positive failure at 10 reps requires an uncommon level of focus, fortitude, and pain tolerance.
A true 10RM will leave you completely drained afterwards. That said, if one loves to train, and dedication to physique development is total, then the challenge should be a welcome one.
IN CLOSING
With muscle growth, the years will tell you what the days do not. All means of “intensification” exist in the way of increased perceived effort or making movements more difficult or draining. But objective measures, those do not get used too often.
Setting 10RM goals on your primary compound movements provides the most clear means to guiding your training and assessing whether said training is working, beyond the usual visual assessment.
So start counting.
About the Author
Alexander is an outlier in the fitness world, coming from an artistic background as a trained dancer with degree in performance choreography. After injuries took him away from his dream of being a principal ballet dancer, he heavily investigated training, rehab, and what it meant to become stronger and achieve better health. In 2009, he began personal training part time, and he realized he had a passion for teaching. Since that time, he relentlessly focused all his efforts on improving his professional skillset and becoming the best asset he can be to his clients. His content can be found on elitefts, in his bimonthly column, as well numerous fitness websites, in mainstream magazines, and his own website. Having worked under John Meadows as a coach, and maintained a constant high volume training clientele for almost 8 years, his maverick perspectives and practices distinguish his place in the industry.
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