How Many Reps to Build Muscle (BODYWEIGHT EXERCISES!)

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What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, AHTLEAN. COM. What is the perfect number for a bodyweight exercise for you to do to get the best results from it? That’s a good question here, guys.

It’s a tricky question. Actually, I’m setting you up because that answer should be, ‘It depends,” and it’s going to depend on a lot of things. When you’re working bodyweight exercises into programming, you have to take into account a lot of different things, namely, the strength level of the person you’re programming it for. And secondly, their body weight because the body weight is acting as a resistance. But there’s so many times, there’s so many programs that I come across where I see specific numbers being laid out there for you to do on a bodyweight exercise, and it’s doing 1 of 2 things.

We know it’s doing a disservice to you, but it’s doing it in 1 of 2 ways. Either it’s setting the bar too low because if it’s recommending 20 Pull Ups and you can do 30, guess what? You’re not really getting pushed hard enough to cause an adaptive response. If it’s saying 20 Pull Ups and you can only do 3, guess what? You’re being set up for failure, right, to fail in a bad way.

So, what we want to do is, I wanted to kind of dip in to some of our programming tactics here. One of the ones we use throughout a lot of our NXT Programs which are our advanced monthly program that we have a lot of our guys have already graduated from AX-1 and AX-2. And also, a lot of the foundation of what we do with the ATHLEAN XERO PROGRAM which has allowed it to help guys build muscle, much more than any other bodyweight program out there. So, it’s this tactic that we have here basically it’s a multiplier effect. So, the way you want to really do this, and this is kind of cool because you can actually take a bodyweight exercise by the time this video is done, challenge a buddy, and see who does a better job on getting to this number.

I’ll show you how we calculate it. So, you take your bodyweight exercise, the first thing you want to do is, you want to do that exercise to failure. So, whether we’re talking about Push Ups, or whether we’re talking about a Pull Ups or talking about Dips, you want to do your first set, give it your best effort that you’ve got. Now, the cool thing again is, it may vary from day to day. We know that some days we show up to the gym feeling great, being able to give us your best effort, and other days, not so much.

So, we want to make sure that we’re talking apples to apples. We want to make sure that on the day that you’ve got your best, that we’re going to get the best out of you. So, you take your first set, you do it to failure. Warm up really, really quickly. You do your first set to failure.

Once we’ve got that number, let’s say it’s Push Ups, and I get 50 out, ok. That’s my number. Now, how do we get a workout off of that? Well, we look for 3 different stages, or 4. We’ve basically got a solid effort.

A solid effort for me is basically a C+. You know, a C+ and B-, C+, B- probably. We’ve got 150. So, if you do 150 Push Ups for that workout, and again, the parameter of rest time is important too. And I always say, let’s keep this in a minute and a half or under.

If you’re ready to go faster, then let it go. If you need all 90 seconds, then go all 90 seconds. So, 150 reps of a Push Up, it’s a decent effort, not bad if you want to get like a little blood flow. If you take that number to 5 times the amount, now you’re up to 250, ok. Now you’re getting to a pretty solid workout.

That’s really a pro-level workout like we like to call it. Good effort. Better than this. This is about a B. If you come here, we got an A- effort.

You’re in the A range, you’re going 7 times that amount. Give me 350 Push Ups in that workout. Again, not resting any more than 90 seconds at any one time but cranking out those reps until you’ve reached 350, k. There’s a nice, solid, elite effort. A really good effort.

But if you want to go extreme here, we call Beast Mode. You want to go Beast Mode? 10 times that amount. Can you do 500 Push Ups? And again, you want to make a workout out of it?

Challenge a friend. So, both of you get over here, you both do your first rep. It’s going to play out exactly as I showed you before. You might do 50, he might do 20, but 20 was challenging for him. So, you’re on an equal playing field.

So, now you both take your numbers and you’re trying to get to-let’s say you set the number at 7 for the day, each of you are going after the ‘7 times your number. ’ So, this guy’s going after 350, the 20 is going after 140, and you see who can get there faster because now we’ve got the other variable which is time. You know, how much work can be done in that amount of time. So, you see guys, when you’re looking at bodyweight exercises and programming bodyweight exercises, you have to consider much more than just a number. No one can tell you a specific number because they’re going to be limiting you.

And as I said, they’re doing you a disservice in their programming. If you want to get the most out of your workouts, you’ve got to be challenging yourself, and you’ve got to be working against yourself. Yeah, you can throw in your friend for motivation, you know, for a bet, but you’re challenging and you’re working against yourself, and you’re working against yourself on that specific day and what you’re best effort was and where you can take your body. Guys, that’s what we do here at ATHLEANX. We push you to the limits, and we do it with you, and amongst yourselves.

In other words, you’re taking yourself, you’re setting the bar for yourself, and you’re beating yourself. We set challenges up every step of the way to ensure that you do that. It’s a great way to take your results and your workouts to the next level because you’re tapping into that competitive inner drive that a lot of us never even expose when we train. We sort of go through the motions and that’s not the best way to get results. If you want to see the best results, guys, if you want to see it in a bodyweight-only format, then I say, You’ve got to try the ATHLEAN XERO PROGRAM, guys.

No bars, no bench, no bands, no bull. That’s our tagline. It’s there for a reason. There’s literally nothing you use, and there’s no bullshit. You’ve got to bring your best effort every single day to get the most out of it.

If you have equipment and you want to push yourself that way, then again, work your way through. It’s a progression, guys, AX-1, AX-2. You join NXT. It’s next-level training. So, you can find all that at ATHLEANX.

COM. I think you might find this valuable, though. Never look at specific reps the same again when you’re thinking about bodyweight training. And instead, start thinking about how you can set the bar, and then raise that bar every single step of the way until you can smash it. Alright.

Good job, guys. I’ll be back here again real soon. Leave me a comment and a thumb’s up below if you like this and whatever else you’d like to see, and I’ll bring it to ya’.