Switching from endurance to building... help!!

TheArchyBunker

Ok for the majority of my lifting I've been doing more endurance than anything as I was trying to cut fat. Recently I've decided to make the switch and I'd love to pack some meat onto these bones now. My routine has been a good 4 day set of Arms - shoulders & back - chest - and leg day. I do 4 sets of super sets on every day minus chest day. Set/rep 3x15. I recently read a tidbit from Lou Ferrigno about lifting in that 10-15 range with heavy weights doing 3 sets each just jacking up the weight. I know this guys a pro and been at this for years but hell when I put 360 on the bar I'm lucky if I can get 2-3 reps out of it before my legs are done!

What kind of routines do you suggest?

cajuntank

Don't follow a bodybuilding program myself, so was not going to answer...but since you have not gotten a reply, I will chime in and give my opinion. Don't stress out about the rep range as this is way overstated on the Internet about certain rep ranges being for strength, some for body building, and some for endurance. Don't get me wrong, these do play a role into those goals, but the difference is widely exaggerated. Your current rep ranges is fine for the volume you are looking for and that's one of the keys to body building is overall volume of work (and not nessessarily on any one particular day mind you)...and of course, EATING. Your must have an overall surplus of calories to efficiently build muscle. I would view a YouTube channel by Omar Isuf
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCaHx0T1LWrVKWF1XfWWLSuw
He has a lot of great and entertaining content on hypertrophy (muscle building) and one video he did lately actually goes into detail about properly building and organizing your own program.

CrimsonClay

I would not adhere to any of the information you read about professional bodybuilders. They are chemically enhanced and as a natural lifter, we could never train like them. It's very unrealistic.

To keep things simple I'll break the rep ranges down into four categories: low-reps/high weight, medium-reps/somewhat high weight, normal reps/normal weight and high reps/low weight. Each of these causes a different, but consistent response to the stress of lifting the weights.

When training with high weight-from 80-100% of your one rep max-and low reps-from one to five, the muscular response is almost entirely neural. What that essentially means is that by doing high weight/ low-reps, you increase your capacity to recruit more muscle fibers-which makes you stronger-but your muscles are not necessarily going to get a lot bigger. So if your goal is to simply get stronger, then this is what you want to do.

If you reduce the weight a bit-to 75-85% of your one-rep max-and increase the number of reps to 6-8, the body responds to this stress differently. Here, the response is both neurological and metabolic. This means that you'll not only realize gains in strength, but also in size as well (hypertrophy). At this level, the response is still more neural than metabolic so your strength gains can be sizable.

Now if you reduce the weight even a bit more-down to 70-75% of your one rep max-and then bump the number of reps up to 9-12, the body's response will be mostly metabolic and somewhat neural. This is the ideal scenario for maximum size gains. You'll gain in strength too-but the increases won't be as pronounced as in other two categories I just described.

Finally, we get to low weight/high reps. Here, you're lifting from 60-70% of your one-rep max but doing anywhere from 13-20 reps. The response to this type of lifting is almost entirely metabolic. And because it's almost entirely metabolic you'll realize gains in endurance, you'll get a little bigger (but not much) and you'll realize some gains in strength-but again, not much.

I hope this clears a few things up for you. If size is what you are after, I would stick with a 9 to 12 rep range with a moderate weight. I apologize for it being so long. I tend to ramble on and on.