Too many squats?

smelmel

Hi, I was just wandering why people say that high reps are bad. I used to do squats with a bar at 3 sets of 15 and my legs were never sore lifting the heaviest weight I could over my head, so the other day I done 5 sets of 50 and I could really feel the burn. Is this bad and why? I was thinking maybe I might need some protein powder or something? Thanks, Mel

Pandorian

If you've got that type of burn my go-to solution is a banana first.

I had my first session with a personal trainer yesterday, my assessment, he had me do 150 squats and today my legs are burning burning... just getting up off my chair is a pain because it's repeating the movement. This squat was only done with my own body-weight no bars or anything. It was a pyramid of squats 50-40-30-20-10. I'm really feeling it, it was a pain to shovel the walk today but it needed done. Getting back up the stairs after the shoveling was a battle too.

High reps are done for endurance, lower reps and higher weight... well, different goal

NightOwl1

Doing that many reps is just going to exhaust your muscles. Your muscles need a rest period to heal and regain strength. That's why most people do sets of 10-15 reps, with a minute break between each set. That break is needed to help your muscles recover. If you're doing 50 reps a set, your muscle doesn't have any recovery time, so its going to get tired and stressed, and could be prone to injury.

charchar16

It's not that is bad but what is your goal? Are you an endurance athlete that uses your legs a lot? If so this could be a good idea, but if you are trying to build fat burning muscle then maybe less rep more weight.

smelmel

Thanks guys,
Well my goal is to tone up, I have lumpy thighs. I am at 64kg now and am not really fussed about losing much more, I do spinning and running and I thought I would start weights, I used to do a pump weight class when I used to go to gym and I was always sore the next day and I did see results but now as I am a stay at home mum and moneys tight I thought I would try at home and the only way I feel the same is with high reps, so I was checking to see if it's o.k.