How to Perform Reps for Most Muscle Growth
December 9, 2025Understanding how to perform reps for most muscle growth starts with understanding how to perform reps correctly. Most lifters focus heavily on workout selection, workout volume, and even nutritional strategies, but overlook one of the most important variables in hypertrophy: rep execution. In this video, I am going to break down how rep speed, rep intent, and exercise efficiency all influence your ability to build muscle and gain real muscle size. If you want to know how to build muscle more effectively, this tutorial explains exactly how to approach each set, each repetition, and each level of workout intensity.
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One of the biggest mistakes people make in their workout is performing every exercise the same way, regardless of whether they are training for strength or hypertrophy. Strength training requires efficiency and acceleration. When the goal is to lift as much as possible, all muscles should contribute as a unit and fast reps become a key tool. But when the goal shifts to building muscle size, the strategy changes. To build muscle, you must intentionally create inefficiency within the movement by slowing down portions of the rep, increasing tension, emphasizing the stretch, and targeting the muscles you want to grow.
I demonstrate this difference using examples like the barbell bench press and the lat pulldown. When training for strength, the goal is to move the weight with consistent speed and full muscular recruitment. When training for hypertrophy, the focus shifts to how to do reps in a way that challenges the target muscle from the first rep to the last. Slower rep speed, controlled negatives, one and a half reps, and longer time under tension can dramatically increase the workload, even with slightly lighter weight. These techniques allow you to create more effective reps earlier in the set, rather than relying solely on the final few reps before failure.
Rep speed plays a major role in this process. Fast reps can be beneficial for power and overall strength development, but slow reps and controlled tempo variations are extremely effective when the goal is to build muscle. The goal is not simply to move weight, but to apply tension to the muscle throughout the entire range of motion. I explain how using a lighter weight with higher workout intensity can sometimes produce more cumulative tension than heavier loads performed with momentum. This is why understanding how to perform reps properly can completely change your ability to build muscle.
The video also discusses how to balance heavy training with higher rep ranges. While heavy lifting is valuable for getting stronger, staying within moderate to higher rep ranges can still build strength over time. Increasing reps at a given weight is a form of progressive overload. As your strength in higher rep ranges improves, your overall strength level increases, which ultimately carries over into your lower-rep, high-intensity sets. The key is combining these strategies so both strength and hypertrophy improve simultaneously.
Knowing how to do reps the right way gives you more options in your workout to build muscle. You can manipulate rep speed, choose intensity techniques, control momentum, and adjust range of motion to ensure that your training matches your goal. Whether you want to build muscle, improve workout quality, increase muscle size, or maximize every set, understanding rep execution is essential.
If you want to learn how to build muscle with the most effective science-based approach, I explain exactly how to structure your sets and how to perform reps to get the most out of every workout. These techniques allow you to increase workout intensity without needing excessive workout volume, making your training more efficient and more productive.
For complete training programs that apply these principles into structured workouts to build muscle, visit ATHLEANX.com. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss new content on rep speed, rep execution, workout strategies, and muscle-building science.



