Repetitions (Reps)
Repetitions (reps) are how many times you repeat a movement during an exercise. Pretty much any rep range between 1-30 is will be stimulative but most people, especially beginners, should stick to ~6-12 reps for primary movements. This is because the psychological component is a lot more manageable taking 10 reps to technical failure where you grind out the last 3 reps; especially when compared to a 30 reps to failure where you grind out the last 8. That’s a really grueling set and many people might not be able to perform that consistently and well.
Sets
Sets are a group of repetitions that are performed without resting. There seems to be a per session limit of somewhere around 6-10 sets for a certain body part before we’re overstimulating our muscles. We could possibly overdo it and reach a point of diminishing returns as well.
Load
Load is how much weight you’ve selected for a given movement. This can be measured in pounds, kilos, pood… when was the last time you measured something in pood? But you get the idea- you can use pretty much any unit of weight measurement.
Example 1:
Let’s pretend that you were going to perform the leg press machine for 2 sets of 10 repetitions at a load of 100 pounds. The first thing you’d do is select 100 lbs on the machine. You’d then bust out 10 reps. Set 1 is now complete and now you rest for a given amount of time. When your rest is complete, you would perform set 2.
Abbreviating
Oftentimes, we abbreviate sets, reps, and load to something that’s easier to read and write.
Example 2:
Using the previous example, let’s say we are going to perform 2 sets of 10 reps. You’re likely to see it written in a program as the following:
2x10
If we were to add load, we’d write it like this:
2x10x100lbs
This is actually a math equation but we won’t bog you down with too much of the nerdy stuff. Instead, that equation will be indirectly covered in our next few sections!