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4 and 3 and 2 and 1 and get your sit ups riiiiiiight and…

– Ye (probably)

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Happy Friday, Coach J here from Anyman Fitness – and welcome to the latest edition of The N.W.A. Newsletter.

Each week with the N.W.A. Newsletter, I give you the best Nutrition, Weightlifting, and/or Attitude advice for you to start to use in your life today.

Tens of thousands of people have used this exact newsletter to gain muscle, lose fat, and become a better version of themselves…

Without any further ado, let’s get started..

N.W.A. Tip Of The Week

Occasionally when I create a program for a 1:1 client, they’ll ask me a common question – “Why are the rep ranges different for deadlifts than they are for bicep curls?”

It’s a great question, so let me explain…

In reality, rep ranges are arbitrary.

They don’t mean much.

Studies prove you can build strength and muscle training all the way from just a few reps per set, up to 25+ reps per set.

The important factor is that you perform each set to full muscular failure (or very close to it).

The key is always to push yourself hard.

That is the only way to reap the benefits of strength training.

To put your muscle through a full range of motion, use a slow, controlled tempo, and continue to “rep out” until you cannot perform any more reps.

If you are not doing this in the gym, then quite literally, you are wasting your time.

Progressive overload and pushing close to failure are the key components to getting the benefits of strength training.

If you aren’t paying close attention to these metrics, you might as well not even lift.

Now, that being said, I do still use different rep ranges for different exercises.

But this is because a smaller muscle group will find it much more difficult to move a heavy weight than a large muscle group will.

As such, it makes more sense to use a bit of a lighter weight, and perform a few more reps.

Take deadlifts for example.

Deadlifts are the exercise you should be able to lift the most weight with.

They are a simple exercise – pick the bar up off the floor – a “Dead Lift”, that’s the entire point of a deadlift.

Since your posterior chain is the strongest muscle group you have, people tend to deadlift more than they can lift with other exercises.

Since the weight of the deadlift is heavy in relative to your bodyweight, it makes more sense to deadlift in the lower rep ranges.

Somewhere like 3-8.

Plus, performing a set of 10+ deadlifts to failure is pure torture…

There’s no reason to put yourself through such misery when a set of 5-6 will accomplish the same objective.

Here are my rep recommendations for you:

Deadlifts – somewhere between 3 and 8 reps per set

Squats/Lunges – somewhere between 5 and 10 reps per set

Pulls (pull ups, rows, etc) – somewhere between 6 and 12 reps per set

Pushes (bench presses, shoulder presses) – somewhere between 6 and 12 reps per set

Isolation exercises (bicep curls, tricep extensions, calf raises, etc) – somewhere between 8 and 15 reps per set

Machine based movements, I tend to use 8-12 as rep ranges, in general.

You can load these up heavy without much risk for injury, so I rarely program them over 12 reps.

But again, the key is to choose a number, and if you hit that number in a given set, the next time you perform that exercise, you move up in weight.

Rinse and repeat forever.

Your progress will ultimately be determined by how many hard sets, pushed to failure, you perform over the course of the week.

No matter if you do 5 reps, 10 reps, 15 reps, or 25 reps per set.

———-

Jordan went from 30% body fat to 10% body fat in Full Access: Anyman Fitness – our group coaching program.

To learn more about this affordable coaching option, tap here and see how we can help you.

February-14-2025

N.W.A. Tip Of The Week

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