The “Magic” of 12 Reps for Building Muscle

When you perform your eccentric reps too quickly you miss out on one of the most significant muscle hypertrophy stimuli that is available to you in your workouts. Often times, people will speed through this portion of the rep, completing the lowering of the dumbbells in one second or less. This is not as detrimental when the weights that are being used are significantly heavy and the main driver of growth in this case is mechanical tension.

When the weights start to get lighter, allowing for reps to failure that are greater than 5-6, and more accurately up in the 8-12 rep range, then you need to rely on alternate methods for driving overload. The eccentric muscle damage pathway is one that is perfectly suited to help you to grow. The key factor here is to try and extend that period to about 3 seconds per rep, paired with a 1 second explosive concentric. This is a total of 4 seconds per rep.

When performing a set of 12 reps, this would take you to 48 seconds for the set duration – enough accumulated time under tension to make an impact when it comes to building muscle.

Remember, tension is the language that muscles speak. You must become fluent in it if you want to build muscle fast and forever.

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Jeff Cavaliere MSPT, CSCS served as both the head physical therapist and assistant strength coach for the New York Mets. Jeff earned his Masters of Physical Therapy and Bachelor’s of Physioneurobiology from the College of Health Sciences University of Connecticut Storrs. He is a certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist by the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA).