Use sets with a total rep count to optimize your strengthening routine safely!

There are lots of exercise programming protocols out there, but the one that summarizes the best available data to back it up is the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) guidelines.

These Strengthening Guidelines were developed by the American College of Sports Medicine to guide how intensively and how much someone should work out depending on their goals. The number of reps recommended is based on someone’s 1 rep max, or how much one person can lift, one time, with good form.

What makes the ACSM guidelines great is its emphasis on good form to the point of fatigue. And by fatigue, they don’t mean feeling the burn. It’s the point at which your core system can no longer stabilize the movement and your start doing funky cheats (substitutions) to make the movement happen.

The old school protocols out there are mostly combinations of completing 1 to 3 sets of 10 to 15 repetitions no matter what. The ACSM protocol emphasizes rounds or sets with a maximum number of total reps. That means you can complete up to 50 reps of an exercise with 1-3 rest breaks until form breaks down and you can’t recover after a short rest. If you are doing maximum total reps and it still feels easy, it’s time to up the intensity of the exercises, period. The reason why 50 was chosen is that is the magic number where endurance can be worked without increasing the risk for repetitive use injuries. On the other end, if you can‘t do at least 8 total with good form, it‘s too heavy. You need to lower the weight.

This simple summary on how to use the ACSM strengthening protocol will give you a straight forward guide to figure out where to start, when to progress and how to adjust if a progression was too hard. Remember form and alignment come first:

• When you feel fatigued or cannot hold your form, stop and rest.

• If you meet the maximum total reps without fatigue and kept good form the whole time, you can increase the weight by 10% next time you work out.

• If you start another set of the exercise again after a rest and you cannot keep good form for the minimum total reps the weight is too heavy.

  • Decrease the weight by 10% next time you work out. Move on to the next exercise.

• If you start another set of the exercise again after a rest and you:

  • Already met minimum reps

  • Cannot keep good form anymore

    it’s time to stop and move on to the next exercise.