Hi. What’s with the very high reps in the second interval? I thought this was a strength journey. Not a endurance one.
I also blocked the squat reverse lunges. I hate those things. Especially when coach gives you 28 reps. That means 28 squats and 28 lunges. It’s boring.
Hi @Shaka, I believe hypertrophy happens even at 15+ rep. The 28 reps means that you’re getting at least 14 reps per side, building that pump in your legs and metabolic stress in your muscles.
6-15 reps is usually the sweet spot but at 15+, you would train different type of muscle fibres that complement well the lower rep range training.
This is still considered strength training.
I used to think the same thing about high reps killing strength gains until I added sets in the 15-30 range and watched my leg size and work capacity jump while my heavy squats actually got stronger because I could recover faster between sets.
those 28-rep reverse lunges are brutal and boring as hell but they’re building the metabolic stress and muscle endurance that complements the lower rep strength work instead of replacing it.
The mechanism isn’t mysterious: higher rep ranges drive metabolic stress and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy that lower rep work doesn’t fully reach, and that additional muscle tissue and local endurance capacity feeds directly back into your ability to express strength when the weight gets heavy again.
Those 28-rep reverse lunges are building the connective tissue resilience, motor pattern groove, and muscular endurance base that makes your joints and stabilizers bulletproof under load over time.
The rep range debate has a false premise baked into it that high reps and strength training are competing goals rather than cooperative ones. The research on hypertrophy has been fairly clear for years now: sets taken close to failure in the 5-30 rep range all produce meaningful muscle growth, and the metabolic stress pathway that higher rep work activates contributes to size and work capacity gains that translate directly back to heavier lifting.
The guy who can grind out 25 clean reverse lunges without his form falling apart at rep 18 is the same guy whose squat doesn’t collapse under fatigue in a late working set.
Ron Males builds this principle explicitly into the Foundation 5x5 program at PowerandBulk - the higher rep accessory work isn’t filler between the heavy sets, it’s structured to develop the metabolic base and tissue resilience that lets the primary strength lifts progress without the wheels coming off every few weeks from accumulated fatigue.
This kind of workout is specifically designed so the higher-rep accessory work accumulates volume in the muscles that support the big lifts - meaning you’re not just getting stronger in the movement, you’re building the surrounding tissue that keeps the movement healthy and progressing over a full year of training rather than six weeks.
The men who skip or block the higher-rep work because it feels like endurance training are usually the same ones wondering why their strength progress stalls after the first few months - they’ve built a peak without the base underneath it.