How often do you increase the weight you're lifting?

[AVarma]

After how many workouts do you increase the weight you're using? Say you work a muscle twice a week how long before you start increasing the weight load? 1 week? 2 weeks?

[kolleamm]

My best guess is that if you can do more than 5 sets and 5 reps your going too light. Weight increase would depend on your ability to put on muscle so I don't think you will get a solid answer here. Also even if you could get an answer I believe the rate of increase on how much you lift would begin to slowly decrease over time as it gets harder and harder to put on muscle.

[Maleficent]

If your works outs are the 2-3 rounds if 12 reps type of workouts, your 12th rep should be so hard to do you wouldn't be able to do a 13th rep.

 

So if you can easily do a 13th rep, it's time to add weight.

[AVarma]

Usually I do 3 sets of 10. The 9th and 10th rep on the 3rd set are usually quite difficult.

[Moy]

I train in the 8-12 rep range. Once I can suddenly get a 13th/14th rep out of a set, then it's time to increase the weight to one where I can get 8 reps out of.

[EasyHeart]

Like everyone else said, you add weight when you can easily complete your last set.

[Maleficent]

Usually I do 3 sets of 10. The 9th and 10th rep on the 3rd set are usually quite difficult.

 

So you could probably put in a little more weight. From what I understood, your last rep should be quite difficult for every set not just the last one.

 

And that's a mistake a lot of people do which is why they aren't getting the same results.

That being said, 3 rounds of 12 easy reps is probably still better than no rounds of no reps...

[fitnessfan365]

I did competitive power lifting for years. So I was always training in the 3-5 rep range with 85% plus of my 1RM. At a body weight of 220, I had a 1550 raw total - 625 deadlift, 505 squat, and 420 bench.

 

But I could honestly care less about lifting anymore. Now I train more like an athlete with a lot of body weight workouts, conditioning circuits, etc.. Physically I just feel a lot more healthy and fit. It's funny though. A client challenged me that I couldn't do as much as him on standing military press. The reason why I took offense, is he was doing 95lbs for reps. So I put 225 on the bar and did 5 clean strict reps. No push pressing. Since I weigh 235, I can max more than my body weight on OHP which is a true test of upper body strength. First lifting exercise I did in a year. I guess when you're 235, you still get some decent resistance on body weight stuff..LOL

[PogoStick]

If you're already working at a higher rep range, which you are at 10 reps, then it can be good to change things up on occassion and throw on extra weight for a set of 3-5 reps, even just 2 or 3 reps.

 

I find you won't gain much max strength working at the 10 rep range. 10 reps is good for general exercise but the only way to really stress your body into pushing more weight is to put more weight on the bar.

 

If you're doing 2 days per week, then make every 4th session a heavy weight day. Often I'll work backwards. If normally you do 100lbs x 10 reps. Then find the max weight you can put up 1 time, say 130lbs and do 1 rep. Then drop 5-10 pounds off it, and then put it up again 1-2 times. Drop another 5-10 pounds and do 2-3 more reps. There's your 3 sets, onto the next exercise!

 

Now for the next 2 weeks, start doing 105 x 10 reps (or 8 or 9, whatever you can manage), and on the heavy day, try for 135.

[LifeNomad]

from what I understand and like others said, to build muscle, the 8-10th rep of each set should be hard to where you can almost barely complete it.