The Rep

For Strength Training - You need  to stay as tight as possible. Your rep range isn’t going to go much higher than five so you can put all of your effort into staying in control of the lift and maintaining tightness throughout the movement.

For Hypertrophy - you need to keep the muscle under tension and the more time under tension (TUT) the more a muscle will break down  (which is what you want). On the concentric ( the lifting phase ) the weight is moved moderately all the way up with a tight squeeze. Then during the eccentric phase (lowering of the weight) you need to try and slow this down and put the tension on the muscle. We are sometimes told raise for 2 seconds and lower for 4. This won’t be practical as you will lose count, so as a rule lower the weight slower than you raised it. With regards to reps, if in doubt, move slower!

It’s important to execute each movement be it squats lat pull downs, triceps cable extensions or whatever, with excellent form.

The reason for this is:

1. You get to work the muscle or muscle group you are actually intending to grow and develop

2. You help to prevent injury by not involving other muscle groups that are not supposed to be part of the movement

In conclusion a rep is a rep and we each have 168 hours in a week. You spend a fair amount of time toiling away at the gym in search for that perfect physique. So why not make every rep of every set count? Reps are like time. Once you’ve executed/spent it, it’s gone - you don’t get it back. So make it a good one!

More power to you!