The Case for High Reps
By: Aleks Salkin
Tags: Fitness, Muscle Building, Strength Training, Strength, Calisthenics

The Case for High Reps

If you’re serious about your strength, you should get serious about high rep training. Aleks Salkin Follow Sep 14 · 7 min read

If you’ve been involved in strength training for any length of time — either for yourself or as a trainer — you’ve no doubt heard (and maybe even repeated) the assertion that

“More than 5 reps is just frickin’ cardio!”

There is this instant need for certain people to denigrate moderate- and high-rep training as worthless for strength, a vain pursuit, and other assorted histrionics.

If only they knew how wrong they were!

Here’s a little personal anecdote:

Back in 2016 when I was still living in Israel, my family came out to visit me and my dad got a wild and crazy idea: to rent a car and drive all over Israel seeing the sights that you can’t see solely by taking a bus or train.

My dad — who is so good at driving he can even hold his own against the unskilled and inattentive drivers of Iowa — was definitely up for the task.

Well, one thing we didn’t do is get a car with much cargo space — so I was left without my trusty kettlebells for days or more at a time.

And this was no good, as I was training to recertify my StrongFirst level 2 kettlebell skills at the time, and my recertification date was coming up in just a few short months.

My solution?

I put something to the test that I had heard wild and wondrous tales of; something that didn’t seem like it should work at all, but was intriguing all the same:

High rep bodyweight exercises.

I started doing loads of face pulls, hip thrusts, hamstring curls, handstand pushup variations — you name it.

And by the time I got back to my apartment and could lovingly shake hands with my kettlebells once more, I was pleasantly surprised:

Even my heaviest kettlebells dang-near floated!

It felt a little something like this

Whether it be a snatch, a press, front squats, you name it — they had not felt that easy even before I left.

My experience is far from out of the ordinary, too.

Both time and experience has shown a great many people that low-rep heavy training alone is only a small part of the equation for getting stronger. If you really want to make an impact with your strength and power, you need to be good at moderate and higher reps, too.

For example:

The Great Gama — arguably the greatest wrestler of all time, with a 50-year career and zero losses — used to do 3,000 Hindu pushups and 5,000 Hindu squats per day in addition to wrestling for hours on end. Lest you assume he was only good at feats of endurance, he is also renowned for having once picked up a 2,000 lb rock and taken it for a short stroll just for the hell of it.

Herschel Walker — widely considered to be one of the greatest football players in American history — at his peak would do 3,500 pushups and 5,000 situps PER DAY. He still does 1,500 pushups and 3000+ sit ups daily. He has also built up impressive gymnastic-type strength with ring work and the pommel horse, and at the tender age of 49, he took up competitive MMA as a hobby. Now aged 59, he looks every bit as muscular and powerful as ever, and still doesn’t lift weights

(Side note: despite his not lifting weights regularly, the first time he ever attempted to bench press when he was recruited to play football for the Georgia Bulldogs, Walker benched 375 lbs at a bodyweight of 222 lbs! He then benched his bodyweight for 24 reps straight. Guess high rep pushups paid off…)

The list could go on and on, but you get the picture.

So why do high reps pay such ample dividends for feats of brute strength?

There are many reasons, but a few of the most salient ones include:

Tendon and ligament strength

Tendons and ligaments are the connective tissues that connect muscles to bones and bones to bones respectively. They are easily the most overlooked part of the strength equation, yet arguably the most important. And while muscles can be strengthened relatively quickly (due in no small part to the amount of blood flow they get, allowing waste products to be swept away and repairs to take place after a hard workout. Tendons and ligaments, on the other hand, require a lot of movement to adapt, i.e. get stronger. In addition to heavy support holds and static bodyweight exercises, high reps are one of the best ways to develop these overlooked tissues.

Greater muscle recruitment

While fast-twitch muscle fibers — which allow for hard, fast bursts of movement — are crucial for low reps, slow-twitch muscle fibers need love too! Higher rep movements will help recruit them better, as they are critical for endurance. The better developed these muscles are, the better they’ll support all of your efforts — both low AND high rep.

Improved mastery of essential strength movement patterns

Strength coach extraordinaire Dan John has noted that wrestlers who take on powerlifting later in life typically reach 400 lb bench presses far faster than others. He credits this to the sheer number of pushups they do in wrestling practice.



While the improved strength of their connective tissues no doubt plays a large role in their success, John points out something else: the fact that they have become super good at the horizontal pressing pattern (found in pushups and bench presses). This hyper-familiarity with this and other movement patterns makes your body superefficient and thus better able to handle greater weight later on down the line.

This is only scratching the surface, of course, as this list could go on for quite some time, but the message is clear: high rep training is nothing to sneeze at — especially if you’re serious about building real-world, no BS strength.

And because the principle of mastering the absolute foundations of your movement plays such a big role in your success in strength training — both high rep AND low rep — it stands to reason that if your aim is to make yourself brute strong and unyieldingly powerful while also building some serious resilience and stamina, you want to make sure you leave no stone unturned in your training.

To that end, the #1 secret weapon in your training ought to be fortifying your gait pattern — the most foundational of ALL your movements.

Crawling and other gait pattern movements work like gangbusters to radically boost your strength, stamina, coordination, and more

Not only can this lead to new and eye-popping heights of strength, stamina, resilience, and athletic coordination, but it can be effectively trained in just a few short minutes a day — 9, to be precise.

If you’ve got at least a kettlebell or two and 9 minutes to spare, my 9 Minute Kettlebell & Bodyweight Challenge will show you how to take loaded carries and some of my other favorite full-body, no BS “non-exercises”, like crawling, and ratchet up your strength, boost your physical vitality, ramp up your resilience, and unlock your natural human movability — quickly, easily, and effectively.

Best of all: you don’t have to put your current workouts to the side; you just tack the 9 Minute Challenge on to the beginning or end of your training and BAM — you’ll be unlocking new and exciting levels of strength you never even knew you had in you in no time flat.

Check it out here => www.alekssalkin.com

Have fun and happy training!

Aleks Salkin

Aleks “The Hebrew Hammer” Salkin is a level 2 StrongFirst certified kettlebell instructor (SFG II) and an Original Strength Instructor.

He grew up scrawny, unathletic, weak, and goofy until he was exposed to kettlebells and the teaching and methodology of Pavel in his early 20s, and took his training and movement skills to the next level upon discovering Original Strength in his mid-20s.

He is currently based out of Omaha, Nebraska where he spends his time teaching students online and in person, as well as spreading the word of strength, movement, and healthy living.

He is the author of the popular free ebook The 9-Minute Kettlebell and Bodyweight Challenge as well as numerous articles scattered around the farthest-flung reaches of the web.

Find him online at www.alekssalkin.com