Fitness

How many sets and reps should I do?

I’m fairly new to weight training. How do I know how many sets and reps I should use for a particular exercise?
Barry Peake, Greater Manchester

Jason Anderson replies: For beginners I always set a repetition range of 15 to 20 using a fairly light weight. These should be performed slowly and deliberately until your technique starts to fail. This allows you to develop good exercise technique and reduces the amount of post-exercise muscle soreness you will begin to feel over the next couple of days.

Start by performing one exercise per body part and do the whole body in one session. Take as much rest in-between sets as you need, reducing it to one minute as your fitness improves. Once you can do one set of each exercise comfortably you should look to increase the number of sets to three and increase the weight you use. After four weeks you may want to look at splitting your programme into two parts, allowing you to train half of your body on one day and half on the next.