Reps and Sets

I wanted to do a little more critical thinking today as far as exercises and reps.
I talked about the fat burning zone and the benefits of interval training and my email box was flooded with emails about interval training and how jogging has caused so many joint problems.
Great to hear from you and keep 'em coming.
Ok let's get on with it...
When choosing exercises for your program you need to consider what exercises are going to be most beneficial for your goals.
What you want to do during your workouts is use as much muscle as possible. That means multi-joint exercises (squats, bench, pullups, deadlifts, rows, presses) are best because they will work more muscle then a single joint exercise (bicep curl, tricep kickback).
Take into consideration the size of your muscles as well. For example, doing squats are far more beneficial then bicep curls. Why?
Well your biceps are roughly only 3% of your entire muscle on yourbody. Doing the squat works over 50% of your total muscle.
So when you're thinking from a fat loss perspective, working out your bigger muscles will build you an overall greater lean muscle growth. The result of that is a higher metabolism, which is of course, what you want because you'll burn a higher amount of fat throughout the day.
Do I have my clients perform bicep curls? A little bit. Most oftime we'll stick to 3-6 sets a week and actually push it kind of heavy for 6-10 reps.
Same thing applies with tricep specific exercises, EXCEPT we'll do10-15 reps because I've found that the stress put on the elbow joints doing a heavier weight under 10 reps increases the risk of injury bya fair bit.
Generally we'll stick between 6-12 reps for most exercises.
PS - Remember, look at the pros and cons of what you're doing. If it's increasing the risk of injury then re-evaluate. That's why I rarely do long cardio with my clients and it's also the reason we stick with over 10 reps for lying tricep extensions.