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Can you build muscle doing one rep per set?

Bicep curls? One-rep max.
Lateral raise? One-rep max.
Pulldown? One-rep max.

Think about it: The closer you get to failure, the more muscle you recruit — especially those big, high-threshold muscle fibers. And here’s the thing: a single max effort rep will also activate those fibers. So... could you just skip all the earlier reps and hit one all-out rep instead?

Probably. But there’s a catch.

One heavy rep creates a ton of tension. And research shows that low-rep ranges, like 2–4 reps, can build just as much muscle as 8–12, as long as total volume is matched.

And that’s the key: You need high tension, but you also need to stay under that tension long enough. With just one rep, you’re not getting enough exposure time. So you’d have to do a lot of heavy 1 rep maxes. Like 10 or more in one workout.

Not only is that way more fatiguing, it’s also less safe and less practical than just doing normal sets of 5–10 reps.