Lower reps actaully better for hypertrophy?

[Longshanks]

At the end of my last SSC I noticed significant gains in size in my thighs and my lats only. At the time I just thought it was one of those things like muscle imbalances or something. However I still have quite a big muscle imbalance in my calfs (right is about half an inch bigger than left). The penny just dropped today that the only thing my pistols and pull-ups have in common is that they were much lower rep than my other exercises (pistols were 2 single negatives left-right-left-right and pull-ups were 4 negatives in a row).However my calf exercises and push-ups for that matter were higher rep negatives (6 rep negatives each due to a 12 rep max) and I've got no noticeable gains there at all, my calfs have actually lost a bit of size.

I know this tends to go against conventional 3*10reps for size gains but has anyone ever found similar results? I'm now wondering if I need to push the intensity a bit higher and drop volume a bit next cycle now? I've been trying to keep the reps fairly high due to previous injuries but my knees are fine now despite doing lots of single negative pistols for months now.

[Neal Winkler]

No, they are not better, not in general anyway. There could be individual variation in how people respond to rep ranges though.

Both low and high repetitions are needed for optimal growth, and in the very long run it's probably doesn't amount to any difference if you did only one or the other.

[Tarun Suri]

Take into consideration the tempo that you were using also. That could be an important factor.