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Building muscle doesn't require lifting heavy weights
- noelchurchill 16y agoIt seems like the biggest gain came from lifting until failure. Even bigger gains were made from lifting more reps of lighter weights to failure than from lifting fewer reps of heavy weights to failure. Personally I prefer to lift fewer reps of heavier weight and just get it over with. The high rep workouts take more time and are somewhat masochistic.
- ryandvm 16y agoMakes sense, but I'd still rather lift something heavy 10 times than something light 30 times.
- sliverstorm 16y agoOr, more importantly, something light hundreds of times. Way way harder to ever reach muscle failure with a really light weight.
- jshen 16y agopick up two 3 lb weights and hold tem out in front of you with your arms straight and perpendicular to the ground. You'll reach muscle failure pretty quick
- flatline 16y agoAnd be much less likely to injure yourself than trying to do three sets of military presses with heavy weights. It just requires a different type of exercise, I wouldn't want to do 300 curls with light weights either. I can reach muscle fatigue with some seemingly simple yoga exercises very quickly.
- jshen 16y agoer, parallel to the ground.
- narag 16y agoA karate monitor told me his secret. He started with heavy and reduced the weight until he ended with just the bar. I tried it and in just four series with few repetitions the muscle feels like it's lifting the whole weight, not just the bar.
- jongraehl 16y agoI don't think this works any better than the reverse (starting lighter, ending with more weight/fewer reps), or a few sets of constant weight (after warmup). It's a well known variation.
- sliverstorm 16y agoIt seems feasible it could work better. If you lift an X lb weight until you cannot lift it anymore, and then drop to X/2 lbs, you can lift again, and can drive your muscles even further into exhaustion. (whether that's good or bad though, I don't know)
- akmiller 16y agoWe used this method in high school (called it burnout then) and it never ceased to fail that a pretty girl would walk in when you got down to the bar and could barely lift it!
- trafficlight 16y agoMy wife and just finished a 4 week program where we did 10 sets of 10 on a relatively light weight with 60 seconds between sets. It was brutal. By the time set 8 and 9 came around, I was almost at failure. We went back to a more normal lifting program afterwards and went up in weight.
- gaustin 16y agoI've been lifting seriously for over a decade. I went to a personal trainer a while back and he introduced me to this technique. I can't recommend it enough.
- tome 16y agoAre you talking about german volume training? http://www.ironworkout.com/german.htm http://www.ironworkout.com/german.htm
- trafficlight 16y agoThat's the one. I couldn't think of the name.
- cageface 16y agoHeavy weights are harder on your joints though. As I get older I notice this a lot more. Better to focus on a lower-impact, more sustainable regime.
- mechanical_fish 16y agoI also assume, perhaps wrongly, that it is harder to injure yourself through improper technique when lifting a lower weight than when lifting something that is near the limit of what you can lift when fully rested.
- sbov 16y agoUnless the pain is due to repetitive stress, which tends to be my problem. I can easily do heavy squats, but riding a bike for 30 minutes kills my knees.
- DenisM 16y agoRiding a bike? That shouldn't happen. FWIW, I had the same problem until I realized one thing - I like laying down on my stomach with laptop in front of me, knees firmly pressing into the sofa. As it seems now this caused prolonged dislocation of kneecaps which caused problems later when biking or doing similar cardio. Two weeks after I stopped doing that the bike problem went away.
- sbov 16y agoI've had issues with knee pain my whole life - at first it was because of "growing pains". Any high rep stuff to muscle fatigue I've tried causes pain for several days. But strength training helps it in general and makes it a non-issue in day to day life. As always, YMMV.
- billswift 16y agoYou may have an issue similar to mine. As the result of several minor injuries in my late teens I had many joints x-rayed at different times over a few years, and every doctor commented that my joints were odd, at one point the doctor had my other wrist x-rayed so he could compare it to the injured one. The bones in my joints are further apart than is normal. This results in a greater risk of injury to some joints, so one of my main reasons for weight lifting is specifically to strengthen the muscles that stabilize the joints.
- knipknap 16y ago15 people seems like a rather small sample size, but still... looking through the study I don't see any obvious problems with it. Good to know if I ever get any pain in my joints.
- AaronM 16y agoI think one has to realize that being strong does not equate directly to having large muscles. Lifting heavy weights allows you to life heavier weights over time. I think I would rather have the benefits of being strong, rather than just having large muscles
- desigooner 16y agoit is very well accepted that low rep/heavy weight sets build muscle/strength vs. high reps/lower weights. the sample set is small to suggest anything empirical and to challenge the set notion that i just described above .. a nice read on the role of lactic acid w.r.t. muscles: http://www.csmngt.com/lactic_acid.htm http://www.csmngt.com/lactic_acid.htm
- desigooner 16y agohigher reps help in cardiovascular endurance. on the other hand, heavy weights/ low reps is much more of an effective stimulus for the body to produce HGH.
- Snoddas 16y agoYeah My coach told me this ~25 years ago: - "low rep/heavy weight" if you want to look strong - "lighter weights/higher reps" if you want to get fit
- leftnode 16y agoTo be honest, there's no such thing as muscle toning. Lower weight at higher reps won't do this. Muscles respond to resistance, and you need to consistently and constantly increase that resistance if you want to get larger/stronger. This is why all of the abdominal infomercials you see are bogus.
- desigooner 16y agoi think the more correct statement would be: there's no way to spot reduce fat. that's the reason most ab informercials are bogus. You'll see the abs if the overall body fat percentage is low. When i say toning, i mean aerobic exercises to lower body fat and weight training to firm up muscles. maybe i put it incorrectly in the original post. this is a nice read: http://www.exrx.net/WeightTraining/Myths.html http://www.exrx.net/WeightTraining/Myths.html
- finnomenon 16y agolocal fat reduction: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1463-1326.2006.00600.x/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1463-1326.2006.... search for aminophylline.
- proee 16y agoIf you're an ectomorph like myself, this is good news. I think I'm going to change my lifting routine to 20 reps and work more on good form.
- jongraehl 16y ago20 is too many[1] reps, except possibly when beginning (or for certain exercises where you can't safely do more weight[2], e.g. for legs if you're afraid/unable to bear more load through the spine/knees). Try 12-15 at most. The point is to keep the number of reps nearly constant while significantly increasing the load over time, while getting enough sleep/protein/etc. (of course you'll plateau without steroids). [1] unless you don't want larger, stronger muscles, but rather more endurance [2] you should first look for alternative exercises or improved technique, rather than decreasing weight and increasing reps
- proee 16y agoisn't the point of this article the fact that the number of reps is not important but the fatigue limit? So saying 20 is too many is fine, but it's not in sync with the article.
- desigooner 16y agoanother myth out there is "i don't want to bulk up too much like the bodybuilders and don't want such big muscles" .. the size of the muscle is determined by hormone levels and certain nutrients + the diet.
- akeefer 16y agoVery interesting study, if small. My two questions about it. 1) What's the plateau state and the initial fitness level/muscle density? Many weight-lifters have experienced that after a certain point, they start to plateau and don't gain further muscle density. Is the plateau point roughly the same for the two styles? 2) How does that correlate to strength? It's been hypothesized (but I'm not sure if it's been proven) that strength is a combination of muscle density and motor coordination (i.e. neural connections to allow muscle fibers to fire simultaneously), and that lifting heavy actually leads to additional nerve ends that help coordinate those things (or something like that, at least). So I'd be interested to know how the different lifting programs affected both maximum lifts and the number of reps that can be performed at, say, 70% of that max.
- ck2 16y agoDoesn't one method build fast twitch and the other slow twitch? So it's not the same kind of muscle.
- joshklein 16y agoThis headline is misleading. The answer is not that you need to be lifting light weights. Rather, you need to focus on progressive load. Repeatedly lifting any weight just gets your body used to lifting that weight. This is how our minds work too. If you do a task enough times, you just get good at that task. It's not that lifting a light weight would suddenly make you better at lifting a heavy weight, nor that repeating a single simple task would make you better at more challenging complex tasks. What you really want is your body to get used to progressively lifting heavier weights, just as you want your mind to get used to progressively more challenging tasks. This translates to starting with light weights and progressively increasing your load over time. Ditto your mind. Where the body is different is that there are physical limitations. You can't increase weight forever. Training programes like HST (Hypertrophic specific training) solve this with periodic strategic de-conditioning. I personally recommend anyone interested in weight training spend some lime looking into HST.
- desigooner 16y agoI followed the HST routine for all but the last 2 weeks. Started out with 2 weeks of 15 reps per set / 2 sets per exercise and then on to 10 reps a set for 2 weeks and then on to 5 reps per set for another 2 .. It not only helped me put some muscle on, it helped me knock down 3-4 percent of body fat as well and increase my strength by quite a bit. i ended up benching out at 240 lbs in the last 2 weeks where as my previous max was 170 lbs. I highly recommend the routine.
- joshklein 16y agoGreat work! One of the advantages this program has to me is also psychological. I don't get to choose how much weight to lift or how many reps to do; it's all determined by my progression in the program (which is figured out at the beginning of my 9-week cycle). For anyone with ADD, executive dysfunction, or just general procrastination, this is a great way to reduce the number of "decision points" that give you an opportunity to break your new habit. Also: I recommend following through with the final 2 weeks. They can be really hard, but when you then take 14 days off and see yourself get in noticeably better shape during a period of sitting on the couch, you buy into the program big time.
- scott_s 16y agoPeople who regularly strength train already take this into account. Hence, you will see body builders focus more on high rep workouts, whereas powerlifters and olympic lifters focus more on low rep workouts. (They all incorporate both kinds of training, but what they focus on differs.) I'm surprised this hadn't already been experimentally established. Verifying this experimentally is good, but it's certainly not a "new paradigm." And I don't like the recommendations from the press release: the kind of training you need depends on what you want to do. Hmm. I'm not sure if they address the different kinds of muscle that is built. The generally accepted model among strength trainers is that low weight, high rep training builds red "twitch" muscle and high weight, low rep training builds white "slow" muscle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_muscle#Muscle_fibers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_muscle#Muscle_fibers The only mention is in the conclusions: In contrast to recommendations [31], that heavy loads (i.e., high intensity) are necessary to optimally stimulate MYO protein synthesis, it is now apparent that the extent of MYO protein synthesis after resistance exercise is not entirely load dependent, but appears to be related to exercise volume and, we speculate, to muscle fibre activation and most likely to the extent of type II fibre recruitment. If I understand correctly, they're detecting a protein associated with muscle growth. But they're speculating on what kind of muscle is actually grown. Since it's already assumed that high-weight, low-rep training does not lead to significant muscle hypertrophy, it would be worthwhile to find out if the muscle that's developed is, indeed, different. If it is, then there's still value in doing both kinds of training. (Personally, I assume this is the case.)
- rubashov 16y ago> low weight, high rep training builds red "twitch" muscle and high weight, low rep training builds white "slow" muscle There's more to it than the fiber type. High volume training like this induces sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. The muscle gets bigger (puffed up), but explosive speed can actually decrease. Capillary density is decreased so aerobic endurance is compromised. People who train for combat sports are well aware of all this. Bodybuilder style high volume workouts can decrease hand speed & punching power, and endurance. The emphasis must be on fast explosive movements. Another aspect is that a major fraction of strength gains come from training the nervous system. The nervous system must learn how to fully engage a muscle. This is best done with fewer more intense reps than with higher volume, bodybuilder style lifting.
- seanalltogether 16y agoMany programs have been pitching this idea for years, some take it to the extreme and tell you that a single rep should last 20 seconds, (10 up, 10 down). One thing to keep in mind is that you have 2 types of muscle, twitch and power. Sprinters overdevelop their power muscles, long distance runners overdevelop their twitch muscles. Your best bet is to try to find workout strategies to find a good balance between those two.
- joelangeway 16y agoNothing in this is new or unexpected. See Ripptoe and Kilgore's Practical Programming for Strength Training for a comprehensive guide in deciding how much weight to lift how many times.
- desigooner 16y agoMark Ripptoe's Starting Strength is one of the best books out there for Strength Training.
- Perceval 16y agoI like Starting Strength, but this study seems to contradict Rippetoe and Kilgore. They recommend 3 sets of 5 reps, whereas this study seems to indicate a higher number of reps with lower weight is just as good.
- warpwoof 16y agoNot true. The measure of success in Starting Strength is 100% based on linearly increasing strength, with zero consideration to appearance aka "muscle growth." As other posters have mentioned, it's well known that high-rep lifting will increase muscle mass, and that's what bodybuilders do. However, powerlifters don't care about anything but strength, so they use low reps, just as Starting Strength recommends. So if strength is your main concern, like it is for Rippetoe and Kilgore, you would follow their recommendation. A higher number of reps with lower weight is certainly not just as good for strength development.
- ashconnor 16y ago>The measure of success in Starting Strength is 100% based on linearly increasing strength, with zero consideration to appearance aka "muscle growth." Strength increase and muscle growth go hand in hand.
- henry81 16y agoI may be off but I don't think it's about "low rep vs high rep" or "light weight vs heavy weight", it's about working your muscles to fatigue. Separately, I know Tim Ferriss wrote a piece on this too.
- AlexC04 16y agoIIRC - Ferriss' point was to go as heavy as you possibly could. Or at least that was my read of it. I've been doing the program myself for the last few weeks and love it. http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/29/from-geek-to-freak-how-i-gained-34-lbs-of-muscle-in-4-weeks/ http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/29/from-geek-to...
- ashconnor 16y agoThere's not a chance in hell a human can develop 34 pounds of muscle in 4 weeks. That article in pure snake oil. Maximum sythenthesis of muscle is around 3-5 pounds/month.
- ellyagg 16y agoThis is already well known. There's a whole school called High Intensity Training (HIT) that promotes doing one set at very low weight to failure. Periodized powerlifting training starts a cycle off with lower weight and higher reps to build a little muscle and gradually reverses this over 2 or 3 months to train the new muscle to increase one's 1 rep max. Whether doing classic periodization or not though, powerlifters know they need to build muscle, and that means higher reps, and they put that time in somewhere. I used to do 5 sets of air squats to failure twice a week, and my legs got huge.
- WilliamLP 16y ago> set at very low weight to failure. Keep in mind that "very low weight" in this context might be what you can do 12 reps of. For anyone who wants to know a lot more, look up "Doggcrapp Training". I'm actually serious!
- jongraehl 16y agoI believe that (Doggcrapp) was at least originally a steroids-required training regime.
- scott_s 16y agoCyclists often have better developed legs than many guys in the gym.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- anew 16y agoThis is true. However I find most guys at the gym rarely do squats, lunges or leg presses. They tend to focus on their glamour muscles and foolishly ignore the rest of their body.
- scott_s 16y agoThis is also true. But I do squats, cleans and deadlifts [1], and most cyclist have much more defined, and often bigger, legs than me. [1] Well, I used to. These days I don't do much heavy strength training, and mostly do conditioning as a part of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practice.
- napierzaza 16y agoGuess what. People who work out regularly aren't about to lift a light weight 100 times when they can still keep it at 10 repetitions by increasing the weight. There are studies that say working out for longer than an hour or so decreases gains. So really, don't make your workout any longer just because you don't want to lift heavier weights.
- jdc 16y agoRecommended reading: Starting strength http://books.google.com/books?id=hq4kAAAACAAJ http://books.google.com/books?id=hq4kAAAACAAJ Practical Programming for Strength Training http://books.google.com/books?id=A5iWRAAACAAJ http://books.google.com/books?id=A5iWRAAACAAJ Both are by Mark Rippetoe.
- gaustin 16y agoI've been lifting without gains for a long time. Switched to German Volume Training a while back and am getting good gains in strength, speed and muscle size/tone: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/luis13.htm http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/luis13.htm Currently doing cycles of two months GVT and one month of more traditional lifting. Note: I don't do any legs stuff aside from my ultramarathon training.
- desigooner 16y agowhen I started HST, someone told me to look into OVT: Optimized Volume Training. It was supposed to be an upgrade to GVT. You might want to look into that once you're done with GVT. There's a nice writeup on tmuscle.com
- kenjackson 16y agoI don't get why do marathon runners have skinny legs, while sprinters and body builders have huge muscular legs? You'd think marathon runners would have big legs too, since they regularly train to muscle fatigue.
- nandemo 16y agoFatigue means that you cannot lift the weight anymore without resting first. Marathon runners don't train to fatigue. They run 10 or 20km. They could still run more if they wished. The reason sprinters are more muscular is that they do a lot of strength training outside running, while marathon runners don't -- although there's some evidence that doing more than they do now would improve results.
- jules 16y agoSimple. Marathon runners don't run to failure.
- augustflanagan 16y agoThree or four years ago I was really into powerlifting. I always weighed about 165-170, but over the course of a year I got up to about 200lbs, and was lifting a ton of weight. I did a mixture of low rep/high rep workouts, but the emphasis was definitely always on lifting heavier and heavier weights. Finally after about two years of this my body was completely shot. I was having all sorts of problems with my shoulders, elbows, and knees. I stopped lifting all together and just started swimming and running instead. Eventually I got into crossfit and now do a decent amount of weights every week. But, the huge difference is that now when I weight train I do 30-40% of the weight I used to do, but 3-5 times the number of reps. The difference is incredible. I'm way healthier now, have no problems with my joints, and my weight has stabilized at around 175. Back in the day I could never imagine working out like I do now, but these days I can't understand why I used to put my body through all of that.
- wake_up_sticky 16y agoI don't want people to get the impression that weight-lifting inevitably leads to injury. This guy was seriously overdoing it or had poor form if his body was "shot" after two years. If you want to do low-rep, high-weight lifting, make sure that you get plenty of rest and don't do tons of volume. Find a program designed by a reputable strength-training coach (such as Mark Rippetoe or Bill Starr) and don't modify it. If your form is good, you don't do more volume than you should, and you're eating properly, your body certainly won't be "shot" after two years.
- augustflanagan 16y agoYou're right "shot" may be a bit of an over statement, but I was definitely on my way to being there. That said I was following a great program and training with coaches and athletes at the University of Washington. In hindsight I was probably pushing the weight farther than I should have been, but I think that is the natural tendency when you are trying to continually lift heavier and heavier weight.
- aaront 16y agoYay! My friend at McMaster was a part of this test. Go Mac!
- alexyim 16y agoThis article leaves a lot missing. When was the last time you saw someone who looked ripped but couldn't lift some heavy weights? Lifting high rep low weight certainly doesn't prepare you for that.
- crazydiamond 16y agoAny possibility for a thin, lean 50 year old on a low protein diet building some muscle ? I do use a parallel bar 2-3 times a week (3 or 4 reps of 15). Is there a regimen that does not use weights and bars that one can do at home to build some strength and muscle.
- joubert 16y agoTo build muscle you need protein.
- freshfey 16y agoI'm not sure about these results. Lifting until failure (also with low weight!) taxes the CNS heavily. So I'm not sure about the long term effects of this type of training. Going to failure with lighter weight is usually only recommended once per month exactly because of this reason. I don't see why people are backing down from lifting heavy weights. Yeah, they can be heavy on the joints, but not so much when your form is good. Look at this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUJFRd4NMvM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUJFRd4NMvM (40+, lifts more than 500 pounds, easy.). Once again I argue that people are generally misinformed about lifting weights and think they are too old or too weak to begin with, so they are looking for excuses ("I can't lift weights because, you know, my back/knees/shoulder/eyebrow" ...) or easier routines. That is exactly why we see hundreds of machines in the gyms which are a lot easier to handle than some weight on a barbell. Rules for heavy lifting: 1.use proper form 2.warm-up properly (too many guys neglecting this!) 3.stretch once in a while - your flexibility will increase and a lot of pain you had will vanish (google "foam roller") 4.use knee straps when your knee is involved in any way (i.e. squats, deadlifts) 5.follow a smart routine (lifting heavy every day isn't going to make you stronger, pal).
- patrickgzill 16y agoIn my experience, you will get better results doing 5BX for just doing day to day stuff. I have done lots of weights, sometimes being at the gym 1.5 hours/day for 5 days a week, but that is basically unsustainable once you get busy with other parts of your life. Hershel Walker's exercise regimen not only made him look good and fit the part of a big football guy, but he remains one of the least-injured players. He did add weights but only after getting into the pros. http://www.2fit4you.com/index.php/bodybuilding/herschel-walker-workout-herschel-walker-exercise/ http://www.2fit4you.com/index.php/bodybuilding/herschel-walk...
- DennisP 16y agoIn the military they've been doing this for decades. High-rep pushups and other calisthenics to failure. It sure built muscle on my brother.