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Makes sense, but I'd still rather lift something heavy 10 times than something light 30 times.
by ryandvm 16y ago
Makes 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.