Are you a competitive athlete? Training for a strongman competition? An experienced, veteran weightlifter? If you answered yes, then heavy weight training is absolutely NOT dumb. In fact, it’s pretty necessary for producing the raw strength and power required for the aforementioned activities, so everyone in the “yes” group has permission to leave class early today (THOSE ARE MY CRAYONS, HEATH!)
But if you’re a realtor, or a bartender, or an accountant... if you’ve had a history of injuries… if your life doesn’t require absolute maximum strength performance on a regular basis… then yeah, heavy weight lifting could be kinda dumb.
The widespread belief has always been that in order to grow muscle mass, one must lift HEAVY weights (low reps, high weight), while lighter resistance training (high reps, low weight) provides muscular “definition”. This concept gets a tad cloudy when you consider the fact that muscle fibers can really only do 3 things regarding their size/shape: they can grow, shrink, or stay the same size.
“Definition” happens when overall body fat % drops enough so that muscle fibers are visible; our muscles don’t magically “define” themselves into a new glamorous form. Think of your muscles like Oprah - they either grow or they don’t… they never just turn into Naomi Campbell.
Science actually started coming around on this idea recently (see studies linked at the bottom), as several experiments in recent years suggest similar findings to what I’ve observed in my personal experience: high-rep, light-weight lifts can produce muscle gains equivalent to heavy training, while greatly reducing the injury risk and joint pain associated with pushing heavy iron.
In addition to reducing stress on joints and soft tissue, lighter weights present another advantage when it comes to working the muscle that you’re TRYING to work. Inexperienced lifters (or even fatigued experienced lifters) tend to lose proper technique when the weight is too heavy, as our bodies instinctively recruit other muscles to assist when we can’t lift/pull something with the intended muscle alone. Unless you’ve had joint issues in the past, if your elbows won’t go where they’re supposed to on a lift, chances are you just need to grab a lighter set of dumbbells or a Shake Weight.
The findings of these studies weren’t without caveat: in order to achieve results similar to heavy training, the lighter lifting must be performed in a slower, more controlled manner than traditional lifting, and the intensity must be high enough to induce failure (or near-failure) at the end of each set. (To recap: Light weights @ slow pace = lean muscle growth. Light weights at regular tempo = mush)
And while all the studies linked below showed that light-weight participants gained similar muscle mass to their heavier-lifting counterparts, the groups that lifted heavier DID experience greater gains in pure strength and power. So while both groups saw significant results, heavier weights proved to be more effective in regard to strength performance.
Ultimately, the exercise program you choose should be based on your own personal goals, health conditions/limitations, access to equipment, and lifestyle. If your primary goal involves getting as strong as humanly possible, you should probably stick to the bar-bending grunt sessions and snorting shark cartilage. But if your profession doesn’t require you to regularly hoist a Buick Skylark over your head or punch-fight Liam Neeson to the death, you may want to consider a more flexible, safer way to approach your workout.
Read more about how the science people did their science stuff:
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