Lifting Heavy to Gain Muscle…Fact or Fiction?
I’M NOT LIFTING HEAVY…AM I STILL ABLE TO BUILD MUSCLE?
Recently I had a personal training client say, “I don’t feel like the weights I’m lifting are as heavy as what I should be lifting. Am I still building muscle?”
My response … do you feel like you’re working hard?
“Of course, I do.”
My simple answer is yes, you can still build muscle without lifting relatively heavy weight, as long as you’re pushing yourself through your workout.
FITNESS IS NOT BLACK AND WHITE
There can be different methods to achieve the same goal.
When it comes to building muscle, there are 3 basic principles …
1. You need to be able to create an adequate stimulus through your training to stress muscle.
2. You need to fuel your body properly to ensure muscle rebuilds.
3. You need to allow for sufficient recovery between sessions.
If these 3 principles are being met, then you are creating the ideal environment for muscle growth, no matter how heavy the weights are that you are lifting.
THE ROLE OF STRENGTH TRAINING
There are 3 basic strength and conditioning rules regarding rep ranges…
1. For strength development, perform 1-5 reps.
2. For muscular hypertrophy (growth), perform 6-12 reps.
3. For muscular endurance, 12 or more reps.
But let me stress again, it is not black and white.
A study performed by Brad Shoenfeld in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning showed that while lifting heavy will boost maximum strength, muscle gain can be achieved across all rep ranges.
Pushing yourself through more reps with lighter weight, can work just as well as doing fewer reps with heavier weight, as long as you’re challenging yourself and making consistent progress.
That progress doesn’t have to increase weight. It can be increasing reps or sets, decreasing rest periods, or changing how you’re doing the exercise. These changes can be varying up the rate of the movement (focus on the eccentric) or challenging your stability by putting your body in different positions, holding the weight in a different way, or using off-setting resistance.
You have to feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately, that’s a necessity to get results, and you signed up to get results.
But as I always stress, consistency is king. As long as you’re consistent with your training, nutrition, and recovery, results will happen.
And as far as what my personal training client mentioned earlier, she had a reassessment recently and she DID gain skeletal muscle mass.
So no, you don’t have to lift as heavy as the dude grunting his way through his bench press. As long as you’re feeling the burn and progressing properly you will build muscle.
Need help in creating the proper program with proper progressions? We’re here. It’s what we do.
And remember …
GIVE YOUR BODY WHAT IT NEED WHEN IT NEEDS IT!
Tony Muyco III, CSCS, PPCS, PPSC*KB, CFSC
Functional Elements Training and Nutrition
TRAIN FOR LIFE
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