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Lucille4444
Posts: 284 Member
I am pretty new to lifting. Rather than ever-increasing weights, can I just work up to a moderate amount and just stay with that and maybe increase reps? I read some online article about exercise that says that if a weight is not difficult to lift after 8 reps or so, that it doesn't do any good.
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Yes you can add reps rather than weight if you'd like. Many programs do a blend. You might work up from 8 reps to 12 before upping the weight and going back to 8 reps.
The flat statement that there's an 8 rep heaviness cutoff is wrong. It may be appropriate for some programs but certainly not all. The New Rules of Lifting for Women program, for example, has people work with 15 rep and 12 rep sets.0 -
I work on 12 rep sets
But I definitely don't stop increasing the weight .. why would you? What is the perceived benefit?0 -
In order to make your muscles grow you need to work them to the point of fatigue. There are two ways if doing this.
Reps: the idea is you do so many reps and the weight doesn't matter as much. You just keep lifting until even 5 pounds weights are heavy. Doing high reps promotes toning in your muscles.
High weight: the idea is you lift as much as you doing a full set, thrn try to add a bit more and do as many reps as you can. You'll still want to do a few sets thoigh and you do them with as much weight as possible. Doing high weight will make your muscles bigger.
As for the article you read it's half true if you do 3 sets of 8 reps and all the time it's never heavy it's not probably doing much for you. But if you do 6 sets of 8 reps and the first 4 sets are easy, but the last 2 sets are pretty difficult thrn you are promoting muscle toning/growth.0 -
Great explanation, thank you.0
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tillerstouch wrote: »In order to make your muscles grow you need to work them to the point of fatigue. There are two ways if doing this.
Reps: the idea is you do so many reps and the weight doesn't matter as much. You just keep lifting until even 5 pounds weights are heavy. Doing high reps promotes toning in your muscles.
High weight: the idea is you lift as much as you doing a full set, thrn try to add a bit more and do as many reps as you can. You'll still want to do a few sets thoigh and you do them with as much weight as possible. Doing high weight will make your muscles bigger.
This is all full of wrong or very poor explanation... For starters there is no such thing as toning a muscle
- Over 15 reps wont do much for strength or size, this starts to get into muscular endurance rather than strength training.
- 8-12 reps, maybe even up to 15 for some muscle groups, is ideal from growth (if in a caloric surplus), and you will gain some strength
- lower reps, 1-4 is for best for strength gains, with minimal size gain.
- 5-8 rep ranges offers a bit of both, you can get bigger and stronger, but not optimizing either one (which isn't a bad thing as most people would want both).0 -
tillerstouch wrote: »In order to make your muscles grow you need to work them to the point of fatigue. There are two ways if doing this.
Reps: the idea is you do so many reps and the weight doesn't matter as much. You just keep lifting until even 5 pounds weights are heavy. Doing high reps promotes toning in your muscles.
High weight: the idea is you lift as much as you doing a full set, thrn try to add a bit more and do as many reps as you can. You'll still want to do a few sets thoigh and you do them with as much weight as possible. Doing high weight will make your muscles bigger.
As for the article you read it's half true if you do 3 sets of 8 reps and all the time it's never heavy it's not probably doing much for you. But if you do 6 sets of 8 reps and the first 4 sets are easy, but the last 2 sets are pretty difficult thrn you are promoting muscle toning/growth.
Rubbish0 -
@erickirb interesting you say I'm wrong and then go on to say pretty much the exact same thing. Except you say endurance instead of toning...
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tillerstouch wrote: »@erickirb interesting you say I'm wrong and then go on to say pretty much the exact same thing. Except you say endurance instead of toning...
That's because muscular endurance is the term used for that rep range. I'm not generally one to get all het up over the term "toning" but what you wrote is flat out wrong. There is absolutely overlap in rep ranges but they are, in general, categorized as lending themselves more/less to strength, size, and endurance. Toning isn't in there at all.0 -
What I said is not wrong it's just simplistic. High reps using everyone's term will help with endurance high weight will help with bulking. What's getting everyone up in arms is using the term toning which I'll keep using because it's not a bad way to describe it.0
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tillerstouch wrote: »What I said is not wrong it's just simplistic. High reps using everyone's term will help with endurance high weight will help with bulking. What's getting everyone up in arms is using the term toning which I'll keep using because it's not a bad way to describe it.
If by "simplistic" and "not a bad way" you mean "wrong" then you are correct.0 -
If by "simplistic" and "not a bad way" you mean "wrong" then you are correct.[/quote]
How so. Maybe I'm not being clear. Doing 5 sets of 5 reps at max weight will work your muscles differently then doing 10 sets of 10 reps at moderate weight. Both will work your muscles to fatigue and make them stronger.
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tillerstouch wrote: »If by "simplistic" and "not a bad way" you mean "wrong" then you are correct.
How so. Maybe I'm not being clear. Doing 5 sets of 5 reps at max weight will work your muscles differently then doing 10 sets of 10 reps at moderate weight. Both will work your muscles to fatigue and make them stronger.
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Because low reps of 2-3 will not help you grow which means higher weight =/= growth, moderate weight in the right rep range is for growth. what you called high rep is 5lbs until it is heavy could be 50+ reps which is not "tonning", it is endurance training.0 -
Hm okay here's where things got off. To me endurance training isn't going to make your muscles bulk so I said toning. So what I Mena then is high reps is for endurance high weight is for bulking. Can we agree in that?
And then maybe I should be more specific in the number of reps I'm talking about. Let's taking squatting. Most people who squat heavy do sets of 5 reps. And do let's say 5 sets. This will work your muscles differently then say doing repss of 10-15 and doing 6 sets but at a more moderate weight.
Both ways will work your muscles but in different ways. You claim I'm wrong in my statements and then say exactly what I said. You just didn't like that I used the work toning.0 -
tillerstouch wrote: »Maybe I'm not being clear. Doing 5 sets of 5 reps at max weight will work your muscles differently then doing 10 sets of 10 reps at moderate weight. Both will work your muscles to fatigue and make them stronger.
I think "...fatigue and make them stronger" is the basic misconception here. To get stronger or induce hypertrophy (two different goals, but with there's a lot of overlap in the means to get to them), you need to introduce microtears in the muscles. That generally involves progressively lifting heavier weights over time -- there is no need to "lift to fatigue", although hypertrophy is more likely when there are more microtears induced (i.e., heavier weights at higher reps than someone going just for strength). You won't have one without the other, 'tho -- if you bias for strength, you'll still have some hypertrophy; if you bias for hypertrophy, you'll still get some strength increases.
Doing high reps of weights too small to induce microtears will just cause your body to get better at getting fuel to the muscles and clearing waste products (an "endurance" adaptation), but it won't make them much stronger or larger -- that's why you don't see bulky endurance athletes.
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tillerstouch wrote: »Hm okay here's where things got off. To me endurance training isn't going to make your muscles bulk so I said toning. So what I Mena then is high reps is for endurance high weight is for bulking. Can we agree in that?
And then maybe I should be more specific in the number of reps I'm talking about. Let's taking squatting. Most people who squat heavy do sets of 5 reps. And do let's say 5 sets. This will work your muscles differently then say doing repss of 10-15 and doing 6 sets but at a more moderate weight.
Both ways will work your muscles but in different ways. You claim I'm wrong in my statements and then say exactly what I said. You just didn't like that I used the work toning.
No, I don't agree with this.
The heavier the weight lifted (and by "heavy" I am referring to an individual's strength level, not an absolute pound value), the fewer reps are used. And that makes sense, right? If something is very heavy you can pick it up and put it down fewer times than you can with something light. Lifting that heavy item for a few reps is not what people generally do to increase muscle mass. Does it help some? Sure. Does it build strength? Absolutely. But lifting a weight that allows you to lift it for more reps (most hypertrophy programs I see use ranges of 6-8 and 8-10) is generally used for muscle building (bulking.)
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How many sets are you talking about? I'm my mind I lift heavy. On a push day I'll bench 5 sets of 10 reps, close to max weight and try to go up, by the last set if I can only do 6 reps that's fine. Then I'll dumbell bench and do the same, then do cables for chest same thing. This pomotes me being able to lift more, making my muscles larger.
On the oposite end I bench and just do the bar but do let's say 3 sets of 25 fast reps. My muscles will get tired but it won't prompt them to get larger it's endurance it'll make them leaner.
I'm not saying doing high reps wont make you bulk or that doing heavy weights won't also help endurance. I'm saying for a begining person new to strength training a general rule is if you don't want to bulk do more reps and worry less about high weight. The answer I gave OP was fine minus I should told them high reps for endurance.0 -
Doing high reps of weights too small to induce microtears will just cause your body to get better at getting fuel to the muscles and clearing waste products (an "endurance" adaptation), but it won't make them much stronger or larger -- that's why you don't see bulky endurance athletes.
This is what I'm trying to say but I think the way I saw saying stuff just cause confusion.
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In general, if you don't want to bulk, the easiest way to go about that while continuing to lift weights is to not eat enough to build muscle. That's something that we've been leaving out of this conversation. Without adequate nutrition, no rep range or weight range is going to help you bulk.
This is a good discussion of set and rep ranges. I'm not going to post the whole article (it's at the link) but here's a chart from it:
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This discussion has been closed.
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