NYT: Lifting Lighter Weights Can Be Just as Effective as Heavy Ones

NorthCascades
NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
edited December 2024 in Fitness and Exercise
Upending conventions about how best to strength train, a new study finds that people who lift relatively light weights can build just as much strength and muscle size as those who grunt through sessions using much heftier weights — if they plan their workouts correctly.

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So for the new study, which was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and published this month in the Journal of Applied Physiology, he and his colleagues recruited 49 young men who had been weight training for a year or more. (The scientists plan to study women and older people in future studies.)

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Instead, the key to getting stronger for these men, Dr. Phillips and his colleagues decided, was to grow tired. The volunteers in both groups had to attain almost total muscular fatigue in order to increase their muscles’ size and strength.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/lifting-lighter-weights-can-be-just-as-effective-as-heavy-ones/?ribbon-ad-idx=2&rref=health

I'm not going to change my workout because of this, but I'd like to hear peoples' thoughts and comments out of interest.

Replies

  • pdxhak
    pdxhak Posts: 383 Member
    GVT has proven you can get stronger with lighter weight. IMO it is silly to think there is only 1 way to get stronger.
  • juliewatkin
    juliewatkin Posts: 764 Member
    The sheiko cycles work for a lot of people too. The key is finding what is most effective for you.
  • DavPul
    DavPul Posts: 61,406 Member
    I checked out when the article said that traditional training programs recommend lifting 90% of your 1RM for 10 reps and until shaking with fatigue.

    Anyway, lifting lighter weights for lots of volume has been what bodybuilders have done for decades. That's not news. But when saying "just as effective" you really need to be specific as to what the goals are. Someone trying to achieve max strength would train differently than someone looking for max mass.
  • SonyaCele
    SonyaCele Posts: 2,841 Member
    glancing over the article, they are saying "light weight" is 30-50% of your 1rm. Thats not necessarily light weight, its just lighter than the 1rm which is what we do anyways when lifting, No lifters use their 1rm for sets, they all use a reduced %. And they say traditional programs lift 10 reps at 90%??, um if you can do 10 reps at 90% than you're 1rm is way too low.

    This article and their research is all fine and dandy, but there are tons of real life body builders and lifters compiling their own research, i'm not going to discount whats tried and true based on one study of a handful of people.
  • BillMcKay1
    BillMcKay1 Posts: 315 Member
    The 80-90% of 1RM 8-10x thing sticks out somewhat to me. As stated above, if you can rep 90% of your 1RM for 10 reps, that's not your 1RM. 90% of 1RM is struggling to push out 3-4 reps.

    I found I increased my strength when I switched from lower weight high rep hypertrophy to heavy weight compound lifts. Not the size of the muscle, but certainly the strength.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    Thanks to everyone who took the time to look this over and comment! I'm new to strength training and I know that reporters can get sciency stuff wrong a lot, trying to summarize complex findings into digestible headlines. Seeing other peoples' reactions helps me figure everything out.

    A few people have all objected to the idea of doing 10x 90 % 1RM. In cycling we have a similar concept, your functional power threshold, and certain things (an intensity factor over 1.05) mean your FTP is set too low. So what all of you are saying makes sense to me. :smile:
    DavPul wrote: »
    But when saying "just as effective" you really need to be specific as to what the goals are. Someone trying to achieve max strength would train differently than someone looking for max mass.

    Personally, my #1 goal is to understand this stuff better, and #2 is to gain muscle mass. If anybody has any suggestions to either of those, I'm all ears. Already doing a progressive overload program and eating lots of protein.
  • pdxhak
    pdxhak Posts: 383 Member
    You are new to lifting so your main goals should gaining strength, eating right and getting enough rest. If you do those 3 things well you will gain strength and size. In addition you will have a much better understanding how your body reponds.
  • hannahsadler_tn
    hannahsadler_tn Posts: 77 Member
    The article said that the results showed no significant difference in strength gain and muscle size, which is fine. Personally, though, I have very limited time to workout so I think that lifting heavier is a more efficient way to achieve the total muscular fatigue that the article references in a shorter amount of time than it would take me to achieve the same results with lighter weights.
  • lemmie177
    lemmie177 Posts: 479 Member
    SonyaCele wrote: »
    glancing over the article, they are saying "light weight" is 30-50% of your 1rm. Thats not necessarily light weight, its just lighter than the 1rm which is what we do anyways when lifting, No lifters use their 1rm for sets, they all use a reduced %. And they say traditional programs lift 10 reps at 90%??, um if you can do 10 reps at 90% than you're 1rm is way too low.

    This article and their research is all fine and dandy, but there are tons of real life body builders and lifters compiling their own research, i'm not going to discount whats tried and true based on one study of a handful of people.

    To be fair, the actual study article references traditional programs being 70-85% x 1RM, but their particular "low rep" group did "75-90% x 1RM, 8-12 repetitions/set". (Which, yeah, kind of calls into question their determination of 1RM if some participants are doing 8-12 reps at 90%.) But I think its just the NYT summary that got "traditional programs" wrong.

    Some important things that weren't mentioned in the NYT summary was that the high rep/low load group ended up doing more volume in order to reach volitional failure. And that in volume-matched studies, high rep/low load is an inferior stimulus for hypertrophy and strength gains.

    An then in the discussion, they write,
    Our results support the concept that maximal strength increases can be achieved with the use of either low or high loads, so long as there is periodic practice of lifting with heavier loads...
    They don't go into detail about this pretty important conditional statement, but both groups were being tested for their 1RM pretty regularly. Anyway, I think the real takeaway is that muscular failure is a strong stimulus for hypertrophy, but I guess that's not really news.
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