“You can lift lighter weights, and as long as you lift them with a high degree of effort, they're as good as heavier weights in making you bigger,” he says. Using a home gym machine or even just your own body weight, like with push-ups or lunges, works.
They sometimes think they can't train hard anymore, but if they just go lighter and do more reps, they can build muscle too.” Bottom line: “It's the effort you put in that matters most,” Hyson says. “Lifting heavier builds more strength, but lifting to failure with any weight can build bigger, more aesthetic muscles.”
You can absolutely build muscle without heavy weights, there's actually been studies that affirm that whether the weight is heavy, has little to do with the mass gained. Mass gained is more to do with calorie intake and enough volume of your muscles operating close to failure.
Medium vs. Heavy Weights. For beginners, Ben recommends trying five to 10 pounds for light weights, 10 to 20 pounds for medium weights, and 15 to 30 pounds for heavy weights—or simply starting with five-pound weights for each exercise and working up from there.
No, lifting heavy is not the only way to build muscle and get bigger. While heavy weights can stimulate muscle growth, other factors also play a crucial role: Volume and Repetitions: Training with moderate weights at higher volumes (more sets and reps) can also lead to muscle hypertrophy.
Research suggests lifting smaller weights and doing more repetitions (or, in gym parlance, “reps”) can have a role to play – but it all depends on your goals. In short: if your goal is to build serious strength and bone density, lifting heavy is an efficient way to do it.
Increase the intensity of your workouts instead of working out for long periods of time. Make sure you're getting enough calories and protein in your diet for muscle growth. Get plenty of sleep and give your muscles time for recovery. Try supplements for more strength, energy, and power, like creatine and HMB.
Workouts that use low weight with higher reps are also safer. If you try to lift weights that are too heavy, you are more likely to cause a muscle tear or strain. You can use signals from your body to figure out what size weights to use for your workout.
Downtime between workouts (whether you're lifting, doing cardio or training for a sport) is when our bodies have a chance to actually build muscle. Strenuous workouts cause muscle breakdown, while rest allows our bodies to build it back up.
Many bodybuilders tend to do cutting and bulking phases. If they are in a cutting phase (fat loss/calorie deficit phase) working with higher reps and lighter weights is preferential due to the reduced neurological impact compared to heavier weights.
Train like a bodybuilder: If you're looking to maximize muscle size, target 8-12 reps per set (on average) and choose multijoint movements like the bench press, squat, overhead press, bent-over row, and deadlift, which recruit more total muscle mass than single-joint moves, thus allowing you to lift heavier weights.
Pay Attention to Progressive Overload
The body doesn't like building muscle – it's not efficient. If you're naturally skinny, this applies even more. Which is why you need to force your muscles to adapt with increased overload. You need to focus on either adding weight or doing more reps with the same weight.
Working with higher reps and lighter weights or lower reps with heavier weights will affect your body differently. According to the strength-endurance continuum, low rep counts are best for building muscular strength, moderate rep counts for building muscle mass, and high rep counts for building endurance.
Protein and creatine are both beneficial supplements that may help you reach your fitness goals — whatever they may be. Creatine gives you the extra energy you need to power through your workouts and boosts athletic performance, while protein helps build and repair muscles for a more effective recovery.
A small study also found that performance for strength and endurance exercises peaked in the afternoon from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. So, hit the gym, the street or your exercise mat a few hours after eating a protein-packed lunch. That's the most likely time to achieve peak performance.
Try to plan one recovery day for every 2 to 3 days of training. Except after a competition or a very intense effort, it is ideal to avoid choosing 2 consecutive rest days.
This holds that regardless of whether you're trying to build muscle, strength, power, or endurance, performing three sets of 10 reps per exercise is a good place to start. The scheme mostly works, especially if you're just starting out with strength training—because everything works in the beginning.
“You can lift lighter weights, and as long as you lift them with a high degree of effort, they're as good as heavier weights in making you bigger,” he says. Using a home gym machine or even just your own body weight, like with push-ups or lunges, works.
The 6-12-25 Protocol is a powerhouse training protocol that harnesses the intensity of giant sets to pack high-volume work into a short period. By targeting one muscle group or body part per set, this method takes you through three different exercises with minimal rest, hitting 6, 12, and 25 reps in quick succession.