5 Advantages to Lifting Light Weight
Studies show that decreasing the load on your lifts can lead to greater muscle gains.
2 of 6 More Effort = More Muscle Growth.
In a ground-breaking study recently published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, found that effort, not load, can actually increase muscle growth. Upending the commonly-accepted training philosophy that hypertrophy occurs only through heavy lifting, the study demonstrated that subjects who lifted lighter weights until reaching muscular failure can gain just as much size and strength as guys who pull big.
Moreover, testosterone and growth hormone – markers of hypertrophic growth – were found to be as elevated in subjects who lifted to failure with light weights, as in subjects who hoisted heavier at a lower rep range. The key is in the effort exerted, explains Robert Morton, PhD candidate in Kinesiology and lead author of the study. “If you want to get bigger, what drives muscle growth is how much effort, not load, you lift with. Using light weights until ‘failure' will stimulate and grow both your type I and type II muscle fibers – the type II fibers being those which had always been associated with only heavy lifting.”
SEE ALSO: The 6 Worst Exercises for Lifting Heavy
In a ground-breaking study recently published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, found that effort, not load, can actually increase muscle growth. Upending the commonly-accepted training philosophy that hypertrophy occurs only through heavy lifting, the study demonstrated that subjects who lifted lighter weights until reaching muscular failure can gain just as much size and strength as guys who pull big.
Moreover, testosterone and growth hormone – markers of hypertrophic growth – were found to be as elevated in subjects who lifted to failure with light weights, as in subjects who hoisted heavier at a lower rep range. The key is in the effort exerted, explains Robert Morton, PhD candidate in Kinesiology and lead author of the study. “If you want to get bigger, what drives muscle growth is how much effort, not load, you lift with. Using light weights until ‘failure' will stimulate and grow both your type I and type II muscle fibers – the type II fibers being those which had always been associated with only heavy lifting.”
SEE ALSO: The 6 Worst Exercises for Lifting Heavy
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