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It does matter. It's the only objective way to measure progress. A study doesn't negate that.
isnt the 1RM the measure of progress?
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There's no way this works in practice. A lot of heavy lifting (maximums) is about neurology and mind-body training. You cannot develop the ability to deadlift 405lbs by spending 2 hours using a cable crossover machine every day. Picking up something that weighs 2x more than you do requires your brain to send an extremely strong, synchronized signal. This is something that takes a lot of practice to develop. You have…
Right, but this post is about hypertrophy (big muscles). Not about heavy lifts.
tldr appears to be that if you work to fatigue it doesn't matter if you fatigue out with high weights vs low weights
I.e. No pain, no gain.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bx3gkHJehRCYZAF3r/pain-is-no...
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> Loads for each set were adjusted to ensure that volitional fatigue was reached within 8–12 and 20–25 repetitions for the HL and LL limbs, respectively I would argue both categories of the study are about low reps. I don't see how the body would tell the difference between 12 and 25 reps. If you said between 5 and 500, like it has to meaningfully take much longer, otherwise why would doing something so similar have…
I feel like I would definitely notice if I went from 12 to 25 reps on any exercise I do. Although typically I max out at 8 before adding more weight.
To be clear, the implication is that 12 and 25 have different weights so they tire you the same amount. Do you think it would be a very strongly felt difference in that situation? What would the difference feel like?
If I read this correctly the gist is that it does not matter if you use heavy weights with few reps (common body builder wisdom) or lighter weights with more reps. As long as you always exercise to complete muscle fatigue you'll get the maximum for your genetics (which itself varies a lot).
Can we replicate the process of reaching muscle fatigue/failure to spur muscle growth without the strength training or anabolic steroids? Think GLP-1RAs but for this specific biological pathway. https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/lilly-terminate-obesity-t... https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/...
This is one of the view places where “if we could we would” is the correct answer. There is so much money in the space of anabolic cheating, the clandestine scientists would’ve already developed it.
I thought it was already well understood/researched that it's not the weights that matter, but effectively taking your sets to muscular failure. While one might think "I can do 50 reps with low weights" there is practical aspects to this - you don't wand to spend hours at the gym, and doing heavy weights at 5-7 reps is sufficient as long as you are close or at muscular failure.
>While one might think "I can do 50 reps with low weights" The caveat is that you need anaerobic training. Low enough weight and it’s cardio, you don’t get giant legs by walking to failure for example.
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What about the old gym adage "training to failure is failing to train" - is there any physiological basis for this, or is it mental, or just a myth?
It's definitely way more nuanced than that. You have to approach exhaustion to get the body to eventually build strength. But you need to carefully time your rests/deloads and handle plateaus with more volume.
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To me it doesn't sound much different than "taking your sets to muscular failure".
Not all muscles resist extension, some do the opposite and contract.