81–90 of 371 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, but this post is about hypertrophy (big muscles). Not about heavy lifts.
Well one thing can lead into the other over time. If you can lift 405 once, 315 for reps becomes pedestrian and 225 becomes boring. Lifting that much weight will turn you into a monster faster than if you had not pushed for that capacity. I've seen people who can treat a 225lb barbell as if it's unloaded and 100% of them look like dragon ball Z characters.
> Healthy, recreationally active but untrained young males Yeah this is why. Anything you do as an untrained person is going to get you newbie gains. It's just really easy to improve initially. Doesn't mean it'll work after the first 6 months
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.
I.e. No pain, no gain.
If it's _painful_ you are doing it wrong https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bx3gkHJehRCYZAF3r/pain-is-no...
It's actually fascinating how an ancient proverb could line up with modern science so perfectly.
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.
Particularly as you get older you become more injury prone and your recovery time slows down. This necessitates being cautious about how quickly you increase weight and how often you go to failure.
The better goal to target is increasing volume, where volume is defined as Sets x Reps x Weight. The literature doesn't conclusively establish that any one of these is "more important" than the others for hypertrophy. The only real caveat when you follow this rule is that at a certain extreme of low weight / high reps (like 50 reps) you wouldn't actually be doing resistance training anymore, it'd be cardio.
> Twenty healthy young male participants completed thrice-weekly resistance exercise sessions for 10 weeks. Not sure how much can be concluded from this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has anyone really ever walked to failure on a regular basis? I typically have to stop because of blisters not muscle failure. (The furthest I've done is 12 miles with +10% weight.)
I used to persistent hunt to failure, ended up with bulky calves and tibialis.
I’ve never heard about modern people doing serious persistence hunting, except for a stunt that I read about years ago. I think it was organized by like Outside or some running publication that got pro marathoners to try and they failed because they didn’t know anything about hunting
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).
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…
To increase your 1RM at the most optimal pace, yes you need to specifically train the movement so that you can benefit from improved technique and neurological adaptation. But if I do tricep, pec, and front delt isolation exercises at higher reps, to failure, and see significant hypertrophy in these muscles, my bench press will be stronger, other things constant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
Has anyone really ever walked to failure on a regular basis? I typically have to stop because of blisters not muscle failure. (The furthest I've done is 12 miles with +10% weight.)
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/...