I am Steve Terrano, welcome to section Body Performance.
Common question that guys ask me, hey Steve, is it better to lift lighter weights for more reps?
Or heavier weights for a fewer reps?
Do you get the same results?
And the answer is no.
Muscles grow because of the intensity of the contractions, not the number of contractions.
If we simply the number of contractions, we have a big like simply from walking around.
So, when you take a lighter weight and you lifted a lot of times, that is good. It is better than nothing. Absolutely, it is not bad way to start. It helps prevent injury.
But as you begin to gaining shape, you got up to weight and begin to lower to reps and I do not care if you are looking to gain strength, become more muscular, or you are playing a particular sport and want to add some strength.
The most effective and the most efficient way of doing that is to increase your weight and drop your reps now, how many reps should you do?
6, 8, 10?
That is all depends on how much you lift, how long have you been lifting,, how warmed up you are, I mean I can like press a thousand pounds, but I have to do a lot of sets to get up to it.
And by the time I get to the 8 - 900 or 1000 pounds, I do it 8, 10 times and by the time I get to the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th rep, it is difficult.
If I tried to make a way so heavy that the first two or three reps were difficult, there is a potential chance that I can get injured.
So, I would rather do 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 reps in a heavier weight, that way the last few reps are heavy and it makes it much safer unless chance of getting injured.
So that is my prospective on heavy versus light and lower reps versus high reps.
Love your body.
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