High or Low Weights, High or Low Reps

What a lot of people misunderstand is that light weights become heavy — the more repetitions you do. Light weights don’t remain light, the more repetitions one does. So if one does light weights, they will eventually become heavy, and then the muscle will progressively fatigue until it fails.

Meanwhile, if one takes a heavy weight, they will quit rather than risk failing — and being crushed by the heavy weight. In order to avoid that, they will require many spotters to prevent that disaster from happening — which then wastes a lot of manpower because the spotters end up doing most of the work — while the trainee quits way before their muscles are fatigued, much less fail.

The definition of failure is the inability to move even with no weight — at which point, one is making a supreme effort with all the muscles of the body — to help the intended muscle of focus, complete any semblance of the movement. When that failure is breached, the body has to adapt and get stronger, whereas if one can still easily do a repetition and even quits many repetitions before breaching that threshold of failure, there is no need for the body to adapt to a higher level of challenge. That’s why such people don’t change — and show any progress — because what they are invariably doing, is resting — and playing with their cell phones.

They are not actually exercising most of the time — but actually resting 90% of the time, and it clearly shows. That is the argument for high repetitions — even with low weights — because actually performed, they will become heavy weights — while those performing few repetitions — even with heavy weights, are usually resting. And it is that resting, that allows them to do heavier weights — for a few poorly executed repetitions, and it is the movement itself, done properly, that is far more important than weight handled poorly.

Even the world’s strongest weightlifters, always begin doing the light weights — in the proper form, or they do not add more weight, because, as in any sport or accomplishment, it is execution, execution, execution — and not simply who can make the most noise dropping the most weight. Precision, efficiency, and economy of movement is what one is conditioning oneself to do — and that is the objective, and the ultimate measure — and not how big one can get and how many calories they can consume, how many pieces of equipment they monopolize, etc.

So when I hear these “experts” claim that if the weights are light, they can do infinite repetitions (theoretically) because they have never tried — or they would know that is not true, and have no idea what muscular failure is. A properly performed movement for muscle growth consists of changing the muscular state from 0 to 100% contraction — and that difference determines the rate of circulatory flow through that muscle — just as the heart works as a pump — alternating a 100% contraction with a 100% relaxation — or it fails!

Muscles worked in that manner, grow become that is how the circulation in that area is increased — to optimalize health and beyond it, to grow. Without that improvement in circulation, the muscle remains the same, and even atrophies in time. Movement directly effects the circulation to those areas actually moved — because it is the skeletal muscle contractions that produce the force back towards the heart and creating the space for blood coming from the heart. But the heart does not force the blood into the capillaries and back towards the heart as many people think — if they remain full but simply causes the heart to work harder to no avail and purpose.

One does not raise the heart rate to hit a homerun, but hitting a homerun will raise the heart rate. Correlation is not causation. Work causes muscle fatigue, and eventually failure, and then one needs rest to recover, and not as many believe, that they need to work out even more frequently — or can. High intensity exercise needs to be brief and infrequent, but a lesser intensity will actually help the recovery from the resulting muscle soreness by producing the contractions that reduce the inflammation, and can be done as much as desired or needed.

The key in all this is extending the range of the movement from greatest relaxation to greatest contraction, because that is the change in muscular state from 0–100% — and that is what one is practicing and exercising their ability to improve. That will keep them healthy as much as it is possible to do — which is by far the most important objective. Some people will exhibit much more dramatic results — but you don’t know which one will until they actually do everything right.

Most people add weight but shorten the movement — and may actually obtain much less benefits in doing so, because the ultimate objective is to increase their range of movement. That will require a sufficiency light weight, practiced many times to achieve that proficiency — rather than cultivating the mentality that they just want to get it over with as soon as possible — so they can get back to resting and checking their cell phones.

The usually productive people in the gym, are usually to be seen actually doing repetitions, rather than resting overly long with the bars loaded up as much as possible.