Written by Jen Ator
“Muscle” and “strength” and “lifting” as it all happens in
your average local gym is what makes strength training intimidating for some.
“Instatrainers” and showoffs and pseudoscientists on social media only make it
noisier with conflicting research, elaborate workout protocols, and stunt
exercise videos to get eyeballs.
But strength training is critical for health. We all need
it. Keeping our bodies strong and functional is how we maintain health and
achieve, hopefully, longevity.
So let’s get away from the show of muscle.
Some facts based on the most recent science: You don’t have
to lift heavy weights to get great results (unless you want to). You don’t need
complex equipment and workouts to get great results (unless you want those
things).
In fact, lighter weights can give you the same
muscle-building results as heavier weight if you know how to do it. You can
also lift those lighter weights to achieve more muscular power, which, as
you’ll see, is something worth striving for as you get older.
So let’s put on a different muscle show — based on the
latest data.
What Really Matters
With Strength Training
When it comes to building and maintaining muscle, two
factors matter more than anything else: volume and loading.
Brad Schoenfeld, PhD, is a professor in exercise science at
CUNY Lehman College in the Bronx in New York City. He’s also a researcher who
has published more than 300 studies in the field of exercise science and sports
nutrition. His studies have consistently found that total training volume — that
is, the sum of all the sets performed per muscle group per week — is a key
driver of muscle hypertrophy (a.k.a. growth).
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Individual differences such as training experience, recovery
capacity, and even genetic factors can influence how much volume is optimal for
you.
“Some people respond better to lower volumes, some people
need more volume to maximize their results,” says Shoenfeld. “But as a general
guideline, to optimize hypertrophy you want to be somewhere between 10 to 20
sets per muscle per week.”
So to target the quads, for example, you’d want to complete
three to four sets of exercises like squats and leg presses two to three times
a week. To hit 20 total sets, you’d need to do five to seven sets of the same
exercises across three sessions.
Is that the bare minimum? No. That’s the ideal. Shoenfeld’s
team recently published a review paper where they looked at what might be a
“minimal effective dose.”
“It was roughly around four sets per muscle per week, which
can be done in two to three half-hour sessions,” he says. “If your goal is just
to build some muscle, gain some strength, you can get very nice results and — I
think probably for most people — the majority of gains in that period of time.”
He quickly follows up with an important caveat: “Provided
you’re training hard.”
That’s where loading comes in.
Why Light Can Be as
Good as Heavy
“In certain respects, my views have done a 180 [over the
years], and nothing can be characterized more so than loading,” says Shoenfeld.
“I had always thought that if you're doing anything over 12 to 15 repetitions,
you're not going to gain muscle. The literature has now compellingly shown that
you can gain similar amounts of muscle across a wide loading spectrum — even up
to 30 to 40 repetitions.”
A study by one of his peers back in 2012 was a real
watershed moment. “It was on untrained subjects doing leg extensions, and it
showed that there was no difference in whole muscle hypertrophy between 30% 1RM
(which is like 30 reps) versus 80% 1RM (which was like eight reps),” says
Shoenfeld. He couldn’t believe it. In fact, he decided to do his own study to
prove his colleague wrong.
“And lo and behold, I carried out that study and — no
difference,” he says.
Since then, there's been so much evidence across the
spectrum of populations: untrained, trained, older, younger, men, women.
“Really any and every population has been extensively studied,” he says. “And
it really is a beautiful thing because it provides so much flexibility and options
to carry out resistance training.”
It's great news for people who don’t want to or can’t lift
heavy weights.
“The caveat to this is that the lighter loads have to be
taken with a high degree of effort. If you do not extensively challenge your
muscles — meaning that the last few reps are difficult to complete — you're not
going to achieve gains,” he says.
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So when we talk about light loads, this isn’t about grabbing
a pair of pink dumbbells and breezing through a few reps. you must challenge
the muscles.
Remember: The reason the body adapts to anything is through
a survival mechanism, says Schoenfeld. “If you are not challenging it in a way
it is not accustomed to being challenged, it has no impetus to adapt. The
reason you will get these adaptations in strength and power, muscle endurance,
bone density, etc., is because the muscles and bones, tendons and ligaments are
being challenged beyond their present capacity.”
The only downside to lighter loads? They take longer. “If
you're doing 30 reps, the sets are going to take triple the amount of time if
you're training with 10 reps,” he says. “So that can be a consideration if
you're very time-pressed.”
But if you want to avoid the heavier iron, the effort is
worth it.
Speaking of Effort:
Lifting Lighter for Muscle Power
As Schoenfeld says, you want to reach a point where you lift
almost to failure, meaning the last few reps will be really hard. Theoretically
you’d do the same thing lifting heavy weights. Those tough reps do you the best
no matter how much weight you lift.
Another interesting benefit of lifting lighter weights: You
can experiment with lifting the weight faster and more explosively to generate
more power.
New research in Mayo Clinic Proceedings shows that muscle
power — which comes from force and velocity — is linked to lower risk of
premature death than just muscle strength alone, particularly as we get older.
For example, a good proxy for overall strength is a handgrip
test where you squeeze a dynamometer to get a grip strength measurement. That’s
very easy to track over time, and grip strength has long been considered a good
measure of overall vitality.
Muscle power isn’t as easy to test, say, in a doctor’s
office because it requires you to move a certain weight as fast and hard as you
can through a range of motion. This is particularly important as we age because
as we lose muscle and strength, power goes too. As the study authors say,
“Every time an individual performs a movement against gravity or inertia, it is
muscle power rather than muscle strength that is the most important variable in
terms of muscle function.”
Lifting lighter weights can allow you to experiment with
lifting for power. The participants in that study did upper-body rows with
increasing speed and force to measure their power. You can do the same through
your variety of lifts. Just be careful you don’t break form.
This also will raise the intensity of your workout, which
has been linked to all kinds of benefits, including better cardiovascular
fitness, curbed hunger, better cognition, and reduced cancer risk.
The only downside to lifting lighter weight? It’s possible your
muscles could take longer to recover from the workout. You’ll need to pay
attention to how your body responds to these different approaches, says
Schoenfeld.
“You need to really start to be in tune with your body,” he
says. “I think a lot of times people are just oblivious. They get into a
routine and it just ‘has to do this, have to do that.’ Try to be intuitive.”
SOURCES:
Brad Schoenfeld, PhD, CSCS, FNSCA, professor of exercise
science, CUNY Lehman College, Bronx, New York City.
Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: “Effects of
Resistance Training Volume on Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review and
Meta-Analysis.”
Sports Medicine: “No Time to Lift? Designing Time-Efficient
Training Programs for Strength and Hypertrophy: A Narrative Review,”
“Physiological Responses and Adaptations to Lower Load Resistance Training:
Implications for Health and Performance,” “Dose–Response Modelling of
Resistance Exercise Across Outcome Domains in Strength and Conditioning: A
Meta-analysis.”
Mayo Clinic Proceedings: “Muscle Power Versus Strength as a
Predictor of Mortality in Middle-Aged and Older Men and Women.”
