LIFTING progressively heavier weights if you want to get stronger is the accepted wisdom of strength training. But a new study from McMaster University in Canada challenges this traditional message by suggesting that lifting lighter weights repetitively is just as efficient.
Stuart Phillips, senior author on the study and professor in the university’s Department of Kinesiology, recruited two sets of experienced weightlifters for the study – all of them men – and asked them to follow a 12-week, whole-body weight training programme.
One group was instructed to lift lighter weights (up to 50 per cent of their maximum strength) for sets ranging from 20 to 25 repetitions. The other group lifted heavier weights (up to 90% of maximum strength) for eight to twelve repetitions. Both groups lifted to the point of failure.
Lift light: weights needn’t be heavy for strength gains
When Professor Phillips and his team analysed muscle and blood samples in both groups, they found gains in muscle mass and muscle fibre size, a key measure of strength, were almost identical.