Monday, May 21, 2018

Choosing a weight: Heavy or light?

Both heavy weights and light weights will help you get strong, as long as you put in enough effort.

The idea that exercising one way will illicit one response and exercising another way will illicit a different response has allowed the fitness industry to play with our emotions for decades. If everyone just focused on getting a strong as they possibly could be through strength training with good form, it'd be really hard to keep filling those column inches with the latest exercise fad that promises "X" amount of inches in "Y" amount of time.

The truth is, we are all genetically predetermined at birth to respond to exercise in a certain way. Some of us grow big muscles easily, while most of us tend to see strength increases, but little in the way of increased mass.

Depending on your goals, this can either be a good thing or a bad thing — but you really shouldn't worry about it, because you don't have any control over it!

So when people ask if Efficient Fitness uses heavy weights and low reps or light weights and high reps, I ask them "Would you rather workout for 20 minutes, or two hours?"

All that really matters when you're trying to increase strength is delivering a meaningful enough level of fatigue that stimulates your muscles into making a positive adaptation. You can accomplish this both ways — you can lift a pair of pink eight-pound dumbbells over your head all day long until you pass out, but do you really want to?

Doesn't doing one one set on an overhead press machine with a challenging weight to momentary muscular fatigue for a couple minutes sound a little bit better?

Both roads lead to Rome and choosing one over the other will not determine how you respond to the exercise. Light weights don't get you "toned" and heavy weights don't make you "bulky." You'll look how you'll look, and that's strong.

So you might as well choose the protocol that gets you out of the gym quicker, so you can spend more time doing whatever it is that makes you happy, because I'm pretty sure hours and hours of daily weight lifting is not one of them!

Want to achieve your fitness goals in the safest, most time-efficient manner possible? Contact matt@efficient-fitness.com or call 425-214-2251 to book your free, introductory appointment today.