Heavy vs Moderate weights

[Travelboyd]

I'm 41 and been training for 22 years. Competed in powerlifting and latterly low level bodybuilding just to have achievement targets. I find it difficault to motivte myself to get cut without a beach holiday or a comp to gun for.
I still love to train heavy and push all out sets of 5 or 6 reps in the compound exercises. Unfortunately my body likes to remind me that I'm not in my 20's anymore by dishing out the occasional injury.
Have set my sights on returning to the stage as a Master in 2009 and am therefore anxious to avoid set backs between now and my comp'.
Anyway, enough rambling and to my point.......any guys out there (>30yrs in particular) who have moved from heavy weights to higher volume and seen an improvement?
Any thoughts and feedback welcome
TB

[Dave-O]

i try to combine them by finding 4 exercises per body part and doing 18, 2, 6 rep scheme for them, focusing on compound movements. i alternate this workout scheme with max-ot every 6-8 weeks.

[RIPT]

I think for bodybuilding purposes moderate reps/weights are required. Every now and then do really heavy sets to up your strength and shock the muscle.

[drob29]

Im 45, 214 10%, 4 cycles, no AAS until over 40.

I rarely max out now, plain and simple it just hurts! I find that by constantly switching up my training split and workout I have been able to continue to grow.

On days I go heavy I always grab a spotter, always. Or use the hammer strength, or the smith machine.

No sense in letting ego push me to do more than I can, like I really need to prove to the kids at the gym what I can lift.

a while back someone said "how much can you bench"? I said "how fast can your car go"? ......really, if I am at 140 MPH only bad things can happen. same with over loading plates to feed the ego.

lift smart! (but lift)

[Grunt76]

Originally Posted by RIPT

I think for bodybuilding purposes moderate reps/weights are required. Every now and then do really sets to up your strength and shock the muscle.

I totally agree.

Intensity is key more than weight moved. A LOT of guys are misguided about this IMO. Look at Cutler. He never lifts more than his bodyweight lol. but you get my meaning.

[Martin Blank]

About 80% of the time I am in the 8-12 rep range. I try to follow a periodization program, so I do go heavier or lighter from time to time. I work out at home with no spotter so thats another reason I don't go heavy. For me intensity with good form works, and this can be accomplished with moderate weight. I am 41 yo and for me, staying injury free is my top priority.

[RIPT]

Originally Posted by Grunt76

I totally agree.

Intensity is key more than weight moved. A LOT of guys are misguided about this IMO. Look at Cutler. He never lifts more than his bodyweight lol. but you get my meaning.

So he weighs 405 when he benches??

[ironkiwi ozdc trainee]

Originally Posted by RIPT

So he weighs 405 when he benches??

I have all his dvds and i have never seen him bench 405

[Grunt76]

Originally Posted by RIPT

So he weighs 405 when he benches??

He weighs almost that in off-season...

Didn't you get the "J/K" smiley?

[Data]

I once read that a trains engine is larger than a hondas engine because the train has to pull heavier weights for longer than a hondas. This is actually a principle of nature and, economy of motion aside, should apply to biological systems which also obey mechanics.

So in other words I think you have to lift heavy weights. There are ways to reduce the load you lift and still maintain a high magnitude of effort. You can pre-exhaust your lats with a machine pullover, you can use proper form and find ways to focus on the muscle, pause between each negative and positive.

If I can squat 4-5 plates for reps I can bring that down to 3-4 plates if I start off with a set of leg extensions and leg press. What I do is squeeze every rep of the extension at the top. Its not a mass builder so I try to really feel the muscle and squeeze the fully contracted position. I also move very slow and controlled. Once I hit failure on the leg extensions, get my partner to help me complete the rep, and then at the top I hold while he presses down to give me a negative. That single set is very draining so I move on to the leg press and after 4-5 warmups I just hit positive failure with my partner assisting the sled up. Next its squats and if you move slow (controlled negative 3-4 seconds long), focus on pushing through with your heels, you wont be moving much weight.

I train heavy as I can, I keep the reps to < 8, but I always look for ways to reduce the load I'm lifting and keeping the effort high.

[awal]

my typical work set

warm up 20 reps
1st set 15 reps
2nd set 12 reps
3rd set 10 reps
power set 3-6 reps
20 rep pumpset.

[Grunt76]

Saying that lifting heavier will make you bigger leads to the logic that powerlifters are better bodybuilders than bodybuilders. IT IS NOT TRUE.

Yes, your muscles WILL GROW by lifting heavier. Is that the BEST WAY to make them grow? NO!!! One exception might be the pectorals, which by their biomechanics, REQUIRE very heavy weights for full recruitment. No other muscle is arranged in the way it is, so that would be the exception to "HEAVY WEIGHTS".

Other than that, intensity is the key. And I'm not talking HIT crap here. I'm talking Milos Sarcev's concept of intensity. Not that I'm a fan of him, but at least he knows what INTENSITY means.

[RIPT]

Originally Posted by Grunt76

He weighs almost that in off-season...

Didn't you get the "J/K" smiley?

I did, I was making a joke of my own.In One Step Closer he did bench 405.

[steveman]

Originally Posted by Grunt76

Saying that lifting heavier will make you bigger leads to the logic that powerlifters are better bodybuilders than bodybuilders. IT IS NOT TRUE.

Yes, your muscles WILL GROW by lifting heavier. Is that the BEST WAY to make them grow? NO!!! One exception might be the pectorals, which by their biomechanics, REQUIRE very heavy weights for full recruitment. No other muscle is arranged in the way it is, so that would be the exception to "HEAVY WEIGHTS".

Other than that, intensity is the key. And I'm not talking HIT crap here. I'm talking Milos Sarcev's concept of intensity. Not that I'm a fan of him, but at least he knows what INTENSITY means.

Powerlifters aren't better bodybuilders becasue they train with poundages closer to their 1-rep Max for low repetitions and they limit the number of exercises performed. Bodybuilders train muscle groups and powerlifters train lifts. Even though powerlifters are training with extremely heavy poundages, the reptitions are low and not sufficient enough to induce maximum hypertrophy. A bodybuilder needs to have both sufficient load and repetitions. You can't compare the build of a powerlifter with a bodybuider and assume heavy weight is not needed for a bodybuilder to maximize growth since a powerlifter doesn't grow a well. Your comparing apples and oranges.

Assume that a bodybuilder can perform a 1RM squat of 500 pounds. Let's say that he can perfom 8 reps with 80% of his max (400 pounds). If he performed sets of 8 with 400 pounds, don't you think he would yield more gains in muscular size than if he chose 8 reps with 300 pounds? Of course he would.

Data made some good points in his post above. There are ways to "make the weight heavier." For example, pre-exhausting the quads before squats may force you to reach failure at 8 reps with 300 pounds on the above example. The weigh is still "heavy" for the trageted rep range.

To maximize muscular gain a bodybuilder needs use enough resistance and to complete a set where they reach a point where the most musle fibers are recruited. This point may be near, at or ocassionally beyond failure. If the weight is too light, the reps will be too high and it becomes an endurance movement. Therefore, the weight must be heavy enough to reach the threshold.

Good topic and thanks for the debate.

[Grunt76]

Originally Posted by steveman

Data made some good points in his post above. There are ways to "make the weight heavier." For example, pre-exhausting the quads before squats may force you to reach failure at 8 reps with 300 pounds on the above example. The weigh is still "heavy" for the trageted rep range.

I can do 250 reps of squats with just my bodyweight. So by that definition, that is "heavy" because my rep range happens to be 250.

When people talk of training HEAVY they don't mean "heavy for 10" or "heavier than your heavy" they mean heavy as in "I can only do 3 reps". "Making the weight heavy" means ways of adding INTENSITY to a set that would otherwise not be worth doing.

Such as for example, doing chest presses after doing flyes, in superset. That's NOT training heavy. That's INTENSITY.

[steveman]

I'll try to clarify my point.

First, we need to agree on what constitutes intensity. Zatsiorsky's Science And Practice of Strength Training does a good job of showing 4 different measurement techniques: 1) Magnitude of Resistance (weight lifted) as a % of 1RM, 2) Number of Reps Per Set, 3) Number of % of Reps With Maximum Resistance and the 4) Workout Density.

By your example of 250 squats, the magnitude of resistance is low and the reps high. Is this intense enough to illicit the gain desired by a bodybuilder? No! The reason is because the rate of protein degradation is too low to acheive a metabolic reaction that will induce hypertrophy.

You stated that my example of prefatiguing the quads before squats doesn't increase the load, "it raises intensity." I agree...it does raise intensity. It does so by prefatiguing the motor units and forces you to decrease the magnitude of resistance to reach your targeted rep range. In effect, as Data said in his post, it makes the load heavier since you cannot lift as heavy of a weight as you could otherwise lift. If someone could squat a 8RM with 400 fresh, but could only squat an 8RM with 300 after prefatiguing the quads, the motor units would be equally exhausted in both cases.

My original post was in response to soemone who was comparing training of powerlifters and bodybuilders in regard to muscular development. If you research the Size Principle, it shows the order in which the motor units are recruited. You can compare the differences in fiber recruitment with maximal weight (powerlifters) versus submaximal weight (bodybuilders). Submaximal training is more influential on muscle metabolism and induces more hypertrophy. It explains why many strength athletes don't have the same muscle qualities as bodybuilders.

[RIPT]

I usually do my sets like this, 12, 10, 8, 6 pyramiding up in weight so the last set is preety heavy and then forced reps etc., but only on the last set.I don't want to be burned out by my second set.........

[Grunt76]

Originally Posted by steveman

I'll try to clarify my point.

First, we need to agree on what constitutes intensity. Zatsiorsky's Science And Practice of Strength Training does a good job of showing 4 different measurement techniques: 1) Magnitude of Resistance (weight lifted) as a % of 1RM, 2) Number of Reps Per Set, 3) Number of % of Reps With Maximum Resistance and the 4) Workout Density.

By your example of 250 squats, the magnitude of resistance is low and the reps high. Is this intense enough to illicit the gain desired by a bodybuilder? No! The reason is because the rate of protein degradation is too low to acheive a metabolic reaction that will induce hypertrophy.

You stated that my example of prefatiguing the quads before squats doesn't increase the load, "it raises intensity." I agree...it does raise intensity. It does so by prefatiguing the motor units and forces you to decrease the magnitude of resistance to reach your targeted rep range. In effect, as Data said in his post, it makes the load heavier since you cannot lift as heavy of a weight as you could otherwise lift. If someone could squat a 8RM with 400 fresh, but could only squat an 8RM with 300 after prefatiguing the quads, the motor units would be equally exhausted in both cases.

My original post was in response to soemone who was comparing training of powerlifters and bodybuilders in regard to muscular development. If you research the Size Principle, it shows the order in which the motor units are recruited. You can compare the differences in fiber recruitment with maximal weight (powerlifters) versus submaximal weight (bodybuilders). Submaximal training is more influential on muscle metabolism and induces more hypertrophy. It explains why many strength athletes don't have the same muscle qualities as bodybuilders.

I agree with all of this. Sadly, a lot of guys who have the extremely simplistic "heavy = bigger muscles" end up doing 1-3 reps per set, 5 minutes between sets, in order to lift HEAVY and believe that this is optimal for muscle growth.

If you train like I do, supersets and compound sets, such as flies and presses, or sissy squats and then slow-motion leg press is supersets, and so on, you won't lift anything that resembles "heavy" by the previous paragraph's description. Yet, as I grow, the weights on these very INTENSE workouts increase. The weights increase because my muscles grow. But many guys misguidedly think the other way around: "I 1RM 315 on bench. I'll try to 1RM 335 today, and hopefully that will trigger some growth". Or replace the '1' by '3'. That's just silly, because that leads to the idea that powerlifters should be much bigger than bodybuilders.

I am sure you agree. And this is incredibly important to clarify, as per what I see in the gym.

Originally Posted by RIPT

I usually do my sets like this, 12, 10, 8, 6 pyramiding up in weight so the last set is preety heavy and then forced reps etc., but only on the last set.I don't want to be burned out by my second set.........

I agree also. It gets "pretty heavy" yet nothing close to what you would be doing if you did 5-3-1 reps with 5 minutes between sets. Which is what a LOT of guys have in mind when they state training "heavy". I call that training lazy.

[steveman]

Originally Posted by Grunt76

I agree with all of this. Sadly, a lot of guys who have the extremely simplistic "heavy = bigger muscles" end up doing 1-3 reps per set, 5 minutes between sets, in order to lift HEAVY and believe that this is optimal for muscle growth.

You hit the nail on the head. It's very common to see people wasting time training in an approach that conflicts with their goals. I think ego gets in the way. For a bodybuilder, it really doesn't matter what they can 1RM on bench when development of the pecs is what's important. As you stated, 1-3 reps with 5 minutes rest would be a poor choice if pec development is the goal. Likewise, a powerlifter with a big chest and nice muscles is worthless unless he can produce a good 1RM. The training needs to be specific.

Thanks for the discussion.