Article Link Light weights, heavy weights, it's up to you

[Negin]

Originally Posted by frostyjan

Using a bolster instead of a stability ball would have saved me 2 surgeries and months of rehab when my ball popped during chest flyes leaving me with a fractured wrist.
Reminding everyone how risky weighted exercises on a ball are!

Oh no. I'm so sorry. Thank you for the warning. I'm going to keep that in mind.

[Negin]

Originally Posted by frostyjan

Using a bolster instead of a stability ball

Is there a bolster that you can recommend?

Originally Posted by Leonana

I no longer have a stability ball

Leonana, do you use anything instead?

[Leonana]

Negin, no I don’t use anything else. I don’t do workouts with stability balls. It’s mostly due to space. I workout in my bedroom, storage space is limited. I do have a small Pilates ball.

[Leonana]

Originally Posted by wendug

I try to do this, too. But I'm finding when I take a break from lifting heavy I really miss it.

The article did say heavy lifting exercisers saw a small gain in strength and muscle over the light lifters.

[Sue B]

Originally Posted by Jane P.

I generally like medium reps 10 to 12, but I also love Pilates so I constantly toggle between the two.

The study (link:https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...31556523001407) compared "traditional" strength training of 8-12 reps with lighter reps of 20-24. So you're training heavy according to their definition. I bet a lot of beginners can't lift more than about 10-I used to be like that-and some older folks might struggle just to lift their arms 20 times with no weight.

[Sue B]

Originally Posted by Vintage VFer

I try to do a change up every few months. Light weight/low reps - medium weight/medium weights - high weight/low reps.

Keeps thing interesting!

I like changing it up too. My favorite programs are a mix of weights.

From the second, meta-study (https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2...ts-2023-106807) I really liked the conclusion:

"Since all protocols increased strength and hypertrophy, rather than determining an ‘optimal’ protocol, future work could determine minimal ‘doses’ of resistance exercise and practices to promote engagement and adherence in this health-promoting form of exercise"

[Vintage VFer]

Originally Posted by frostyjan

Brilliant!!

Using a bolster instead of a stability ball would have saved me 2 surgeries and months of rehab when my ball popped during chest flyes leaving me with a fractured wrist.

Reminding everyone how risky weighted exercises on a ball are!

I remember that and bought a new ball. I also do ball moves on a thick mat. Hugs, Jan!

I still have my BodyWedge and use that for incline moves.

[prettyinpink]

Originally Posted by Leonana

The article did say heavy lifting exercisers saw a small gain in strength and muscle over the light lifters.

And this small study was in those who had never lifted weights before. I thought that this had been known for a while now, that lighter weights also build muscle.

The key is working to failure, like the article says.

I like to use lighter weights with higher reps sometimes, but I’m not yet as good at finding the correct weight for failure at higher reps as I am with heavier ones. When I used to do mostly lighter weights, I increased a little at first and then got stuck at the same weight for years, probably because I was following the video for reps too closely and not what my true max was.

[hch]

Thanks for the thread. Some reactions:

- Both the first study and the article mention that the subject needs further study.

After reading this part, I remembered, by way of partial contrast, a set of news-flavored online health articles from around 20-25 years ago. They tended to have sweeping messages based on simplistic readings of single studies. "AcCoRdInG tO a NeW sTuDy, YoU cAn SeNd YoUr HeAvY wEiGhTs To ThE sCrAp HeAp!!!!" I don't miss that kind of lazy or sensationalistic writing.

Some of the language in this article, though, is also at least potentially misleading when taken out of context. I'm thinking of phrasing like "any way at all" or "easy." One problem is that "easy" has readings that don't quite fit the stated goal of volitional failure, and I wonder how many casual or distracted readers may get the impression that 3 curls with 2 soup cans once a year is somehow an effective workout.

- In looking for discussion, I found a Reddit discussion of the article , which includes some points with which I agree. (I do not know who these people are.) Some of these points concern (generally) limitations of viewpoint, different responses from individuals to exercise, and my earlier point about calling things "easy."

Later, I'll read the studies closer and have some non-expert thoughts on what I see.

My immediate next post, though, is about three loosely related thoughts.

[hch]

As mentioned in my last post:

Thought 1: the article ties "traditional" heavier training with the phrase "more tradition than science," but the article doesn't mention a contrasting strain of "tradition," a strain that instead promotes Lots of Light Lifting (or alternatives to weights) for women of certain supposed body types--in some cases, even for all women.

VF seems to have been largely spared wars over The One True Protocol for building strength and size (and I don't miss such threads), but we did sometimes have long discussions, sometimes rather fraught ones, about the supposed best protocol for goals like "weight loss" or "slimming." VFers in these discussions mentioned getting different kinds of "results," even results contrary to conventional wisdom about people with certain supposed body types were supposed to do.

Thought 2: What if the studies are right? Even before these studies, I've had some thoughts about why those VF discussions never quite reached any specific conclusions that was as neat as what some self-styled fitness experts would like us to think. These studies may support multiple parts of what I've suspected, but for now these are speculations.

Thought 3: What I found the most jarring note in the article is the last paragraph, which lets us know that weight training won't make most of us look like The Rock. I was a little surprised to see that type of "reassurance" in one of the world's newspapers of record in 2023 (I've always found this statement problematic, from as long ago as when it was most likely to be "look like Arnold"), but maybe I shouldn't have been surprised.