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Originally Posted by vesonexavier Here's the definitive question: Is it Better to do low weights high reps or the other way around? what has worked for you guys? |
There is no either/or, good/bad, better/worse.
How you exercise is completely dependent on your current state and your goals.
Here's an example for you:
You have two women both looking to lose fat. One is 300 lbs and the other is 130 lbs.
In terms of weight lifting, the heavier woman would probably benefit more from the circuit type of training where you use high volumes of work using lighter weights and short rest. In this event, you're turning it more or less into another form of cardiovascular exercise with a hint of strength training. The reason this would be optimal for her is pretty simple: at this stage in the game, burning the most amount of calories is going to be the primary factor that will contribute to weight loss and circuit training is going to accomplish that better than your traditional strength training routine of heavier weights, lower reps, and more rest.
The lighter woman might be better off (IMO definitely would be better off) by sticking with the more traditional strength training stuff I mentioned above. Not b/c of caloric expenditure so much, but more for what this type of stimulus/training does to the body. Primarily, it triggers muscle maintenance.... it gives your body a reason to hold on to the muscle you currently have. The closer you get to an ideal weight, the more probable muscle loss becomes. This is an important concept. (a) Muscle keeps your metabolism nice and healthy and (b) I think one of the major things most women looking to get tone do wrong is move to lighter and lighter weights and higher and higher reps following the misconception that this sort of training causes toning.
Toning is a function of fat loss and muscle maintenance. Losing weight is easy, just create a caloric deficit. But genetically average people, especially women, who aren't carrying a lot of fat carry the big risk of losing muscle if they don't take precautionary action; one of those things is proper, traditional strength training. Which, as I said above, goes against what gets passed around traditionally as good advice.
In essence, for the lighter woman, weight lifting transforms from something that gets your heart rate going and expends calories to more of something that triggers muscle maintenance. For her, diet and cardio will be the primary players in terms of establishing the caloric deficit. Don't get me wrong, traditional strength training burns calories too, but it's primary purpose in the 'program' isn't that.
Make sense? I feel like I'm rambling.