What weight is best?

As a fitness professional, I frequently receive two types of questions from beginners. The question that does not relate to what protein powder they should choose focuses on a very different matter: How much weight should they be lifting on a given exercise?

It’s a perfectly good question, and there’s no simple answer. In fact,A number of variables are in play here, so let’s go through them one at a time. Doing so will allow you to customise your training program to ensure you’re using the right weight every time.

You can pick up a 5kg bar, curl it 75 times, and, after a while, you’ll become fatigued and your arms will get pumped. You’ll certainly be sweating a lot. Conversely, you can pick up an 25kg bar, curl it 8 times, then have to drop it because you can’t do any more reps. In both cases, you trained “hard.” But is one approach better than another? It may surprise you to learn that the answer changes depending on your goal. If you’re looking to get as strong as possible, you’ll be using a heavier weight than someone who is trying to get as big as possible. And to improve muscular endurance, you’ll use an even lighter weight.

Strength training means choosing weights that allow you to train in a rep range of 1-6.

Building muscle mean choosing weights that allow you to train in a rep range of 8-12.

Focusing on muscular endurance means choosing weights that allow you to train for at least 15 reps.

Let’s take a closer look at the three training protocols.

Training for strength The biggest, strongest men and women —powerlifters, Olympic lifters, Strongmen—have one thing on their minds: getting stronger. To lift heavy objects in competition means they have to likewise lift heavy objects in practice. That means, basically, lifting really, really heavy.

Focusing on strength requires doing multi-joint movements like bench presses, squats, and deadlifts. Here, more than a single set of joints are working at once, such as the shoulder and elbow joints working together on a bench press. This multi-joint action recruits more total muscle mass, thus allowing you to lift heavier weights.

The actual muscle fibres being recruited during very heavy sets are called fast-twitch muscle fibres; they’re the ones that are more prone to growing bigger and stronger in response to resistance training as well. However, they run out of steam fairly quickly, which is why you can’t lift a very heavy weight very many times.

Rest periods between sets for main lifts are fairly long (3-5 minutes) so that incomplete recovery doesn’t inhibit succeeding sets. Of course, lifting heavy means warming up well beforehand, so a number of progressively heavier warm-up sets precede the maximal weights.

Strength trainers also avoid taking sets to muscle failure, a technique used primarily by bodybuilders.

Training for muscle size While those who train for maximising strength do in fact get big, their methods may not be the most effective for maximally increasing muscle size (hypertrophy). Bodybuilders and gym rats who aim to increase the size of their muscles take a slightly different approach to determining how much weight they use. Here, Choosing a weight in which they can do 8-12 reps has been shown to maximise muscle gains.