RE: Weight Training for Weight Loss (Muscle Definition)
Trevor, I don't have any arrows to shoot, but my rose bushes are trying to bloom and it's only 40 degrees here!! Will you take some rose stems, fresh with thorns, instead? }( Actually, I just have a couple of comments to make, and they are likely to show how out of the loop I am when it comes to new theories on weight training.
I do know what hypertrophy means, so I guess I have that going for me ... LOL!! Anyway ... I always thought - and someone please correct me if this is now passe information - that to increase muscle size you had to work said muscle to exhaustion. Also, I always believed that lower weights combined with higher number of reps equaled more of an endurance type workout. On the other extreme, higher weights with lower reps - and working the muscle to exhaustion at the end of those last couple of reps - would result in building the muscle mass - increasing the size. So ... I guess my question in all this is ... why should it matter how many actual reps you do, when the GOAL is to work the muscle to exhaustion?
For example, when I first started doing the Slow & Heavy series, which I use for building muscle, not endurance, I started at a weight I could use, and worked the muscle to exhaustion by the third set, and the last couple of reps of that set. The first time I did Biceps and Triceps, for example, I was using 2 10# dumbells for bicep curls. When the 10's no longer worked the muscle to exhaustion by the end of the cycle, I upped it to 2 12#'s. When that no longer did the trick I upped it to my current weight of 2 15#'s. That is now almost not working the muscle to exhaustion by the end of the third cycle, but the jump from 30# total to 40# total is a big one. Does it really matter that I'm actually doing 24 total reps (3 sets of 8)? What if the workout were designed to do 4 sets of 10? What I'm asking is, is there actual scientific evidence that you have to do a specific number of reps at that exhaustion weight, or is that simply an arbitrary number so it gives you something by which to measure progress? It would seem to me that it wouldn't really matter what the actual count was, if the goal is to work the muscle to exhaustion. Of course, I do understand that to truly monitor progress you have to do the same number of reps each time, but is the actual number you pick significant?
Does this question make any sense to anyone besides me?? LOL!!
Thanks in advance!!
Carol
