Standing Leg wk vs Floor Leg wk

[Faythe]

I have a (2) questions for Cathe and the educated crowd.
Is it true that standing leg work such as squats, lunges, etc are more effective than floor work, even with weights? If so, why? I do both and mix them up. When I don't have as much strength I do floor work if it's a day for lower body. It's much easier for me to do floorwork, although still challenging with the weights I choose.
Also I was wondering if you should have light weight days and heavy days (which I heard is good)? How is the light weight effective? If your going to endurance rather than strength should you use lighter weights?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Faythe

 

[lwseymour]

Just bumping. I would also like to hear what Cathe has to say about this.

 

[Beets]

I think that doing both standing and floor work like you are doing now is just great. The reason: the standing work is making a few muscle groups work together--for example, when you do squats and lunges, you are working quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves, core muscles,etc. but none are working at 100% of their capacity. When you do the floor work, you can isolate things like the quads and hamstrings, etc to work them specifically. In terms of having lighter weight/higher rep days, that is a good thing as well. You have two muscle fiber types (well actually there are subsets of the two main ones but that gets a litte too detailed than you need!). Type I muscle fibers are the endurance/lower strength fibers and are what you are primarily working with the floor routine. The Type II fibers are the strength/lower endurance fibers and the primary ones being worked with the heavy squats/lunges, etc. Keep up what you are doing and don't question any exercise as not being worth it!

 

[Faythe]

Thanks Beets, that's very helpful!
Faythe