If you have lifted even a dumbbell, this is the first question that would have popped into head. Should you do light weight lifting with more reps or heavy weight lifting with fewer reps?
The answer depends entirely on what your fitness goal is. Are you trying to cut? Or bulk? Or simply trying to lose weight?
But even then, one of these lifting styles takes an edge over the other. Let’s see which one:
When Should You Lift Light Weight?
If your goal is to shed those extra pounds, you should go for higher reps with light weights. Lifting light is also good for building muscle endurance since you are going to use more aerobic energy thus gaining more stamina for any endurance sport. Doing 15-20 reps of low weight lifting involves your slow-twitch muscle fibers that give your muscles higher endurance. One thing which is important to note here is that even if you are doing higher reps with fewer weights, you would have to start moving to higher weights in the future since your body would adapt to the current weights and would offer no resistance thereby giving you almost no progressive results.
When Should You Lift Heavy Weight?
If you are looking at gaining strength, toning your body, building muscle or bulking up, you should go heavier with 8-10 of maximum repetitions. Going heavy won’t bulk women up though since women do not have the amount of testosterone required to release the hormone that increases the size of your muscles resulting in bulk. Lifting heavier weights also burns more fat for longer hours. During lifting, the body looks for fat stores in the body for energy resulting in the release of fat burning hormones up to eight hours after the workout. Although light weight lifting creates more endurance, heavy weights boost the metabolism as a result of more muscle mass causing the body to burn fat even when you are not working out since muscles burn more than fat.
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