Muscle Building

Building Muscle Without All The Heavy Lifting

August 16, 2010
By J White

You look in the mirror and see your puny body. You would love to build muscle, but the idea of constantly having to lift heavy weights doesn’t appeal to you. Well according to a new study out conducted by McMaster University you can actually bulk up without all that heavy lifting.

In their study the researchers found that a similar degree of muscle building was possible by using lighter weights. The secret: pump the iron until you reach muscle fatigue.

That’s right. Rather than grunting and straining to lift heavy challenging weight, just grab something lighter and go until you are exhausted. This means of course lifting till you can’t lift anymore.

The researchers are convinced that growing new muscle simply means stimulating your muscle to make new muscle. Over time this process will help your body to accumulate more and bigger muscle tissue.

Keep in mind that the key to increasing your strength and size is to fatigue your muscle. Anything less will cause your body to remain the same.

So what is lifting light? As a matter of comparison, the old-school dogma of heavy lifting is to lift 80-90% of your maximum for 5 to 10 repetitions. In the study light lifting was defined at 30% of your max. By lifting in this range, participants were able to lift the weight at least 24 times before they felt fatigue.

Even though this is significant new for those guys, and gals well, who spend part of their free time in the gym working out to sculpt their body, it is also great news for the elderly and those recovering from surgery, and other ailments. Lifting heavy for this group of people is unreasonable and can be dangerous even though the increased muscle mass would improve their quality of life. With the news that lifting light can have similar effects as lifting heavy, people of all ages and conditions can grow new muscle.

So if the idea of lifting heavy weights keep you out of the gym in the past, you can finally put that concern to rest. Just get in there, pick some light weight, and lift until your can’t lift anymore.

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