I Trained One Side Of My Body HEAVY and The Other LIGHT for a Week

Training one side of for reps and the other side for strength! Will there be a difference after a week? The results may surprise you!

[Lucky-fmdt]

This man sacrificed his dignity for our gains..

[samdunkksub]

The feeling of the pump with high reps comes from so much blood flow and inflammation of sorts. The apparent bigger “pump” with heavy weight may just be from the contractions having to be harder due to much more force being generated. I say: do whatever feels good to you. If you stay consistent, dial in the right volume, and recover and eat right you will get results either way

[gtegsown]

I personally train with what I call the "10 rep method". Always aim for 10 reps of the heaviest weight you can HANDLE (keeping proper form, not straining to the point you are using other muscles to compensate). Once you can handle the weight easily at 10 reps, time to bump up the weight. This is basically progressive overload, but just an easy way to keep track and manage it.

[patrickkenyon]

I split this one down the middle. I used to do high weight low reps. Recently I have adopted a middle ground approach where I do a slightly lighter weight with slower reps. I find the sweet spot where I can fail on my 3rd set and feel my muscles actually get warm to the touch while utilizing time under tension. It takes a little tweaking but has been yeilding some nice results.

[tongkatali]

One week's not enough time to see a real difference, maybe in about one month you'd be able to notice. At 68 my prime objective is to avoid injury while staying ripped My sweet spot is in the 10-15+ range, two minutes rest between sets, a low chance of injury plus it gives me a great pump along with good definition. If you're young and your goal is powerlifting, different story

[AbdElKareim]

I love how you take the risk to do something that can get you injured or change your body in a negative way just for us to learn new things
I love you bro
And i will always focus for you

[senhaken]

It all boils down to the type of muscle fibers you're stimulating your body to build. There's red and white muscle fibers (and intermediary stages in between those) which are both specialized for certain types of activity. White fibers are called "fast-twitch" fibers which need high-intensity and explosive movements with a lot of rest. Red fibers are the opposite of that. Generally with light weights we use the red fibers more due to the higher rep count, lower intensity due to lower weight and less rest required. Basically, we do endurance training at that point and that's exactly what red muscle fibers are specialized for. Generally speaking, our legs and back are made mostly of red fibers which is why you felt "better" doing low weights on legs and back - it's our natural predisposition. And it makes sense from a biological view since our legs and back are the 2 muscle groups that get the most activation throughout our everyday life - legs for walking and back for stabilizing our spinal column and maintain balance while walking. Heavy weights do the opposite - they stimulate white muscle fiber growth. This is why weight-lifters are generally pretty bad at running long distances, but can be quite fast at short lengths. This is also why people who do endurance sports, like long-distance running, have slimmer muscles as red muscle fibers are thinner compared to white, and why bodybuilders have buldging and thick muscles. And if you look at any top athlete from any sport, you'll be able to approximately determine the ratio of high-intensity movement and low-intensity movements for each specific muscle group. Boxers, for example, have very bulky upper bodies due to a lot of punching which is a fast-twitch movement and relatively lean legs due to them being constantly in use for movement, but rarely having any significant spikes in intensity.

What's interesting with weight-lifting specifically is this: you can skew your workout towards one or the other regardless of the weight. Even though low weight is more suited for red muscle fibers, you can increase the intensity of the movement by increasing the speed and achieve a similar effect to maintaining the same speed with higher weight. Likewise, if you lift the heavier weights but reduce the speed of each movement (i.e. taking 5 seconds from point A to point B instead of 2), you'll stimulate your red fibers more. Just something to keep in mind for those who are trying to bulk up or lean down, especially if you have some limiting factors such as joint issues, ligament issues, etc.

[jimmy]

Appreciate you making this type of video because I’m always full of questions when working out

[reignenangelo]

This doubled as a way to show multiple different workout routines regardless of the weight that one could implement and I'm really appreciative of that. Thank you

[YushiruOokashiSLW]

Very enlightening, thank you for your hard work and "sacrifice" brother 🙏 ❤

[BrianShuffle]

after trying calisthenic and weight lifting, i think progressive overload is the number one key for building muscles, keep add more (weight or reps depend on your style of training) as long as you progress to adding more, you gonna gain more muscles. ME end up adding weight and doing skill calisthenic cuz it's burn my patient to adding reps XD

[stevenmed]

I like how this guy dedicated all this time and effort to provide us with evidence of what actually happened in his experience only to be responded to by all these people giving anecdotal stories in YouTube comments. I've been lifting weights for 10 years, I've been bodybuilding for 15 years, what I do in the on you guys....good on you

[kenshi]

Dude i frickin' love your channel man! You do a lot of stuff, I LOVE IT

[tipoftheiceberg]

Look here's what I know from training in both light and heavy techniques. It literally just depends on the muscle. When I first started I benched for like a 12 rep range and would feel those chest fibres stretching and squeezing but barely ever got sore, when I switched to benching heavy ass sets like 5 to 8 and going all the way to only getting 1 rep a set my chest felt nothing during the lift but I got sore and grew much quicker. For legs? I ditched the barbell squats and did 20 bodyweight followed by minimum 8 Max 20 squats jumps and that blew my quads up. Biceps for me it was the lighter weights with dumbbells maybe 12 good clean reps, drop them do the ez bar for another 15 reps. That grew them better.

I now incorporate light AND heavy for every muscle for every exercise, I.e. heavy flat bench, drop off the bench do push ups then cable flies.

Biceps, dumbbells curls and hammer curls, drop the dumbbells do the ez bar, after 5 sets of that I grab the huge barbell and do cheat curls for minimum 2 reps maximum 7 reps for 5 sets.

Lat pull down, in each set I'll do maybe 12 reps with a slightly more narrow grip (holding RIGHT as the bar starts to dip), slow and controlled squeeze, up the weight then with the best controlled form I can and a wider grip do 5 to 7 reps.

Whatever muscle you do that day, incorporate lighter and heavier forms of training supersets. If anyone read all that then cheers

[DDDYLN]

I've been strength training for 34 years. The trick to building great strength, is to periodize your program, both in rep ranges, and types of exercises. I just did light/high-rep day today. Next session I may do medium reps. Lifting heavy is definitely the key to getting stronger. If you don't do it, you'll never surpass a certain strength level. However, lifting weights heavy all the time, will definitely result in an injury. I know this from experience. Many of my power lifting friends, from back in the day, ended up with a bad injury. If you're already extremely strong, and you want to look better for the beach, you can do light/high-reps for a month or 2. Anyone very strong, who tells you it's possible to build their level of strength with high reps, is taking anabolics. Don't listen to them. Those guys can go to the gym 5 days a week for 2 hours, lift 10-15 reps, and still get strong. Trust me, you can't, unless you want to use anabolics.

[rembliekain]

Thanks for sharing this video. In response to the question for the audience at the end of the video. I like to alternate one week heavy, second week reps, then third week calisthenics then 4th week stretching then start over but I'm not very disciplined and have a bad tendency to skip work outs. However every once in a while I'll get enough motivation to stick with it consistently for up to 7 weeks before I get back in to my lack of discipline and start skipping work out however right before I do I feel like a rock star. Also for a warm up I get on the treadmill for 30min and my goat is just keep a good steady heart rhythm and consistency in breaths some days this means 5 miles and other it means 3 but the goal is a good warm up before the main exercise not to reach failure before the main exercise.

[levourious]

depending on what you're going for, with my experience heavy seemed to be bigger and helps with getting stronger faster as light seemed to give me more control and definition

[TheBold]

This guy is a freaking scientist! Very inspirational! You provide so much value to this world with such magnificently put together and informative content !

[SkatingwithAaron]

Awesome video! I’ll be 38 this year and gotta admit it’s been tough to find the time lately. Definitely not ready to stop though!

[iiamknght]

The whole thing to building muscle:
Tearing muscle fibers with exercise, and letting protein and other nutrients heal them.