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I have two fitness goals at the moment, in priority order:
For the recent past, I've been focusing on this by adopting a more "bulking" strategy, wherein, I'd use larger weight for my exercises, and try to push my muscles to hit higher and higher weight limits. I'd usually do this by doing 2 to 3 of sets of 12 to 15 reps for each muscle, trying to push myself to muscle failure. So basically, more weight, less reps.
However, for achieving my stated goals, how does the above bulking strategy compare to a "toning" strategy, where I'd essentially be doing less weight, for more reps, and more time. With this sort of strategy, I may be doing up to 5 minutes of reps at a time, but with 1/2 to 1/3 of the weight as I'd be doing for bulking.
Which strategy is better to help me achieve my goal? Or should I do a mix, in which case, what percentage of time should be spent on each?
To achieve body recomposition, you need a lot of protein and a calorie deficit. It's all in the diet.
The lifting strategy, so long as you're doing something reasonable, is far less important. You don't need a specialized program.
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Strong first.
That's a particular program, but it's also a general philosophy.
The rep range you're talking about (12-15 or higher) is undoubtedly in the hypertrophy or endurance strikezone. You're building muscle mass (but not strength) or building your body's ability to process lactic acid efficiently (endurance).
A better strategy, especially if longevity is even a tertiary goal, is to build overall strength first. Strength is built in the 3-6 rep range, with 5 (or "fahve" according to Saint. Mark) being a generally agreed upon gold spot. Sets also fall into 3-5 for most of the big compounds, with a major exception being deadlifts which should be done for only 1 - 2 sets if at all. Some folks completely replace deadlifts with cleans or power cleans.
Why "Strong First"? Because it's the most "convertible" to other fitness goals; endurance, hypertrophy, or a mixture of the two that is often called "toning" (which isn't, strictly speaking, a thing). If you can squat, bench, press, clean / deadlift, and row heavy, you can then start to manipulate the weight-reps-sets schemes for your specific goals. Going the other way doesn't work. I've seen badass PT Marines who can do 20 pullups fail to deadlift their own bodyweight.
Additionally, there seems to be a growing amount of research indicating that resistance training is the best exercise form for longevity.
Here's the good news: Unless you already have been lifting serious for some time, your first six months of going to the gym will yield noticeable and impressive results. "n00b gainz" are real regardless of specific weight/sets/reps combos. This is also good because it frees you from the mental stress of really caring about hyper-optimization of your routines. One note, however - please, please, please do compound lifts with free weights (unless you have some prior injury where this would be a real safety hazard). Isolated lifts are pointless for anyone who isn't a bodybuilder and if they're really over-worked, can result in such proportional imbalance that they increase the likelihood of injury. Machines are ok if your gym is a typical corporate gym that skimps on squat racks. Stay away from nonsense like band work (there are applications for this, but not general fitness).
high skeptical of this
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"band work" = resistance bands?
What's wrong with them? They seem like a minimal equipment way to do strength training. Maybe they just are only functional at weights too low to be useful? Or is there some deeper issue?
I see three major drawbacks to bands:
The increments are too large. Exercises span resistances from like 5 Lbs-250 Lbs for a modestly trained person. Some exercises you may be only able to increment by 1-2lbs per period. So you would need an absurd amount of bands for full coverage. Compare this to a barbell where you can get 1/4# plates, or a suspension trainer/rings where the resistance can be changed infinitesimally by changing the angle you are pulling at.
You need a surprisingly strong anchor point, as strong as you would need for a suspension trainer. At the point where you are installing anchors in your house, there are better options. Recall how Harry Reid somehow managed to blind himself in one eye using bands. I don't recall if this was part of the cover story for his pancreatic cancer now that I'm thinking about it though. My point is that a band going flying off and crippling you is at least plausible enough story for a US Senator.
The force curve is exactly backwards of what would be effective for hypertrophy stimulus. Most of the literature indicates the greatest stimulus occurs near the stretched position for a muscle. This is when the band is least extended for most exercises, also the point of least resistance a la Hooke's law.
They are very convenient and cheap, and I do use them to warm up sometimes, but aren't generally considered very good for serious training. Well, unless you are an elite powerlifter who subscribes to westside style accommodating resistance. But then you're far too advanced for anything here.
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Of course it does. It's called an accumulation phase and it's bog standard powerlifter training.
If you're in a powerlifting cycle of any sort, you've already move past the beginner lifter phase which, I believe, was OP's situation. We're talking about two different things.
When you're a beginner, just about anything you do is going to lead to gains, so it makes even less sense to say base building "doesn't work".
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Like literally you've seen someone who you know can do 20 pullups fail to deadlift their own body weight? Or just like with poor form? I'm trying to understand how that's possible, like worst case they should be able to row that weight and stand up just pivoting around a bar that is already at waist height. I've seen people that can can do 20 pushups who cant deadlift their own bodyweight, but that's a totally different part of the kenetic chain.
All that being said, I do tend to agree, which is why I used fahves in my example below. I didn't want to be too dogmatic about it, because other stuff can work. My rough view of the literature is that somehow it even suggest that it 'should' work just a well or better. My not very well supported theory, on why the other stuff seems to work less well than the laboratories studies suggest is that normal people have no idea exactly how hard you have to go to reach true failure in rep ranges > 10. Like a 20 rep set of squats to total failure feels uncomfortable at rep 6, starts noticeably slowing down at 8, feels like your legs are going to explode at 12, feels like you're going to vomit at 15, feels like you're going to vomit blood at 18, and requires entering the shadow realm the last rep or two. The lab studies that indicate higher rep ranges work tend to at least have a undergraduate telling the participants to keep going if they obviously have reps left in the tank. From casual observation, I think unprompted most people stop at very uncomfortable which can be very far from failure in high rep ranges.
I do actually recommend the starting strength book as well as practical programing. The big advantage being the novice linear progression is pretty idiot proof, or more charitably novice proof. I was a little bit surprised that it's no longer on the fitness wiki, because it used to be the go to suggestion for beginners on their fitness journey.
Peace be upon you, fellow gym-meme brother/sister.
Re: "20 pullups, but no deadlift?" The case that comes to mind was a long distance runner who I saw doing a PFT. Rail skinny, but did kill his pullups. By sheer insane coincidence, ran into him at the post gym later that day. 2 plate deadlift, had to cat-back it by the third rep. My theory is that the hyper-specifically trained for his pullups on the PFT by doing .... a shit ton of pullups for several months. I can see how that would over emphasize biceps-to-lats but not actually develop the full posterior chain through the glutes and hamstrings. I think you're also probably correct in the "form" argument - he had no conception of how to use his legs to start the rep.
Now, would've been able to rack pull 225? Hey, maybe.
Our toothpick-built distance runner was deadlifting a good deal more than his body weight and was doing pretty well for someone who doesn't lift much if at all. If he was trying and failing with 185 for a single rep that would be different.
Also, he most definitely would have been able to rack pull 225, given that his deadlift form was shitty and he nonetheless got 2 good reps at 225. Starting as a stick-thin non-lifting dude built like a gazelle.
not a surprise. being fat or extra weight is of no benefit for the deadlift, unlike other major lifts
The distance runner was just a very skinny and fitter-than-average special case of 'untrained dude attempting weightlifting'. For someone who may step foot in a weight room twice in a good year this is pretty decent for a complete and total n00b. Sure, anyone who's not a total stranger to a weight room (unlike this guy) will smoke him, but the guy's a runner, not a lifter; he'd smoke us in a 5K for sure.
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No way did that guy weigh anything close to 225. And even that weight he could lift.
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This may be bro-science, but I've been taught that lower weight + higher reps is what to go for if you want to prioritize muscle mass versus strength. The reasoning having to do with the total amount of time your muscles are being activated. Again, probably bro-science, but at the least, that indicates that there's nothing about using lower weight + higher reps that significantly reduce one's muscle gain from weight lifting, since if that were the case, people would have noticed and not developed this bit of old wives' tale.
More generally, my own personal experience and general "common sense" among people who lift weights has been that, for 99% of people, whatever weight lifting regimen that is safe, challenging, and regularly stuck to is the best one for achieving their fitness goals, whatever those goals are. The differences that come from different types of strategies only matter for that 1% of people who take this very seriously and/or compete against other people who are hyper-optimizing their body recomposition. If you're not in that category, I'd say the main concern should be, can I do this "toning" strategy just as safely and just as regularly while challenging myself about as much as my other strategy? If so, then it'd be good to add it into your exercise toolbox, if only for variety's sake.
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Doing both goals is possible if you are a novice. In that case I would recommend sticking to the 5-20 rep range and focusing on clean technique. Pushing to true muscular failure is probably not necessary, I don't interpret this as a license to totally slack off though. I would just stop at technical failure or 1-2 reps shy, normally this is perceived as "hard." Especially for people who have never trained hard before.
The terminology used here is... slightly non-standard. The dominant factor for losing fat or gaining muscle, assuming hard resistance training, is energy or caloric balance. If you are not a novice, and you would like to do both, you will either have to separate the goals into distinct periods or (not recommended though @self_made_human might provide a counter argument) hop on anabolics.
@Mewis's description agrees with my own interpretation of the consensus on muscle building stimulus. It's not clear there is an upper bound for the number of reps where hypertrophy stimulus stops, but below 50-60% of one rep max weights getting anywhere close to an effective distance from failure is very difficult. For example, say we define an effective set as within 4 reps of muscular failure. Choosing a weight of 1/2 of 1RM might be anywhere from 20-100 reps for true muscular failure. This is the first problem with very low weights, choosing a target to hit is very hard. Now say the true number of clean reps to failure is 50, reps 40-46 are all going to feel horrible. If you stop at 40 though, we likely haven't gotten 'close enough' to failure to deliver a quality stimulus. This is despite doing a lot of mechanical work/volume. Compare to targeting 80% of 1RM. the number of reps to failure is likely 7 or 8. If you do 5 reps you are for sure within 4 reps of true failure. So you deliver a higher quality stimulus while having to do less total tonnage. At 30% of 1RM your not really targeting muscles in the anabolic or even anti-catabolic sense. You would probably be better off with a different modality of training, like an elliptical or something.
For completeness, for pure strength the 3-5 rep range is generally considered the Goldilocks zone (with occasional singles, doubles, and higher rep work).
I'm no expert on the matter, and my previous post was largely asking for information about the drugs so I could make an informed decision, so I'm going to recuse myself for now!
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There is not really any such thing as a 'toning' strategy. Though many people appreciate the toned look, which is to say, lithe and lean with only a bit of muscle, the fact is that a build like that is pretty easy to get without weights. To that end, doing easy sets where you come nowhere near failure would be quite effective because you wouldn't be stimulating any muscle growth.
There is an argument for doing sets with more reps. Anything from 5-30 reps is effective for stimulating muscle growth, and there is some evidence that on the higher end of that range, it's better for hypertrophy, while on the lower end of that range, it's better for strength, but the difference seems pretty small. However, this is assuming the same intensity - in other words, going to or close to failure. Though the exact mechanisms for muscle gain are not totally understood, one thing is clear - mechanical tension on the muscle itself is very important. If normally, you lifted 80kg on a particular lift for a set of ten, it's likely going to be very hard to stimulate growth going down to 40kg or 30kg. To take a real world example, it's not people who do a lot of steps that end up with big calves, it's people who have high bodyweight.
At the same time, a lot of people who are naturally muscular from heavy manual labor aren’t lifting ‘to failure’ when they’re stacking crates or moving machinery, they’re just doing a ‘lot of reps’.
manual labor does not make you much stronger, more like stronger people attracted to manual labor
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I don't know how true that is. I myself am a laborer, and I work alongside other laborers - they tend to be physically fit, but only to the extent that the job selects for physically active young men. We have slender twinks and dad bods, and the guys with great physiques all go to the gym on top of whatever we do at work. It's not that manual labour doesn't do anything - even jogging and stretching have been shown to work as muscle stimulus in people who are totally untrained, so any level of physical activity is better than nothing. But if you carry 10kg boxes around for work, your body will adapt, and eventually you will find it no longer works as stimulus even when you do it for forty hours a week. Endurance runners do not end up with big legs, sprint cyclists do, because they're pumping their legs hard to create a lot of force to accelerate quickly - thus, placing a lot of tension on their quads.
But, even supposing this was true, it's still totally impractical. Maybe a workout regimen that replicated this situation could work - but it would take forty hours a week!
yup...you cannot reliably predict how strong someone is or isn't by appearance except for very obvious cases
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Or at another limit, endurance runners do literally thousands of reps of swinging their arms per workout but I would still expect someone who does 100 chin-ups a week to have a bigger upper body.
Manual laborers do tend to have good general physical preparedness and work capacity, so I would expect someone who does manual labor to be able to make better gains if they do resistance train. Only because they can handle more tonnage (sets x reps x weight / week) and more effective volume (hard sets / week). I wouldn't expect that much more on a volume equated basis beyond the selection effect mentioned by @Mewis.
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I thought the general consensus was that while building strength is best done by lifting heavier things, hypertrophy (ie bulking) is best served by lighter weights for more reps. The powerlifter lifts less but heavier, the more vain bodybuilder lifts more but lighter?
I guess one my my questions is, if I'm looking to primarily gain muscle for the purpose of increasing my base metabolism, so I can lose weight, what's best? Hypertrophy or strength or something else?
The general consensus I'm familiar with on this is, this isn't worth it. It's been a while since I looked into it, but IIRC, if you replace 1 lbs of fat with 1 lbs of muscle in your body - no easy feat - this adds like 30-50 extra Calories to your daily energy usage. That's only like 1-2K extra Calories per month, which is only about half a pound of fat loss, or about 6 pounds a year. Not bad, but in the scale of a year, 6 pounds is basically just noise, and you're going to get much better returns on effort through cardio and diet.
But, of course, every bit does count, and it's not as if building muscle is bad for you or your weight loss. For that, I believe you want to increase mass, since for increasing BMR, the mass is what matters most (the types of fibers likely matter as well, but for BMR, it will be minimal, since the energy required to twitch those muscles isn't factored in). Which likely means less focus on strength (weight) and more on hypertrophy (e.g. reps to failure).
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I think the consensus is something like 1-5 reps for strength. 6-10 for hypertrophy. I'm not sure what more than 10 gets you and it might be considered fuckarounditis.
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