There is a common misconception that heavyweights are the only way to build muscles.
But the truth is, you can build lean muscles with light weights too!
Yes, you read that right. Lightweights can be as effective as heavyweights in building muscle.
However, the only difference comes in the rep range. You need more reps to gain muscles as compared to heavy weights.
In the following sections, we will study more about the science behind light weights and lean muscle growth.
Moreover, we will find out how light weights stimulate muscle growth in your body.
Can You Build Lean Muscle with Light Weights?
Yes, the following studies show that lifting light weights can stimulate muscle growth similar to that of heavy weightlifters:
Study I – Both Heavy Lifting and Light Lifting Stimulate Muscle Growth
The study compares the results of heavy lifting and light lifting on muscle hypertrophy among trained men.
18 young men took part in the study and were divided into two groups:
- The first group of participants lifted light weights in 25-35 reps per set per exercise.
- In the second group, men lifted heavy weights in 8-12 reps per set per exercise.
According to the results, both groups showed similar muscle hypertrophy.
Similar results were published in popular journals; here are a few excerpts from these publications.
Study II – Light Weights Stimulate Muscle Growth
The study was published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. According to the study, you have to exhaust your muscles with light weights (300 rep-set) to elicit muscle growth.
By training your muscles to the extent of exhaustion, the muscle’s stress response is triggered, helping in muscle growth.
Overall, both studies suggest that you can build and maintain lean muscles with the help of light weights. But they also emphasize that muscle growth is only possible when you increase the reps.
However, the question is: how can you build muscle with light weights and high reps?
Let’s understand the process of muscle growth with lightweights to answer this question.
How Do Lightweights Increase Muscle Growth?
Building muscles with light weights is based on the high-repetition and low-load resistance training approaches.
In this training, you fatigue your muscles with higher reps to elicit the following mechanisms for muscle growth:
#1. Train Fast-Twitch and Slow-Twitch Muscles
Slow-twitch fibers are trained by low-intensity exercises; here, lightweights provide low-intensity training.
Fast-twitch fibers need higher intensity. For high-intensity training, we increase the reps. By doing so, we train both fibers at the same time, stimulating muscle growth.
#2. Muscle Stress
By training your muscles with light weights and higher reps, you create metabolic stress among muscles.
It releases metabolic products like lactate that further influence testosterone and GH secretion. These hormones stimulate muscle repair and growth.
#3. Cellular Swelling
Higher repetitions increase the blood flow toward the muscles, causing cellular swelling to provide the muscular pump. The swelling stretches the muscle cells, stimulating muscle growth.
#4. Muscle Damage and Repair
Muscle growth occurs when the muscle tissues undergo microtears, and amino acids form proteins to fill in these microtears.
While lightweights cause major microtears, combining them with high reps near exhaustion increases the tears, leading to muscle growth.
#5. Longer Time Under Tension
Higher reps sustain muscles under tension for longer durations, causing muscle fatigue. The process stimulates muscle growth.
Hence, lifting light weights every day results in gradual muscle growth similar to the effect of smaller reps of heavy weights.
But it’s important to follow the right training technique to get results from lightweight lifting. Thus, here is a complete guide on how you can build lean muscles with light weights.
How to Build Muscle with Light Weights?
Here are some tips to build muscles with light weights:
#1. Training
When training your muscles with light weights, make sure you keep a check on:
- Time under tension – The muscles need to sustain tension for a longer duration to undergo fatigue. Hence, try aiming for two to three seconds of the lifting phase and three to four seconds of the lowering phase to train muscles for longer during each rep.
- Include compound exercises – Including multiple exercises like squats, lunges, and deadlifts along with LL targets different muscles to increase muscle growth. This gives you comprehensive training along with the effects of lightweight lifting.
- Progressive overload – The work on your muscles should increase with each set to cause variations and avoid muscle adaptations. For example, increase a rep in every set you perform.
After training your muscles, nourishing your body is crucial to letting your muscles repair and recover. Without recovery, you won’t see muscle growth and might end up losing your muscle mass.
Hence, the next step to gain muscles with light weights is to focus on nutrition and recovery.
#2. Nutrition and Recovery
Take protein-rich foods to provide the essential amino acids that synthesize protein for muscular growth in our body.
However, make sure to keep your protein portion limited to 1.6 g of protein per kg of body mass. It is enough to stimulate protein growth.
Some of the best sources of proteins for muscle growth are chicken breast, lean beef, lentils, fish, and eggs.
Since you are creating micro-tears in muscles during training, it is essential to let the muscles recover.
It’s the time of recovery when you build muscles, as the amino acids synthesize proteins to fill in the tears with muscular tissues.
Generally, forty-eight hours are enough for muscle recovery, but people might take seventy-two hours for complete recovery.
To speed up recovery and fuel up your workouts, you can even add supplements to your workout routine.
#3. Supplements for Muscle Growth
Many supplements help in muscle growth by boosting recovery, but till now we haven’t seen results as good as the D-Bal max before and after transformations.
CrazyBulk D-Bal is a 100% natural muscle booster with ingredients like Ashwagandha, L-Arginine, L-Lysine, caffeine, and Panax notoginseng with Vitamins & minerals.
These ingredients speed up your workout results by increasing muscle growth, strength, energy, and muscle recovery.
Moreover, the supplement will help you overcome the disadvantages of lifting light weights.
Conclusion
Lifting light weights can induce muscle growth similar to that of heavyweights, but has some disadvantages.
Lightweights show lesser muscle hypertrophy and have lower strength gains as compared to heavy weights.
So, is it better to lift heavy or light weights to gain muscle? Not exactly! Although heavyweights have more strength gains, the risks of injuries are much higher.
Hence, sticking with light weights for muscle growth can be a safer way of gaining muscles.
But if your goal is quick muscle growth for a competition, we would suggest heavy lifting as a better option.
