If I asked you which is better for building muscle, heavy or light weights, which would you choose?
My guess is you would say heavy, am I right?
I would have guessed that too when i was starting out training.
We would both be wrong on that one and heres why.
First, it helps to know a little about how you build muscle.
A muscle is made up of lots of different fibres.
Stimulating these fibres, which then increases protein content is what causes a muscle to grow.
When you lift a weight, these fibres become activated one at a time and you want to activate as many fibres as you can during your set to be effective as possible.
You do this by using a high degree of effort which signals more fibres to become active.
The key here is a high degree of effort, this means taking your working sets to failure or fairly close to failure.
Why?
Because this needs a high degree of force production/mechanical tension and this is what forces adaption and a muscle to grow.
So, if you use a heavy weight for 6 reps or a light weight for 20 reps, they will both cause muscle growth if you take your set close or all the way to failure because this will create enough of a stimulus to force adaption.
The key to building muscle is using a high degree of effort, what weight, sets, reps, number of times you train etc are all just variables of how you can do that and they can all change over the course of your training for best results.
If you have any questions just ask away.