5 Ways To Build Muscle While Lifting Moderate Weights
Contrary to popular belief, you can build muscle and progress towards your goals by lifting a moderate amount of weight. You don’t need to lift as much as a powerlifter to build muscle mass.
You should gravitate towards using moderate weights if you want to remain injury free. Using heavier weights can put a lot of stress on your joints and muscles which increases the probability of an injury while training.
Determine What is “Heavy” For You
Every individual has varying levels of strengths so it’s important you know how heavy is “heavy” for you. A good way to find out challenging weights is to test your one rep maximum or 1RM.
It’s recommended that you warm-up and ask someone for a spot if you’re attempting a 1RM, especially if you’re a beginner. Once you know your 1RM, you should be using anywhere between 50-75% of your 1RM for your moderate weight training.
Use a Higher Rep Range
Since you’ll not be challenging your body with heavier weights, you need to make up for it by increasing the number of repetitions. While using moderate weights target anywhere between 12-15 repetitions on every exercise.
Performing higher repetitions puts your body in the state of hypertrophy. Muscle hypertrophy is the growth and increase of the size of muscle cells resulting from performing a higher rep range. Muscle hypertrophy can result in an increase in muscle size and fat burn as it recruits your cardiovascular system.
Use Advanced Training Techniques
You need to constantly challenge your muscles if you want them to grow. Using advanced training techniques like supersets, drop sets, intra-set stretching, etc. is a great way of shocking your muscles into growing.
There are many types of advanced training techniques so you can try a different one each day of the week. It’s also important to switch up your training program so your body doesn’t get comfortable with your workouts.
Fix Your Diet
Diet is a major aspect of building muscle. If your diet is not on point, you won’t be gaining muscle mass no matter how hard you train. A small change in your diet can spark muscle growth when you’ve hit a plateau and you’re blaming your workouts for it.
When you’re working for a goal physique, it’s important that you count your calories and macros. While counting calories isn’t the most convenient of things, it can make all the difference in your progress.
Focus on Recovery
Your body undergoes changes when you’re asleep. You break muscle while you’re in the gym and gain muscle mass when you’re resting. You need at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night to recover optimally.
You should give enough time to your muscles to recuperate before you train them again. A general rule of thumb is to wait for three days before training the same muscle group again. You should also explore using supplements to help you with your recovery.
Header image courtesy of Envato Elements
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