low rep high weight or high rep low weight sets?

Let me explain a bit better: When lifting weights there is commonly a discussion about which one is better for you as far as muscle growth is concerned: Do you lift light weights a lot of times or do you go for really high weights for just a few times in a row?

There are good reasons for both approaches and I'll try to explain them here.

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There are people out there that will insist that one way is superior to the other and some of these people have actual research to back it up. Both sides do in fact so the suggestion that one is better than the other is something that can't really be solved since both seem to have benefits and shortcomings. I'm going to speak purely from a normie perspective though and stay away from the science stuff.

Namely I think that two things that are very important to normies like me that are just trying to get a work out on, is that we have limited time and we aren't experts at any of this stuff. One of the major thing that plagues people in the gym who are trying to do to much is the sacrifice proper form for higher weights and this is a mistake. It ends up transferring the workload to unintended places such as shoulders or back and this can result in injury, perhaps chronic pain.

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Here is the fact that I think most trainers and bodybuilders would agree with though: The idea behind any weight exercise is to work the particular muscle group to the point of exhaustion or failure. This means that you can not possibly do another rep. Obviously if you use really heavy weights you are going to reach this point a lot faster.

The problem with doing the low rep / high weight approach is that the weight stack you are using may actually be too heavy for you and you end up "cheating" and sacrificing good form. This is unlikely to happen with a lower weight but of course, the tradeoff is that it takes significantly more time.

For me I have used both approaches but tend to save the high weight/low rep stuff for machines rather than dumbbells because the machine at least to some degree enforces correct movement. I think it is a bad idea to try this approach with free weights unless you have someone that is going to watch you form for you.

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I personally have seen results from both methods and mostly will make my decision about which to do based on how much time I have. Sure, I can pick up some 12 lbs dumbbells for bicep curls but it is going to take me a long time to achieve failure / exhaustion. Do i have that much time? Well, sometimes I do and I kind of turn it into a cardio workout, which is good. I alternate arms so I don't have to take any breaks and this keeps the heart rate up, which is a good thing for me because I don't get near enough cardio in my life.

At the end of the day I think that for most normies, it is probably a better idea to stay away from the high weight stacks until you are very familiar with proper form and even then, if you have time the high rep probably has just as much benefit as the highs do. In scientific studies it has been shown that some exercises using large muscle groups benefit a small amount from low rep high weights but for most people the end result is going to be exactly the same provided you lift to the point where you can't do any more reps - this should be the idea behind any weight-lifting exercise that you do - how you get to that point is largely up to you.

So the winner in the debate from my normie perspective is to "do whatever you want" provided you get to the point of exhaustion with the muscle group in question. Always remember that form is more important that how much weight you are lifting and to always pay close attention to that.

_{from athlete in my 20's to fat ass in my 30's to the strongest I have ever been in my 40's. I lost over 50 lbs and kept it off by making small manageable changes in my life and sticking to them. I believe that if I can pull this off so can anyone else}