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A think a lot of the reigning wisdom in the fitness world is created by serious strength trainers, for serious strength trainers. They aren't wrong, and their advice will become useful to you if you also get seriously into strength training. But for people starting from neutral, the advice in this article is better than anything your most enthusiastic gym friends will tell you about protein intake or leg day or training to failure. Just workout specific muscles several times a week and you will get stronger and bigger muscles over a few months, regardless of diet.

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Getting out there and doing your run, or your routine in the gym, is the 80%. Other specifics will make the remaining 20%.

100% agree. The most important point is to make exercise enjoyable; the more it feels like a chore, the more you will not be getting out there doing it.

I wish I could agree with this more. Vigorously nodding will have to do.

A corollary to that is to not overdo it, even if you have an enjoyable time while you do it. You shouldn't be too tired or sore when it's time for the next training session.

Exactly. This is why I got into indoor boulder climbing. It's hella fun, and as long as it is I'll push myself without even trying.

Yes! Everything I learned when I was young told me a) you have to be *very serious* about working out if you are going to do it and b) it's mostly about looking good.

Both of those turned out to be huge fallacies. I'm 40 now and not very serious about working out, but I do it reliably (on an irregular schedule) and I don't target specific muscles etc to try to make myself look a certain way. The result is that I am just plain healthier and feel great. That has many second order effects.

This. Take shoulder press as an example

Most people would be better off lifting a 10 lb weight 50 times instead of lifting a 50 lb weight 10 times. High weight, low reps is a great way to injure yourself if you're like 99% of people out there.

Yeah i moved back my weights to 50/60% of max rep. No more back issues or injuries.

Also train less.

Yet strength and mass have gone up.

I always had problems doing full pushups. Now I'm starting slow, doing upright pushups against the wall. Have to thank this youtuber for the motivation: https://youtu.be/zkU6Ok44_CI

Somehow I just knew it would be Hampton’s video. Yes, this guy and his channel, hybridcalisthenics, is amazing at breaking workouts down into progressive sets for beginners .

Source for 10-rep sets being particularly injurious please. And 10 lbs x 50 is much less stimulative than 50 lbs x 10, bordering on being not particularly effective.

Any weight you can do 10reps of is unlikely to be near your 1rm max. From my limited experience it's a out 15 percent off.

> Any weight you can do 10reps of is unlikely to be near your 1rm max.

Most people can't do 10 reps at 85% intensity, it's closer to 70-75%.

It’s not that 10rep set is injurious. It’s that 50lbs is injurious, even just lifting it overhead.

It's only injurious if you can't do it. If you can lift 50 lbs up above your head a few times in a row, there's nothing wrong with doing that.

Most males can probably do that with a tiny bit of practice.

Holding a heavy weight overhead is an inherently unstable position. Even if you can lift it overhead (using momentum), doesn’t mean you can hold it overhead. Even if you can do a few overhead presses, you need to be very careful not to do it to failure, as you need enough strength to safely bring it back to the ground.

If you lose balance and the weight swings back, your shoulder is fucked, especially at that weight.

Yes, but essentially no-one tries to do a high weight overhead press without training. If anything, most people are less likely to even touch a barbell because it looks like "serious work".

For most adult men lifting the bar (44lbs, so almost 50) above their head after studying the form is not "injurious".

> Even if you can lift it overhead (using momentum

You don't do shoulder presses using momentum (unless you're doing something specialised, in which case you know what you're doing).

> as you need enough strength to safely bring it back to the ground

You don't, you can do them in properly configured squat rack and just drop them.

The overhead press is usually done off of hooks or pins, you don't have to start or end on the ground. The front rack position is very stable, I've never felt it to be the least bit sketchy lowering the bar even after a failed lift, either strict or with leg drive.

If you do start off the ground, it's going to be a weight you can clean up into a front rack position; if you can clean the weight you can certainly lower it back down.

Ah, right, I always did overhead dumbbell press so I first thought of that. Yeah 50lbs barbell press is trivial, and using pins or even Smith machine it’s completely safe.

Mmm, yeah I don't like going too heavy on dumbbell presses, but heavy is really relative to your max, and sets of 10 is about where they start feeling good to me.

I occasionally use 50-lb dumbbells for one-hand overhead presses. It takes some mindfulness of form, but otherwise is perfectly safe for me. I like it for when I don't have a lot of time, since I can only do a few reps with each arm.

Part of lifting weights is raw strength, another is proper form. If I can't perform a lift 'the right way', I take off weight until I can. It took a fair bit of practice to

> Source for 10-rep sets being particularly injurious please.

That's absolutely not what they said.

99% of people have bad form, because nobody showed them good form. 1 set of 50lb dumbbells on shoulder press with no warm up & bad form, by a middle aged dad with no gym experience, can def mess up a rotator cuff.

I don't think that means the solution is to recommend they do 10lb sets with bad form though; it's more like they should learn proper technique instead, regardless of what their target weight is.

25 pounds for 6-10 reps, always stopping before any pain, is a good middle ground. Dont do curls with 2-5 pound weights. Find something that is actually a bit difficult, but most people shouldnt pile on weight or even continue to increase it unless their current weight feels like it isnt very difficult.

Yeah, if you want an old age filled with weakness and fragility. If you build up to it and you have the strength and lift with good technique there is nothing wrong with it.

50lbs is only just over the weight of the bar anyway. Weakness is never a strength.

50 times is a bit too much for me, and probably a lot of other people. It leads to mental or cardiovascular fatigue, which is not what I'm after when building muscle/strength. If you're an endurance athlete it would be more appropriate.

When training for muscle size the important thing is to fatigue the muscle itself, which is easier to do with 5-20 reps, maybe 30 at the most if exercising small muscles.

Regarding "low reps", that usually refers to sets of 1-3 reps very close to your maximum potential. Once you go above 5 reps or so, the risk of injury is much lower. There are lots of beginner programs using sets of 5 reps, and people aren't getting injured left and right on those.

Think they were being hyperbolical. Your example makes sense though

You still need a minimum level of intensity. You won't be improving strength with something that you can lift 50 times.

One way to measure perceived exertion is how many additional reps you think you can do - if you're doing 10 reps at a weight where you can only do 10, then you're obviously at some risk of having worse form / injury; if you're doing 10 reps at a weight that you can lift 12-15 times, you'll probably get stronger, if you're doing 10 reps at a weight you can lift 25-30 times, you likely won't make a lot of progress.

If you can lift what you need to 50 times, do you need to improve strength?

For most people, exercise is about health and about being functional in their life. If you have a baseline level of fitness and an exercise habit that supports it, it is OK to plateau at that level and just live your healthy life.

It's perferctly fine to maintain but that also requires training at some minimal level of intensity.

It's not ok to plateau at that level. You will get old, your strength and bone density will go down and it is a lot harder (but still possible) to improve those when you are old.

Much better to start with a lot more than the minimum so you have a decent safety margin (and lifelong habits that will keep you healthy for as long as possible).

What's your current maximum shoulder press, and how's your physique? I've been training the latter, and I am almost certainly stronger than you.

While I do like the idea of HNers having to post their physique in any thread related to nutrition and fitness, the topic of this thread is what's ideal for most people who aren't as serious about lifting. Whether they are right or wrong (I don't think we have a way to know), it's kind of a different point.

Besides, I don't think your body is going to be any different from your clone doing massive reps to failure with the same conviction.

Using 10lbs for shoulder press does absolutely nothing for your fitness. Even 50lbs barely does anything unless you are completely untrained.

And 10 reps is not low reps either. It's on the upper end of what people usually use in their workouts.

They could be talking about dumbbell weight, as 10lb is entry level but 50lbx10 requires some shoulder development.

Either way, I don't see the issue with doing 50 reps of something if you're failing at the end. The main issue is that it's boring and more mentally taxing than 6-10 reps I think.

There's a Huberman Lab podcast with some expert who also says the ideal rep range is anywhere from 6 reps to 30+ reps to make the point that we overly fixate on it. Lifting something until you can't is the operative goal.

I personally like drop sets for this purpose (decreasing weight until failure) because you end on a lighter weight that won't hurt you if something goes wrong, but you aren't stuck lifting one weight for too long.

Couldn't agree more.

> "Days of are still good."

Have a look (or rather listen) here: https://hubermanlab.com/dr-peter-attia-exercise-nutrition-ho... Interesting discussion.

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