WHY ZUMBA TONING WORKS-- High Reps and Light Weight Muscle Growth.

High Reps and Light Weight Muscle Growth

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High Reps and Light Weight Muscle Growth

Overview

Your exercise program may be counterproductive to your exercise goal. For example, striving to build muscle mass with light weight and high repetitions is a losing battle. In fact, the National Strength and Condition Association lists that highly repetitive aerobic-basic exercise can reduce the size of some muscle fibers. The American Council on Exercise states a low-resistance, high-rep program leads to minimal hypertrophy. Please consult a doctor before starting any new fitness program.

Possible Weight Training Goals

Weight training goals include increased muscular power, endurance or size and require specific training strategies to achieve. For example, type I muscle fibers are developed through low-intensity, long-duration activity, while type II muscle fibers require high-intensity, short burst exercise to develop. According to the American Council on Exercise, exercises that incorporate type II fibers contribute to muscle hypertrophy to a greater extent than exercises that incorporate type I fibers.

Muscle Mass and Lifting Light Weight

 

The "American Council on Exercise Personal Trainer Manual" defines a light load as requiring less than 70 percent of your maximal ability. Light loads are considered easy to moderate intensity, predominately require type I muscle fibers and promote muscular endurance instead of muscular growth, or hypertrophy. Muscle fibers are naturally damaged during resistance training and grow back larger during rest. Light loads elicit minimal damage, further decreasing hypertrophic benefit.

Muscle Mass and High Repetitions

The American Council on Exercise categorizes one to eight reps as low, eight to 12 reps as moderate and 12 to 20 reps as high. The exercise prescription for muscular endurance includes one to two sets of 12 to 20 reps using a load less than 70 percent of your maximal ability. If you are able to perform 12 to 20 reps, your lifting load is too light to promote significant hypertrophy or recruit high-intensity, high-hypertrophy type II muscle fibers.

Recommendations for Muscle Growth

The Nation Strength and Conditioning Association's exercise prescription for muscular hypertrophy includes performing one to six sets, for eight to 12 repetitions using a moderate lifting load of 70 to 80 percent of your maximal ability for all major muscle groups. This method provides adequate weight training volume and intensity for optimal fiber damage and recruitment of type II muscle fibers.

Considerations

Weight training with a goal-specific strategy improves your results. High reps and light weight is appropriate if you are training for muscular endurance; however, this approach does not help if your goal is to build muscle mass. Performing high repetitions with light weight enhances your ability perform at a specific intensity over time but does not provide significant muscle growth.

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/314187-high-reps-and-light-weight-muscle-growth/#ixzz1QrE0oQLW