What Are The Benefits Of Lifting Heavy Weights?

One of the most common beliefs we hear from adults over the age of 40 is that “lifting heavy weights is bad for the joints.”

There have been several occasions when someone has received the “don’t lift heavy” advice from a doctor (that doesn’t exercise regularly).

Without more context, this advice isn’t helpful.

We don’t recommend only lifting light or only lifting heavy. You need both as they each provide different benefits.

In this post, I’ll do my best to shed a little light on lifting heavy weights.

Defining Lifting Heavy

First of all, “lifting heavy” needs a better definition. Too may people (doctors included) view this like the famous pornography descritiption…I’ll know it when I see it.

Lifting heavy does not mean pushing the envelope of what you maximally achieve physically with every rep, set and session.

This does NOT mean training to failure with garbage form.

That is ego lifting disguised as training.

Lifting heavy is defined as a weight that forces you to focus. This is something you can lift for 2 to 8 crisp reps with solid technique.

Heavy is also very relative. What’s heavy for you might be a warm-up for someone else.

And vice versa.

Strength is measured relative to your bodyweight. Therefore 100 pounds would be a heavier load for a 100 pound person that it would be for a 200 pound person.

And 100 pounds might be a very heavy bicep curl but a rather light deadlift.

As you can see, “lifting heavy weights” requires a little more context.

Why Lifting Heavy Weights Works

When you lift a weight heavy enough to challenge your muscles, you cause microscopic tears in the muscle fibers.

While this may sound bad, it’s actually a good thing.

These micro-tears trigger a biological reaction where your body repairs and rebuilds stronger muscle fibers.

Your body doesn’t just heal…it fortifies in anticipation of future demands.

This is essentially your body preparing you to be stronger next time. This is how you improve.

You’re Losing Muscle Fibers Every Decade

This is something that should garner your attention.

You lose your high-threshold, fast-twitch muscle fibers ar roughly 10% per decade after age 30.

If you don’t train them.

Heavy, low-repetition work sends a clear message to your body: these fibers need to stick around.

Lifting heavy weights recruits and engages more fo the Type II muscle fibers responsible for generating force. These are the fibers responsible for the size and definition of a muscle.

When you lift a heavy weight and feel your muscles shaking, that’s your nervous system working to engage more motor units and recruit more muscle fibers.

Lifting light weights doesn’t accomplish this.

Heavy Weights Require Better Technique

You can fake good form with light weight.

You can’t fake it with a heavier weight that actually challenges you.

The weight tells you instantly if you’re out of position, inadequately braced, or cheating. That feedback is how you learn to move better.

And most importantly, it’s how you improve your form to stay injury-free.

Getting Stronger Without Getting Bigger

There’s a difference between muscles getting larger and muscle fibers becoming thicker and denser.

Lifting heavy weights will make your muscle fibers thicker and stronger but not necessarily larger.

This is great news for everyone wanting to get stronger without getting bigger.

Adding a significant amount of muscle to your frame requires intentional focus with your nutrition.

The only way a 50lb dumbbell will you make you bigger is if you eat it.

Bones, Hormones, and Metabolism

Heavy lifting increases your bone density by stimulating the growth and strengthening of bones. This is crucial for preventing osteoporosis.

Lifting heavy weights also triggers a hormonal response. Your body releases testosterone and human growth hormone and both of these play pivotal roles in muscle growth and muscle repair.

Heavy resistance training is one of the few legal ways to give your these hormones (testosterone and growth hormone) a reason to stick around as you age.

Done correctly, heavy lifting is armor-building for your joints.

Increasing your muscle mass can easily increase your resting metabolism by 50 calories per day.

Over the course of a year, that extra muscle mass will burn off more calories than 5 pounds of body fat…with no additional work.

How Going Light Can Hurt You

This is what can happen when someone only trains with light weights.

You never really wake up your fast-twitch muscle fibers. Light weight training focuses the smaller Type I endurance fibers.

This type of training won’t help you become stronger, more powerful, or more resilient.

Lifting light doesn’t require your technique to be as sharp. Lighter weights will let you twist, bounce, round, and use momentum to get your way through the reps.

Lazy technique with higher reps (at lighter weights) leads to overuse injuries.

Repeating sloppy form creates a lot of tendonitis, cranky shoulders and mystery joint pain.

And it’s not because the weight is too heavy. It’s because the movement isn’t optimal.

When the load doesn’t challenge you, your body doesn’t send the signals to build and preserve muscle.

What Lifting Heavy Should Look Like

For the big patterns, we define heavy as everything above 70% of your 1 Rep Max (1RM).

If you’re not sure on this, our One Rep Max Calculator will help.

The reps will generally stay between 2 and 8 for your main lifts. Your goal is to stay between 7 and 8 on the perceived scale of exertion which would leave 2 to 3 reps in the bank.

You should train the primary movement patterns 2 to 3 times per week (not once every 10 days when you feel like it).

We don’t advocate only lifting heavy weights and we certainly don’t recommend only lifting light weights.

This is where a well balanced program that uses a variety of sets, reps and intensities comes into play.

When recovery is a concern, the first option isn’t necessarily to reduce the weight.

Your sleep, total stress, total volume and exercise selection should be considered as well.

Remember that it’s not about how much exercise you can do…it’s about how much exercise you can recover from.

The Bottom Line

Lifting heavy isn’t the enemy.

Stupidity combined with lifting heavy is the enemy.

If you’ve been hiding behind “lifting heavy is bad for you”, here’s a question to consider:

Are you protecting your joints or are you protecting your ego from doing work that challenges you?

Absolute strength is the glass and everything else is the liquid inside that glass.

Said another way, getting stronger allows you to do more.

Strength increases your capacity….not your limitations.

If you would like to begin lifting heavy weights but would prefer the guidance from an experienced coach, contact us today and let’s chat about getting started.