One of the most common questions that people who exercise with weights ask themselves is whether it is more effective to gain a lot of weight and do few repetitions or, just the opposite, to take low weight and do many repetitions. If that is your case, the answer is that it depends and varies according to the objective you have set. As personal trainer Verónica Scotti explains , what you go after with exercise is what determines how to combine weight and repetitions.
Ways to combine weight and reps
- If you want to gain muscle. To increase muscle mass, the repetitions should range between 6 and 12/15, with enough weight - depending on your strength - to try to reach muscle failure in the last repetition, that is, until that moment when you are unable to do one more rep.
- When you want to lose weight. In the event that your intention is to lose weight and volume, as you will surely be doing a hypocaloric diet and cardiovascular training, to avoid the loss of muscle mass Scotti recommends working with strength with a lot of weight and few repetitions. Discover here super easy exercises to lose weight that you can do at home.
- To gain resistance. When what you are looking for is to increase your resistance capacity, in this case, what is recommended is to do many repetitions without too much weight to strengthen the muscles more than to increase them in volume. For example, you would have to do between 20 and 30 repetitions with little weight.
Attention to pauses
It's also important to take different breaks during your weight training depending on what you are looking for.
- To work resistance or increase the size of the muscles, what is recommended are the so-called incomplete or short pauses, ranging from 30 seconds to a minute.
- To increase strength, on the other hand, much longer pauses are recommended, which can range from around 3 to 5 minutes.
And if you want more exercise routines, don't miss the ones our blogger Patry Jordan proposes at the gym at home.
