how to build muscle

[johnnyada1]

I am in total confusion I read in a magazine (flex) that to build muscle you should use heavy weights and low reps and 3-4 sets. Yet I read in an other article you should use light weights and high reps with 3-4 sets.

this may sound like a real newbie question ( aint that right THAI BRI ) but its got me in a real dilema.

Help

[Thai Bri]

The vast majority of muscle mags are full of steroid heads, and they recommend the routines that steroid heads use. The clean amongst us will not grow on those routines, and will probably end up weaker than before we started.

If you want a clean and safe method of body building/strength trainin go here www.hardgainer.com

[IIjojoII]

If you use light weights and high reps, you're only toning your body.

If you use heavy weights and low reps, you're gaining more strength.

[johnnyada1]

I guess by toning you mean building muscle but not strength. strengh has always been my main goal but i mean some more muscle would be nice

[Half-Asleep]

i thought u used heavy weights to build muscle and high reps with light weights to build endurace or prolly what your refering to as strength.
the low reps and heavy weights means your muscles have to to be stressed and build more muscle fibres increasing the size to adapt to the lifting of the weights but kos u do low reps the lactic acid didn't eat away the muscle tissues.
And low weight high reps builds endurance but not size kos your muscle get used to excessive use but the lactic acid that forms through the high reps.
This is why marathon people tend to have small muscles because they are training with the equivelant of high reps by training for long periods of time with the same amount of weight, yet sprinters have larger muscles kos they go for a shorter time with more focus on going fast so more stress on the muscle the equivilant of more weight.

I got good results using this theory to build up muscle. Yet for endurance i am not so good.

[foolsknight362]

In my multiple conversations with a few of my friends that lift, we all do something different, and they are all designed to do different things.

Heavy weight, less reps = building muscle that you don't have. You get mass and strength from this. It takes less time to do so, but alot of people don't want to look like a steriod freak, but still want to be strong.
Less weight, higher reps = building the muscle that you have. In other words by doing this, you pack more muscle fibers into the muscle mass that you already have. Thus you get stronger, but your muscles stay the same size. It takes alot longer to build that strength then the other way around, but it just depends on what your goal is in training.

I train with both, because to me, if you just use heavy weight, less reps, you get bigger, stronger and slower. Less weight higher reps, your endurance and speed go up, and with time you get strength. So I work on heavy lifting to build muscle, lighter lifting to tone muscle and increase speed.

[Half-Asleep]

yeah thats what i was trying to say prolly just in a less clear way hehe

[adacas]

go with the heavy weight low rep thingy. You will get stronger and the muscle will come. In this scenario you are forcing both your slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers to work. in the other case of light weights and high reps you are only utilizing the slow twitch muscle fibers. Now think about this. Fast twitch muscle fibers are larger than slow twitch fibers. So to get big muscles you are better of building fast twitch muscles and so are better off lifting heavy.

[Jun Fan]

Either do one day of high weight low reps, one day of vice versa, or you can just do three sets of 10 to get the best of both worlds.