Is It Better to Do More Repetitions with Lighter Weights?

 The more relevant question is whether light weights can build health — which includes better functioning as well as muscular development. And once one knows what they are doing, they can even build health and muscles with no weights at all — but with a better understanding of what they are trying to achieve. That is particularly important the older one gets with an increasing urgency for health and functioning — and not just to have bigger muscles or to lift more weights.

The person often called the father of modern bodybuilding, Eugen Sandow, prescribed such a course of using 5–10 lb dumbbells for 50–100 repetitions in all his exercises. Then 50 years later, Arthur Jones developed his Nautilus training principles centered around producing resistance through an even greater range of movement — in which he recognized that at one extreme of movement, the muscle under consideration was fully relaxed, and at the other extreme, the muscle was fully contracted. But beyond that, if one increases the range of motion beyond either extreme — the body produces its own resistance — against further movement — not requiring weights at all but working with the greater understanding of the physiology involved.

That is the first thing one has to do — increase the range of movement — and then repetitions become relevant. If one shortens the range of movement to handle heavier weights, then such exercise becomes counterproductive, and eventually injurious. That is the case for not advising older people to use increasingly more weight because it greatly increases the risk of injuries, while being non- or counterproductive — and why people think exercise is no longer effective in older people, or dangerous at worst.

So beginning with these older, more critical population, one fully recognizes the wisdom of the Hippocratic Oath, which is first, “Do No Harm” — and not as many coach and advise, “What doesn’t kill (cripple) you, makes you stronger.” That is the major reason people have to give up exercise entirely — even if they were once Mr. Olympia. More likely than not, they just die at a prematurely young age — of an exercise-induced condition.

We are surprised to learn that many so-called very fit athletes die suddenly — while following their self-prescribed regimens for keeping fit and healthy forever. Particularly susceptible are the “world’s strongest men,” because their hearts and joints can’t take the abuse anymore. The truth of the matter is that exercise does not have to be hard and difficult to be productive — and the favorable health effects can be achieved with a better understanding of the physics and biology involved.

People are healthier in every way because the circulation is optimized — rather than stagnant. Those are the fundamentals of essential life functions — breathing and circulation that in the absence, life cannot be sustained — but under normal conditions, is also not optimized, which exercise clumsily attempts to do. But it is not just a matter of making the heart beat faster and work harder — but that the entire musculature has that as its primary and most important function as well. That happens when a muscle mimics the action of the heart — in alternating muscular states of contraction with relaxations — that produces a pumping effect.

But you don’t do Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation with just 3–6 repetitions and think that is enough. Instead, one does 50 compressions in a minute — and maintains that pace for as long as they deem necessary and hopeful. Compressions are a contraction as they both make a volume smaller — which increases the pressure within until it is forced out into an area in which there is less pressure. And then when it relaxes, it allows space for new fluids and gases coming in from a properly functioning heart. But it is not the heart that is forcing the blood into an already occupied space. It has to first be vacated by the muscle contraction beginning at the insertion of the muscle that is being contracted — back towards the heart by a different set of blood vessels (venous) — which only has tiny valves to prevent a backflow. But the major propulsion has to be provided by the contractions of the skeletal muscles beginning at the insertion of the furthest axis of rotation (contraction).

That is true for the head, hands and feet — which suffer from the poorest circulation in most people because they do no produce contractions at those axes — because of the sedentary life and lack of articulation particularly at those axes (joints). As such, it is easy to understand why people suffer from arthritis at the hands, feet, and head — which greatly explains dementias and the lack of functioning at those critical parts of the human body with advanced ages — even those who exercise their hearts tirelessly but exclusively — as is possible to do with modern exercise equipment.  The inflammation remains in the tissues.

That’s why the telltale signs of aging are at the hands, feet and face/neck — because in modern conventional exercise, they are deemed unimportant to exercise — when in fact, they are of the greatest importance, and assuring that circulation and health, requires the health and development of the rest of the body — but not necessarily vice-versa. And so we have the familiar people whose hearts go on beating long after their heads, hands, and feet have become unresponsive — and people can’t understand why.

They don’t want to understand why. They think they should just be entitled to optimal health, functioning and development. But that’s not how life evolved. Life favored those who used all their faculties — and that use, optimized their continued survival — just as with all the other species. That is the meaning of survival of the fit. It is not an entitlement to live forever doing nothing to ensure one’s own health and prospects. One has to care for oneself as one’s primary task — and not only demand it of others. That means practicing what needs to be done — all one’s life — as though their lives depends on it, because it does.

It sounds like a cold, cruel world but it doesn’t have to be that way. One has to improve the understanding before repetitions do any good — and practice such movements until they become second nature — not requiring extraordinary effort and motivation to effect. Too much of the discussions on exercise presume that it is extraneous and even vain to desire rather than the reasonable expectation of continued life. That is what it takes.