Light or heavy weights grow muscles the same
Do the anatomical and physiological properties of a muscle determine its adaptive response to different loading protocols?
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Using light or heavy weights made calf muscles bigger and stronger equally in young men who trained hard.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
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Evidence Score
Participants are randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, minimizing bias. Considered the gold standard for testing whether an intervention causes an effect.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Using light or heavy weights made calf muscles bigger and stronger equally in young men who trained hard.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 541 / 90
Evidence Score
Participants are randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, minimizing bias. Considered the gold standard for testing whether an intervention causes an effect.
Publication
Authors
Schoenfeld BJ, Vigotsky AD, Grgic J, Haun C, Contreras B, Delcastillo K, Francis A, Cote G, Alto A
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When untrained young men lift lighter weights many times until they can't lift anymore, it builds just as much muscle in their calf muscles as lifting heavier weights fewer times. Both ways made their muscles about 10% bigger after 8 weeks.
When people do strength training, the outer calf muscle grows more than the inner calf muscles, no matter how they lift weights. This shows that some muscles naturally grow faster than others.
For beginners, lifting heavy weights a few times or lighter weights many times both make your calf muscles about 15-18% stronger after 8 weeks.
Different types of muscle fibers in your calf muscles don't affect how much they grow from lifting heavy or light weights, because both the mostly slow-twitch and mixed fiber muscles grew about the same with both types of training.
When untrained young men lift weights until they can't lift anymore, their calf muscles grow bigger by 7-14%, no matter how heavy the weights are. This shows that pushing hard is what makes muscles grow, not how heavy the weight is.