Should You Train Heavy for Muscle Growth?

You have to take many things into account when performing a set to get the most gains. First, you should take your sets (working sets, of course) to failure or close to failure. Recent research agrees that this is an important factor to take into consideration when performing a set, especially for people who have been training for a while.

Taking a set to failure means that the targeted muscle works until it can work no more – you continue to perform reps until you can no longer perform one rep with good form and through the proper range of motion. However, apart from the targeted muscle, a lot of other muscles and organs in the body are also working hard while you’re performing an intense set. Your heart is pumping blood, and your nervous system is firing, the same as the cerebral cortex and other parts of the brain responsible for the mind-muscle connection.

When a set is too long, all these bodily functions will also happen for long, and this could lead to general fatigue, even before the muscle you’re training becomes fatigued. And as you can guess, this is not good for muscle growth.

Yes, You Should Train Heavy!

Well, one way to circumvent this problem of general fatigue before muscular fatigue is by using high intensity - training heavy. Yes, the rep range does not matter much, as you can grow muscle performing many light reps or performing few heavy reps to or close to failure. But while doing 25 light reps of, say cable rows, you could experience cardiovascular fatigue or some general discomfort, causing you to end the set even before your lats have been exerted.

Here’s the thing: the last few reps in any set are the most important ones. You know, the ones that are close to failure. What training heavy does is it allows you to get to those close-to-failure reps faster.

For example, if you perform a set of dumbbell presses and go heavy enough to reach failure on the sixth rep, you’d have been close to failure from somewhere around your third or fourth rep. But if you perform the set using smaller dumbbells that allow you to go up to 20 reps, you’d only get close to failure around your 17th or 18th set. By this time, the set could have dragged on for a while.

There are Some Considerations and Exceptions

High-intensity resistance training is not an excuse to ego-lift. You should still use weights that you can control, especially on the eccentric portion of the exercise. Slowing down your reps helps you achieve failure quicker, too, because the muscle gets fatigued faster, which is good for muscle growth.

You find a middle ground between intensity and control. No one can do this for you. You do this by experimenting with your warm-up sets, and sometimes, you may need to experiment over different training sessions to find the right resistance profile or the perfect rep range.

You see, performing high-intensity reps and sets with good form is a skill that you need to practice over time to get better at. Somehow, the research seems to favor this logic because people who have been training for a while (maybe two years) respond better to heavy, intense reps. On the other hand, beginners would increase both muscle mass and strength, regardless of whether they train intensely or not. But once those “newbie gains” leave, training intensely and to failure becomes more important for hypertrophy.

The assertions made here are not to say you can’t grow muscle at a higher rep range or make considerable progress. In fact, depending on your skill and how you’re feeling during a set, you may perform up to 15 intense repetitions. This also depends on the muscle group. Some larger muscle groups, for example, the quadriceps, may be able to perform more than 10 reps of any given exercise to failure, and all the reps would be intense.

Final Verdict

You don’t absolutely have to train heavy for muscle growth, especially if you’re new to the gym. However, training to failure or close to failure has been proven to be essential, and using higher resistance helps to train to failure faster and better.

Also, training heavy may become essential, depending on how far you go in your lifting journey. Why? The simple answer is that gains are harder to make, and you have to give more to get more. There goes the answer to the question. If you’re not already performing intense sets, I’d suggest that you start slowly and see how your body responds. Enjoy the gains!