[raducu]

> not the mass used.

Completely anecdotal, but when I was 18, in highschool, I trained in the gym in my hometown, supervised with a trainer, 12 reps per muscle group, very modest gains.

I move to university, start reading a fitness forum where people were saying do max 6 reps if you want big gains.

I also started supplementing with whey protein, and within 3 months the gains were spectacular, everybody noticed, I felt on fire, best time of my life, I miss so much how great I felt in my own body.

I've seen other colleagues and how they trained -- I can say there was 100% correlation that those people who were not training hard also did not have big gains. People who had enough breath left in them to chat in the gym simply did not gain as much as people I saw as training hard.

Also for me, the 6 reps to exhaustion felt completely different then 12 reps (again, to complete exhaustion) -- immediately after the training it felt amazing to be alive, the world became a comfortable place, my anxiety completely vanished, and in the night and morning after an intense training (especially the legs and back) the erections and libido boost were out of this world, something I never felt with the 12 reps regimen.

[vidarh]

What do you consider gains? Consider that this paper looked specifically at hypertrophy (size), not strength. While they correlate, training for one or the other can be very different..

"Traditionally" the rep ranges recommended for hypertrophy has typically been significantly higher than the ranges recommended for strength, but the number of sets recommended is often also significantly higher, often translating to significantly higher total volume.

> I've seen other colleagues and how they trained -- I can say there was 100% correlation that those people who were not training hard also did not have big gains. People who had enough breath left in them to chat in the gym simply did not gain as much as people I saw as training hard.

Well, yes, but training with lower weights and higher rep ranges does not automatically translate to "not training hard".

Having gone through a period of really high rep training, including for a short period doing 1000 squats per day as an experiment, mostly bodyweight, that was far harder exercise than when I 1RM'd 200kg. But the effects are different.

I much prefer Stronglifts and Madcow but because I favour strength over size, and it's far more time efficient, not because you can't also get results with more, lower-weight reps.

[matwood]

> Consider that this paper looked specifically at hypertrophy (size), not strength.

I'm not sure where this idea came from that people do one or the other. Except for the advanced lifter, both will happen from either program. Show me a person who is really big and they are likely pretty strong as well (see Ronnie Coleman). Same with the other direction.

[bendtb]

Anecdotally as someone who strength trained on a recreational basis the last 20 years (and run a marathon just to see if I could), nothing beats heavy lifting.

A Strong lifts 5x5 program build around squat, deadlifts, bench and shoulder press can always make me feel pumped for the day!

[matwood]

Same. Finding heavy lifting changed my life if I’m honest. The strength gains, body comp, and how I felt was amazing.

[machomaster]

To maintain my health I supplement with iron. In a form of barbells and dumbbells.

Shoutout to Barbell medicine. It is a good youtube channel by 2 lifting MDs (formerly associated with Starting Strength).

[marknutter]

There really isn't much of a difference between doing 6 reps vs 12 reps, what matters is going to failure which I think may end up being harder when doing 12 reps because people maybe don't realize how much they have left in the tank.

[bonesss]

Going to failure can also be a question of which ‘link in the chain’ is hitting failure at any given rep range.

Bent over rows being and easy example: at a 5RM upper back is giving out as desired, but past 10RM my lower back is the issue. If my goals are bent over endurance in my core then higher reps will force adaptations where I’m weak, if I’m trying to get my shoulder blades sexy and humpy I gotta keep the stimulus where I want results. In addition to manipulating reps something like a snatch grip can provide a leverage based answer to the same targeting needs.

Proximity to failure is key, targeting and maximizing that proximity is individual and highly goal dependant.

[As a bit of a physio case I’ve found General Gainz (/r/gzcl on Reddit), to be a highly productive RPE based system with very happy adaptive approach to hitting personal limitations mid workout; no “failures” or broken spreadsheets = motivation = consistency = progress; strong recommend to check out]

[matwood]

> People who had enough breath left in them to chat in the gym simply did not gain as much as people I saw as training hard.

IDK. When I powerlifted the goal was to move the weight. I've almost passed out from heavy deadlifts, but was rarely out of breath. I also almost never chat in the gym because it's my meditative place, not because I couldn't chat :)

[hunter-gatherer]

I think what OP is specifically refering to is the intensity level that varies among individuals. I suspect that oft times when people train with a low weight/high rep scheme, they accidenrly let their intensity levels slip. I suspect that for most people, especially newer lifters, doing a high weight/low rep scheme makes keeping the workout for intense because it is easier to focus on being intense for a short time. Just a thought....

[eastbound]

Why did you stop? It seems you did, but since it made you feel excellent, it seems strange to “choose to stop”.

It’s not an innocent question: Gains and feeling extremely well and confident and serotonin-boosted are only useful if it can be sustained in life. The two alternatives are: 1. It pumps you but tires you very fast and you get fat down the line, and your overall life is ~obese (seems to happen to way more people than one could assume), 2. Only the change produces this feeling, and change cannot be sustained forever.

[raducu]

Not just one reason, but I stopped because I more or less maintained my physique for 7-8 years afterwards (probably being in your 20s helps) and my life circumstances were in a goldilocks zone; my dad (a doctor) was adamant I'd destroy my heart with all the muscle mass I added.

The thing that motivated me to start was the fact I was not very successful with girls and gaining 30 pounds of muscles in early 2000's Romania was intoxicating, if anybody told me before that girls would send kisses in the subway, grab my arms in the bus and start conversations with me or ask for my number in clubs, colleagues ask me to dump my girlfriend I would have said it's impossible.

I'm ashamed to say, but all that validation was even better than the way lifting made me feel and the primary drive to weight lifting.

It's only now that I remember how good weight lifting in itself made me feel, I never did give it much thought back then.

But now it's very hard to find the time or motivation to start it again.

I'm not really scared of getting fat down the line, I'm in my early 40s now and I've never been fat.

You could be right, that it's only the change that makes you feel amazing, and I only ever went to the gym for some 6 months total, but I have my doubt that it would ever go away, I've been on many, many drugs, NOT ONE ever made me feel good for 6 months straight, they all downregulate very fast.

Now thinking about it, I get a renewed motivation to re-start weight lifting