Reply to Do I have to use heavy weights?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For general health and fitness, it doesn't really matter if you are doing sets of 15-20 (with relatively light weights) or sets of 5-7 (with relatively heavy weights). But to build strength, you do need to be using weights that are heavy enough to really challenge you. You don't have (and probably shouldn't) go to exhaustion, where you literally couldn't do another repetition if your life depended on it. But the last rep of the set should feel quite difficult and give you the sense that you couldn't do more than a few more.

Also, it's generally more efficient to do exercises that engage multiple large muscles, such as rows, deadlifts, and squats. You will naturally use heavier weights for those than for exercises like shoulder curls and bicep curls.

For instance, according to https://exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/DeadliftStandards60LB, an untrained, 97 pound woman in her 60s should (on average) be able to deadlift 30 pounds. Unless you are a frail, small, elderly woman, deadlifting with 10 pound dumbbells won't help. (And the standard for a "novice" 130 pound woman in her 40s is 115 lbs. [/quote]

These deadlift amounts aren’t with dumbbells are they? I would pull a back back muscle if I lifted that! I usually do 15lbs for each dumbbell (30lbs total) and do it nice and slow, and feel it in hamstrings and glutes. [/quote]

No, these are BB standards, but even with DBs you should be able to do significantly more than 15lbs. You are stretching the muscle, which is why you feel it, but you are not meaningfully overloading the muscles. [/quote]

You have to be careful giving advice. It’s easy to injure yourself working with weights that are too heavy. People have to build up… slow & steady. [/quote]

Did I tell her to go pick up 100s? She can experiment herself, but she will very likely find out that even 30s are pretty easy to move. For most women the grip will give up before their posterior chain too, so straps or Cobra Grips could be useful.[/quote]

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