Heavy Light Training Routine

Heavy-light training is what made the bodybuilders of the 50's and 60's appears to be so big. Sports science tells us that when training with maximum or heavy weights we stimulate force-generating myofibrils that grow in size and number. But we also need sarcoplasmic expansion which we get from training with lighter weights, called density training.

Sports science has also taught us that doing more reps using a lighter load will stimulate a hormonal response because of the fatigue-product pooling effect. This boosts all anabolic hormones including testosterone and HGH into your blood.

Research now clearly shows that training with volume boosts all these anabolic hormones together with the glycogen load pumped into your muscles when training more reps with a lighter load. This enables the speeding up the repair of the muscle damage done from the heavy weight training the day before.

The more glycogen you are able to force into your muscles by training light and heavy the bigger your muscles will get. This underlines the importance of a pre and post workout meal or shake. Bodybuilders have been using high rep volume training with light weight while carbo loading 2 or 3 days before a contest for years because they know it works.

Any light workout done will bathe your still-recovering muscles with glycogen and all the amino acids needed from your pre-workout drink-without taxing your depleting muscles any further. It is a tried and tested regime that will get you fuller and more defined muscle mass.

To demonstrate exactly how the light-heavy principal is applied we have listed a bicep training routine doing a light day once a week and a heavy day once a week. This routine would obviously be done with other major body-parts but the sets and reps would be similar.

Heavy Day:
Barbell curls, 3 sets of 10, 8 and 6 reps
Incline curls (drop set to failure), 1 set 8 then 5 reps on each new weight

Light Day:
Barbell curls (sub-failure) 2 sets of 10-15 reps
Concentration curls 3 sets of 15, 12 and 10 reps


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