Strength training progress - Increasing sets or increasing weight?

[Friday]

Dear community,

I have a question I can’t seem to find an immediate answer to and I hope you can guide me.

When it comes to strength training workouts, what’s the essential difference between:

• Keeping the weight of the dumbbells the same but increasing the number of sets
• Keeping the number of sets the same but increasing the weight

I’m asking this question to make progress in building muscle strength and quality, as part of tackling a chronic illness.
My goal is to push my limits without overstepping them...

I’m already very grateful for any experiences, help or feedback you can share.

Regards,
Ingrid

 

[Fremen]

I can't think of anyone better than @Damer to answer you

 

[Damer]

@Fremen thank you for tagging me here and @Friday thank you for kicking open this can of worms. There is a quick answer to this and a longer one. I will give you the quick one first and then expand it. You're dealing with a chronic illness and that requires a massive amount of taking responsibility for your self and your actions (for which you have my full respect) so the more you know the better you understand and with better understanding you are better positioned to make rational choices that help guide you towards the goals you need to reach.

The short answer is that there is no difference in terms of strength, except by lifting lighter loads but more times, you better control the exercise and reduce the chances that the external load (i.e. the weight) will overload muscle groups to the point of injury. We cover most of this in our guide: The Science Behind Lifting For Strength.

There is a more complex answer part of which you will find in the back-and forth in our AMA on strength (found here) and actually just scrolling through our Knowledge Base from time to time will help you with many of the questions that will inevitably come up as you seek to have more control over your body.

The more complex answer is that strength is an attribute (or a skill, if you like) not a byproduct of large muscles. Muscle size, muscle fiber length, the number of cross-bridges that can be activated at any one time at the myosin-actin binding action, all contribute to strength as does the strength of the message sent by the central nervous system (we have a guide on the CNS) to the muscles and the quality of the cardiovascular system that delivers the ribose sugar phosphate compounds necessary to form the adenosine triphosphate (ATP for short) necessary to run the cells of our body and brain.

In that regard lifting heavy as opposed to lifting light but lifting a lot creates the signal for some adaptations that deliver a different kind of strength (and this is also a contentious issue as strength should be strength which it is but also isn't under certain conditions) that is useful in some distinct and highly specialized situations. So if someone were to ask you whether you get the exact same benefits between lifting light and increasing the reps so that you can increase the load to the muscles with lifting heavy where you just increase the weight you lift the most truthful answer you can give is no, but the results are close enough as not to matter to most people and lifting light but a lot is so much safer that it makes sense to go with that.

I hope this helps a little bit. Please ask me any further questions as they may arise.