Maggie's Farm

Yeah, but that's also a way of giving yourself permission to take the easy route. "Don't lift heavy stuff, light weight will work just as well."

That's nonsense, of course. Easy doesn't work (beyond some low threshold). We all know that.

Two things to remember: One, strength is the ability of your muscles to apply force to an outside object, be that a barbell, the ground, a ball, another person, a bicycle pedal, whatever. Two, your body adapts to the stress applied to it.

Therefore, to build strength, you have to move a heavy enough weight to make yourself strong. Lifting light weights, no matter how many reps you perform, cannot make you strong. Doing 20 bench presses with 90 lbs will not make you strong enough to do even one rep at 225 lbs. You'll get good at doing 20 reps at 90 lbs, but that's about it. Once you put in the effort to get to the 225 mark, by lifting 95, then 105, then 115 and so on, those 90 lb presses will of course be easy.

I actually did not use the term "easy stuff" and only used the word "easy" because you did ("it's so easy").

I'm turning 60 in a few months and I'm currently squatting 365 and deadlifting 465, both for reps, at a body weight of about 216. Sure, I've had my share of tweaks, but then so have many of my friends who don't lift. But I have the advantage of being strong, while they remain weak.

There is of course a huge difference between working out with light weights, working out with heavy weights, and working out with maximum weights. I just don't think people should be encouraged to take, yes, the easy way, by sticking with light weights.

Do you have an argument against my two points? How exactly do light weights make you strong?

Makes sense. Building muscles requires actual structural changes to your body. You're building muscles, after all. And increasing bone density, toughening tendons and ligaments, etc. Your muscle endurance will improve with your strength as well, as each sub-maximal effort requires a smaller percent of your maximum effort, so you can do more of them.

Improved cardio performance is in large part improving the efficiency of existing chemical pathways, nothing new has to be built.

That's why strength takes long to develop but sticks around even after you stop working out. Your body doesn't like to give up those gains that were so expensive to build.

Good luck with your recovery, you'll be back to where you were in no time. There's no doubt in my mind that your strong deadlift was a big help in getting you back on your feet.