The absolute fastest way to start a war of words on a weight lifting message board is to ask what are better, high reps of low weight or low reps with high weight. It seems that either people have an unmovable opinion on one side or the other, or they have no clue, asked the question which stated the argument, and walk away even more confused. Let’s see if I can’t shed some light on the topic without loads of hate mail and/or someone trying to crash my site.

First, we need to define what we mean by “better”. Do we mean gives results faster? Or do we want a specific result and want to know if one method provides that result and the other doesn’t? Are we looking for a magic method that is easier than other ways?

Next let’s define what we mean by “high” and “low”. We will consider low to mean 3 -8 reps. High is defined as 12+ reps. Any ludicrously high numbers like 200, and the weight corresponding to do that many reps, can really be considered cardio exercise and doesn’t have a place in this article. The weight for high or low reps should be one that causes you to fail on the final rep. This way the low reps will have higher weight than the high reps. Doing low reps and low weight will give you no result, and high weights will not allow you to get to high rep numbers.

Perhaps the best way is answer the question for several common scenarios and tailor the answer to the situation:

I want to lose weight

Since any exercise you do will result in a calorie burn that can help you lose weight, let’s assume you want the way that will do it the fastest. The mechanism that forces the body to lose the most weight when lifting is muscle repair. This is when the body rebuilds the muscle after a workout, fixing the micro-tears caused by the weight lifting. The greater the stress on the muscle, the greater the amount of repair, the greater the calorie burn.

I want to look toned

What most people mean when they think of “toned” is that they want some muscle definition, without looking bulky. Naturally in order to see the muscle, you need to lose the weight first, so refer to the first scenario if you need to. Both methods will build muscle, by low reps, high weight, will do so faster. Luckily most people don’t need to worry about looking bulky. Unless you are a professional lifter, have good genetics, and a diet geared specifically towards bulky, you are in no danger of gaining the physique of a pro wrestler.

I want to be better at a sport

When training for a sport, the first best thing you can do is work on your fast twitch muscles, this is done through sprinting and other speed drills. The second thing you can do is increase your endurance. Higher rep exercises, force your body to work for longer periods of time. This forces your body to adapt by increasing blood vessel size and count. This allows more oxygen and nutrients to be delivered to your muscles.

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