stevegreer said:
Just wondering about some opinions for strength training with weights for your legs. Do you think it is better to do heavy weights and low(er) reps or low weights and high reps? For example, if you are doing leg presses, would you do 8 reps with 400 pounds or 25 reps with 200 pounds?
All opinions are welcome!
I will answer since you asked a question purely on weight training and did not relate it to cycling performance.
Progressive overload is the key for strength training and general speaking it cycles through periodization with a planned goal.
Your legs will adapt to the stress placed on them. Doing higher reps with lighter weight will improve strength a little and for a little while, but once your body adapts you will either have to add more reps or more weight. You may gain lean mass depending on genetics but the relationship between strength and muscular gain may not be in balance. Again really depends on a person's genetics.
The old school of general weight training was to keep within a 10 rep range and then once that is fairly easy over a period of time you would increase weight until that becomes easy and then continue to incrementally increase.
My personal preference was to pyramid my sets and would go as low as 4 to 6 reps at the peak of the sets and then drop down and do a few lighter sets with higher reps. Again your body will adapt to the stress placed on it, but with weight training it also becomes a mental challenge as well. For instance in the peak of my past days I could leg press over 800 lbs, but backing out of a squat rack with 500 lbs was a huge mental challenge to overcome. The reason I say that is even if you could gain substantial strength by doing high reps lower weight once you unracked the weight, whether it be bench press or squats, the large jump in weight will just about crush you mentally. By incrementally progressing over weeks of time you give both your body and your mind time to adapt and adjust to the weight. The body adapts by becoming stronger (again genetics plays a huge role) and so does the confidence (hopefully).
So taking your example above if it were me I would do something like this pertaining to leg press if that is the weapon of choice.
(if you have already warmed up with light cardio or other leg equipment you may not need as many warm up sets. Later in my lifting career I began to really appreciate more warm up sets and my legs have adapted to large volume workouts. In my peak I was doing more than 30 sets on leg day with a lot of heavy weight training)
Set 1 light warm up 15 reps
Set 2 add weight, light warm up 15 reps
Set 3 add weight, light warm up 12 reps
Set 4 add weight, warm up 8 reps
Set 5 add weight, working set 6 reps
Set 6 add weight, working set 4 reps
Set 7 lower weight, working set 10 reps
Set 8 lower weight, working set 10 reps
Bottom line in all my years of lifting I have never witnessed anyone
continue to gain strength using higher reps in the manner that you asked. Almost everyone will initially gain strength just by starting as it is the same with cycling and most types of training. The initial phase is productive to newbies, but the body adapts and progress will stall eventually (typically).
I try to implement the following catch phrase in most things that I do.
If you keep doing what you are doing and you will keep getting what you are getting.
Based on that phrase I attempt to apply progressive overload whether it be weight training or cycling and my career.
