John Stone has a bunch of information on what kind of training he did to lose a lot of weight and what he does to keep it off. One of the places he referenced is AST Fitness that has an interesting approach to weight training. They pitch the supplements their company makes, but they also give decent advice on weight training, occasionally with references. When I switched from a different training regimen to MaxOT to see how it worked, I was pretty impressed, and despite the “hardcore” aspects of it, it’s not as painful as it seems. I was more wasted after completing a circuit of my previous training program than one of MaxOT.
When I was researching fitness, one thing that a lot of resources seemed to agree on is that the old saw of high reps, low weight equals toning, while low reps, heavy weight equals bulk is pretty much crap. Different training changes aspects of performance and efficiency, but it doesn’t change the “look” of the muscle that much. The difference in appearance depends on your body fat and the amount of overall muscle tissue you have, not the type of muscle tissue you recruit. Runners look lean because they have less muscle than lifters. They also sometimes have higher body fat than you would think.
Other near-universal advice/debunking:
[ul]
[li]you can’t spot-reduce fat or “shape” muscles[/li][li]isolation exercises are not as beneficial as multi-joint ones[/li][li]overtraining inhibits muscle gain[/li][li]rest is almost as important as training[/li][li]you need to take in enough calories to gain muscle or you won’t see any benefit[/li][li]upping your protein intake as a percentage of your total calories is (depending on your current diet) possibly a good thing[/li][/ul]
To gain size and strength, to increase your overall muscle tissue, you should not do too many repetitions. Advice varies depending on the source and the goals of training, but basically everyone says that if you can do more than 15 repetitions per set, the weight is too light and you’re just wasting your time. You need to have a minimum of 1-1.5 minutes of rest between sets. If you’re lifting heavy with low reps, even more time (2-3 minutes) might be necessary. Too short of a rest period and you’re overtraining, not getting the most out of your exercise time. A set of muscles needs a minimum of 24 hours rest between workouts, 48 if you’re lifting heavy. You could work out almost every day if you concentrated on one area only each session, giving your muscles a few days to recover between bouts while still keeping your butt in the gym on a regular basis.
The reason you haven’t seen any specific weight to lift is because it depends entirely on you. Everyone has different levels of conditioning and natural strength. That’s why they state rep ranges. You pick a weight that you can only lift for that number of times. For example, for 8-10 reps, 3 sets (not including warm up) you pick a weight you can barely complete the reps with. Only seven reps, the weight is a bit too heavy; eleven reps, weight is too light; barely, squeakingly getting nine is just about right. If you can finish ten reps on all three sets, you need to increase the weight a bit the next time you do that workout. This takes a bit of trial and error at first, but you get it pretty nailed down within a few weeks, even if you cycle to a different rep range.
