Which helps build muscle faster? Heavier weights or volume?

You might be considering returning to the gym and hitting the weights.

Whether your goal is to build more muscle, get leaner or improve your sporting performance. Understanding what is the best way to go about it is key to achieving the results you are after.

Naturally, you might be thinking that the heavier you lift the bigger your muscles will be.

While you are not wrong, lifting heavy can also increase your risk of injury by putting excessive stress on the joints.

A recent study found that both groups who did equal volume (30 reps) gained the same amount of muscle, but the group with heavier weights gained more strength.

Plus, 10 sets of 3 reps with a 2-minute recovery is 20 minutes of time that was spent on rest while working out.

In this time, you could have done a full body workout comprising of 4 compound exercises to hit all major muscle groups and be done in less than 45 minutes.  

So unless your focus is mainly on improving your strength. Focusing on intensity and volume, rather than weight, are the important factors for seeing improvements in your muscle growth.

So it is more convenient to use moderate weights for muscle-building, reduce the risk of injury, and improve recovery time (so you can train more often which increases progress faster). Then try to lift the heaviest you can and increase the likely hood of the opposite.

So in theory, heavy or lightweight does not matter for growth as long as intensiveness and volume are matched. In practice, using more moderate weight is way more convenient.

So if you are returning to the gym soon, start lifting lighter weights than planned and slowly increase the intensity to reduce the risk of injury and to build a more consistent gym routine moving forward!