 In order to understand why lower weight training, light or moderate weight is effective, we have to keep in mind the physical size of our muscles and the amount of weight that humans would have realistically used in nature. We know that in a natural environment we would have rarely lifted anything close to what we're doing now in the gym, hauling around 50 pounds for a job or doing consistent repetitive motions, swinging an axe, digging a shovel, our worlds away from even a 25 pound bicep curl. Thrusting a spear at an animal, sprinting, fighting someone, high intensity movements might not have been that common for our ancestors, but they were very adept at doing so because even if those events only occurred on a weekly or several times a month basis, they were still incredibly active doing other activities, walking all day in amazing athletic shape. A large part of strength and athletic ability comes from physical development during early life and how active you are as a child. How big your bone structure is, what's earned is muscle size. A natural lean muscular build that was seen in those indigenous people is a far cry from bodybuilders today, even myself. I don't consider my physique that muscular, but I guarantee you no one back then had this much muscle because they didn't have modern bodybuilding equipment. Nothing in nature can be compared to even a 25 pound bicep curl or a 20 pound chest fly. It gives us a lot to think about. The amount of stress that is meant to be put on the bicep muscle is incredibly small if we look in nature. There is nothing incredibly heavy that our ancestors would have lifted and even if there was it would have been a temporary explosive movement. It's obvious that the stress we're putting on our muscles with these modern bodybuilding routines is nothing that existed in nature. Even if you were picking a super heavy rock off of your caveman friend, hopefully you're not, you're not just using your biceps, you're activating many other muscles as well as tendons, your forearms, your shoulders, your back, your abs, your legs. If you were raised in a natural environment like our ancestors, your muscles and physique would have developed evenly strong throughout their early years resulting in a strong and balanced musculature as an adult that would have moved the rock in a natural way using their whole body, not bench pressing it off someone, not curling the rock. That's the key concept to understand. The amount of weight stressing a specific muscle as opposed to the whole body section. Doing a bicep curl for the bicep versus the bicep, the tendon, the forearm, the wrist, the shoulder, everything. The point I'm getting at is that heavy weight is absolutely not necessary for muscle growth. Indigenous people built lean muscular physiques without any sort of weight in their environment. So the idea that you can use a light to moderate weight to achieve your physique goals makes sense because that's already light years ahead of what they were using, granted you're consistent with high enough volume and training properly. Just think logically, look at your bicep. It's about the size of a softball, perhaps a baseball. Do you really need to put 25 pounds of tension on that muscle? Maybe on your whole arm if you're activating your form and your tendons. But even when I had 17 and a half 18 inch arms back some years ago, I was still only curling 15 to 20 pound dumbbells in my isolation movement, sometimes even 12 or 10 pounds. Same with my shoulders. Think about the size of your medial deltoid, your rear deltoid. Over the past nine months for my fitness transformation, I have not used more than five pounds on a lateral or rear raise, not more than 20 or 30 pounds on each arm for a dumbbell press. A lot of this ties into my other videos discussing lightweight where if you're performing the exercise properly, you're only activating the targeted muscle, well, mostly activating the targeted muscle, not as much the other accessory muscles or tendons. Can I curl 50 pound dumbbells now? Yes, absolutely. Could I do lateral raises with 30 pounds like everyone else? Could I do that 70 pound dumbbell shoulder press? Of course. And that's what I used to do when I was a young meathead in the gym. I'm not saying that amount of weight isn't effective for building muscle as it works for many and most people, but I'm not convinced it's ideal and it's certainly not necessary. Larger muscles, of course, like the chest, back, upper legs, which have multiple times the volume of muscle than your arms, your biceps, your triceps and shoulders, will require much more weight. You might have to use 100, 120 pounds on a lat pull down, whereas only 15 pounds is needed for a bicep curl and not only will those larger muscles require more weight, they generally require more volume, more sets, more exercises. I'll mention this through many of my fitness videos. Once you reach a certain amount of muscle, it's easier to activate those muscles and throughout the progression of muscle size, you should increase the weight you're using. I just don't think as much weight should be used and certainly not as rapid of an increase as people are looking to up the weight every single gym session. Every exercise and movement progresses differently. I've gone from 15 inch to 17 inch arms, just curling 15 and 20 pound dumbbells, but in order to get my chest larger, I've gone from bench pressing 25, 30 pound dumbbells to 50 pound dumbbells. The larger the muscle is, the more progression you will tend to see. Despite using what most people consider a light amount of weight, and I think that's an understatement as I've been called weaker than a vegan girl, I've still developed size and strength more than any of these vegan juice heads. Just because I curl 20 pound dumbbells with very strict and slow form, squeezing the bicep doesn't mean I can't take some 50 pound dumbbells and move them from point A to point B. Ask yourself this, how much weight should a novice weightlifter bicep curl with? How big can they get that bicep curling that amount of weight? How much more volume, more mass can they add onto that bicep? Is a bicep that is double the size it was originally twice as strong as that original bicep? Absolutely not. If you can grasp this concept, you'll understand in the whole point of this video. You can double, triple, even make your bicep five to ten times the size it was as a beginner by not increasing the weight of the dumbbells that much, specifically because you're isolating the bicep. However, if you were to use your forearms, tendons, even a little bit of shoulders in the movement, perhaps some momentum, you're strengthening more parts of your arm besides the bicep, you're involving more parts of your body that requires a drastic increase in weight. Very simple. Consistency, volume, and taking the muscle to failure. It doesn't matter how you do it, what exercise, what weight, what rest time, what rep range. If you take the muscle to failure, it will get bigger and stronger. In this case, taking the bicep to failure with a lighter amount of weight. The basic steps most people need to take are to reduce the weight, even cut in half in most cases, focus more on squeezing the muscle throughout the movement, reduce the rest time between sets, and increase the overall volume and frequency of your training routine. Hopefully, this gives you guys an interesting perspective of like, oh yeah, well, that makes a lot of sense. Humans aren't that big and there's not a lot of heavy stuff in nature, so why should we have to use such heavy dumbbells and nonsense and barbells in the gym to get bigger? We don't. Thank you guys for joining me today. Hopefully this helps you change your workout routine or get closer to your fitness goals. If you guys would like to support me, please just drop a like on the video, leave me a comment, please share the video on social media if you can. If you guys do know how to support me further, down in the description below. Thanks again for joining me today guys, I'll see you for tomorrow's video.