The 5 Best Ways To Build Muscle Without Lifting Heavier Weights

When you purchase through links on our site, www.PrimeBoosts.com we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. To build muscle mass, endurance, or strength, you should lift weights consistently, adopting the progressive overload technique (a gradual increase in intensity within a strength program), right? True, but there’s more than one way to increase muscle without lifting heavy. Whether you exercise at home or in the gym, there are some clever ways to increase the intensity of your workouts and get your muscles working harder. You can still work multiple major muscle groups using equipment or your body weight. But these five techniques move the body through resistance in totally different ways, allowing you to add versatility to your workouts while still reaching your body composition goals. Forget the gym - these 3 exercises build full-body strength you can brag about, because who has time for more? Below, I cover five clever ways to build muscle without lifting heavier and why these tried and tested methods work.



Grab the best adjustable dumbbells and read on. If you’ve just started lifting weights, you’ll need to understand the difference between rep and weight ranges for types of training: strength, hypertrophy (building muscle), and endurance. Your rep range is how many repetitions you do of each exercise. To build maximal muscle strength, calculate the heaviest weight you can lift for an exercise (like a bench press) called a one rep max (1RM), and lift close to that number - roughly 80-100%. Traditionally, strength training adopts higher sets of five or six and lower reps of one to six. If your goal is to build muscle mass - known as hypertrophy - you would calculate a weight between 60-80% of your 1RM and aim for three to four sets of higher reps between eight and 12. Endurance trainers could lift slightly lighter weights for much higher reps, working the muscles through less load toward fatigue. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips.



The rule of thumb is that to build bigger muscles, your body should feel challenged by the rep ranges and load. Either way, the last few reps of each set should feel tough to finish. While these are only guidelines, gym-goers, and bodybuilders have been training this way for years. Anyone trying to develop strength or muscle should adopt progressive overload. If your muscles aren’t feeling challenged, they won’t be forced to adapt, strengthen, or grow, and you could experience training plateaus. But increasing weight is only one overload method. You could also increase reps and change tempo, sets, and rest periods. Below, I cover five techniques worth adding to your exercise regime to spice things up, work muscles harder, and develop muscle growth. Adopt these next time you train. Sets are the total grouped number of reps per exercise. For example, if you’re training to build muscle, you might choose 3 sets of 12 reps per exercise.



Without adding weight, you could increase the sets and reduce rest to add intensity. Supersets combine two exercises performed back to back with a brief rest after, reducing overall rest while doubling the workload in one go. For example, perform 12 reps of a bicep curl followed by 12 tricep extensions straight after. You could opt for the same muscle groups, opposing, or a lower body-upper body split. You’ll also recruit smaller muscles for longer. These require you to decrease weight while increasing overall training volume, but it’s still no walk in the park. Drop sets are extensions of an exercise beyond your working sets and reps to reach burnout. Take the bench press. You’d complete 3 sets of 12 reps, then on the fourth, drop down in weight by around 10%. Continue until failure, then drop down again, and so on. Giant sets are an extended version of supersets, saving you time while overloading the muscles using three or more exercises in a mini circuit without rest between the moves.