Dr Stacy Sims has the latest research and I am so excited to share it with you:

Do you need to lift heavy to get results?

Not always and not exclusively!

What?? We've been told this is what matters.

Continue reading for the latest research...

What actually matters for results:

• Effort (working close to your limit)

• Mechanical tension (the muscle has to work hard)

• Progression over time

• Recovery and fuelling

Research now shows that muscle can grow across a wide range of loads, as long as sets are challenging enough.

So:

• Heavy, low reps → biases strength

• Moderate or higher reps → can still build muscle and strength if effort is high

• Different tools can lead to similar outcomes

Why this matters especially for women

Women are not small men, physiologically or practically.

Women tend to:

• Be more fatigue-resistant🙌🏻

• Recover faster between sets🙌🏻

  BUT

• Gain muscle more slowly if under-fuelled (unfortunately very common in women. We need to eat enough, particularly protein when strength training)

For peri- and postmenopausal women:

• Resistance training becomes more important, not less

• Heavy and/or explosive loading (build up slowly & carefully!) is powerful for:

  • Muscle quality

  • Strength

  • Bone density

  But this doesn’t mean only heavy lifting, which I'm sure many of you are delighted about!

Why higher reps are also brilliant:

Higher-rep work (lighter weights for longer sets) is often used to:

• Learn and refine movement

• Build strength through larger ranges of motion

• Reduce joint stress while still training hard

• Increase tissue tolerance and resilience

• Support return-to-training or longevity goals

Great news. We are more likely to own lighter weights in our homes and the risk of injury is lower. To lift heavy, perfect form is non-negotiable!

We need to be challenging ourselves but this report shows there is more than one way to use weights that will give us those strength gains 💪🏻

Managing expectations (this part is important)

• Strength gains slow down as training age increases, that’s normal. Once over 40, we are fighting muscle loss, making strength training even more important!

• More training isn’t always better:

  • Beware... Fatigue, stress and injury risk increase if we push to exhaustion

  • This matters a lot for women juggling hormones, life load + training

Smart training is about doing enough. Shorter, effective workouts show more benefit once our bodies start changing. We don't need back to back classes or hours in a gym.

The practical takeaway

• When training ensure you are training well - effort & challenge without exhaustion.

• If lifting weights- train across different loads and rep ranges

• Progress strategically over time- build strength slowly and safely following guidelines.

Heavy lifting is a powerful tool but it seems it is not a requirement, as we were led to believe.

More importantly... before we add load, we need functional and confident movement.

Bodyweight training and mobility work build the foundation that makes strength training effective, safe and sustainable. They teach coordination, control and joint integrity; they strengthen connective tissue; and they reveal where stability or range of motion needs attention. When you can move well under your own bodyweight, you’re better prepared to tolerate external load, generate force and progress without unnecessary setbacks. Lifting weights doesn’t replace this work, it builds on it.

Prioritising bodyweight strength and mobility first sets you up for life!

If you'd like to learn more about Yoga-informed Bodyweight training: Take a look at my 6 week digital programme, Strong & Centred by following the link below:

https://www.josteelewellness.com/pages/sandc