Light or heavy

[gareth h]

I'm training a couple of times a week and rather than doing split sessions which didn't seem to be working too well I'm doing a sort of 5x5 routine, last week I trained Monday and again on Wednesday and as my chest was a bit sore on Wednesday instead of 5 sets of 5 I did 5 sets of 10 lighter reps.
Normally I do 5x5 at 80kg which is a total of 2000 kg, with the lighter sets I did 60 kg which totals 3000 kg.
Which got me thinking, am I training harder / better with the lighter set.
What do you think?

[gregs656]

It depends on your goal I suppose. You're kind of comparing strength to endurance.

It wouldn't make an awful lot of sense for a 100m sprinter to run 10ks for his training. Sure he would do more running than the other sprinters but it's not running endurance he will need.

Progressive over load is key to the 5x5 and other strength programs.

[TameRacingDriver]

Supposedly, low reps / high weight primarily increases strength, and higher reps / moderate weight increases hypertrophy (muscle size). So yeah, it would depend on your goals really.

For me, I do the latter. I found that for me, the risk of injury with higher weight was not worth the risk, and primarily I am going for hypertrophy anyway, and not that bothered about raw strength. With lighter weights, I can concentrate more on perfect form, and its easier to see when I'm getting towards failure, which is important for me as I train alone so its risky to fail!