Lifting Heavy Weights vs. Light Weights
WPH Press
Each Wednesday the WPH features the WPH Wednesday Workout, designed to help you become a stronger, fitter, faster, and better handball player. From leg and shoulder strengthening exercises to HIT Training, biking, balance, footwork, agility, coordination, first-step explosiveness, hydration, cooling down, upper body strengthening, and much more, the WPH Wednesday Workouts focus on the areas that every handball player needs to reach their peak form.
To view all WPH Wednesday Workouts, go HERE
On this WPH Wednesday Workout, we’ll discuss lifting heavy weights compared to lifting light weights.
Handball is a game of skill and will, endurance and quick bursts, and mental and physical fitness. How can handballers use weight training to become more conditioned and stronger?
Light Weight-High Repetition
According to SELF HERE, light weights are good at building muscular endurance, as lifting light weight with many repetitions is extremely challenging. Training with lighter weights and higher repetitions requires more aerobic energy than training with heavier weights and lower repetitions. Hannah Davis states, “Using higher reps is really good if you train for any kind of endurance sport.”
High repetitions refers to lifting weights that you can lift 15 times or more. If, however, if you can achieve 30 repetitions without experiencing some muscle fatigue, the amount of weight is too low.
Heavy Weight-Low Repetition
To increase power, SELF HERE recommends training with heavier weights at lower repetitions. Using heavier weights with low repetitions is also more ideal for working on one body part, such as your chest or biceps.
“Training for strength, or your max force output, means the heavier the weight, the more strength gains you’ll have, along with size gains,” states Tuminello.
Where does this Heavy or Light Weight Training for Handball?
Handball requires endurance, but also requires strength. Throughout history, the game’s greatest players have not had outsized muscles, but have also been extremely strong and fit. The best weight training for handball is a combination of both heavy weights/low reps and light weights/high reps. By combining both types of weight training, handball players can increase strength, while also building aerobic conditioning.
Both types of weight training require proper form and what SELF refers to as “progressive overload.” “Progressive overload” means challenging the muscle to continue to see results – over time, increase the weight and/or reps for each exercise.
If you are only able to lift weights two or three days a week, a “total body” workout is advisable, in which you implement lower weight with higher reps for each muscle group during each weight training session.
Men’s Journal HERE disputes SELF’s heavy vs. light weight training debate, stating, “It’s the effort that matters most. Lifting heavy builds more strength, but lifting to failure (fatigue/exhaustion) with any weight can build bigger, more aesthetic muscles.”
Several important lifting rules from Men’s Journal HERE are that you don’t always have to lift to exhaustion, this compromising your form and risk of injury, take your reps to about two reps short of exhaustion, gains come from creativity, not just volume, and switch up your training cycles.
The bottom line: alternate your workouts! Lift heavy weights with low reps one day, and lift lighter weights with high reps the next! See your endurance and strength increase and start taking your handball game to the next level.
David Fink
WPH Fitness Director