Well, if you exercise until you can't lift 50 pounds for another rep, you've fatigued your muscles more (deteriorated more myofibrils) than if you exercise until you can't lift 180 pounds for another rep, although you're not going to build your fast twitch muscles as much only doing low weight.
Well, if you exercise until you can't lift 50 pounds for another rep, you've fatigued your muscles more (deteriorated more myofibrils) than if you exercise until you can't lift 180 pounds for another rep, although you're not going to build your fast twitch muscles as much only doing low weight.
... and you are quite possibly just overtraining, leaving yourself worse off than before!
I'm looking for resources on effective weight training for the purpose of physique building. It's an area with a particularly poor signal to noise ratio so I would value pointers from other rationalists. The kinds of questions I would like to answer are:
Edit: I'm vegetarian, and I now realise this is rather important to answers to point three. So far the only supplement I've been taking is soy protein.