Scroll through social media for muscle-building advice and the message is often clear: go to the gym; lift weights so heavy you can barely finish your final set. “People assume that’s the only way to build muscle,” says Leigh Breen, professor of translational physiology at the University of Leicester. “But there are other ways.”
Muscles grow when we place a demand on them that isn’t typical in our daily lives. If that demand is repeated often enough, the muscles adapt: getting stronger and, yes, larger. But they don’t “know” whether this stimulus to the muscle is coming from a heavy or low load.
