Many of us want a nicely built body but are afraid to even think about being in the gym lifting heavy weights. Now there’s good news. You don’t really need to lift heavy weights. You just have to be willing to do some lifting, as light weight will work just as well for you.

Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario say you don’t need to strain with very heavy weights to build up muscle mass. The study is published in the journal of Public Library of Science, also known as PLoS One.
Most body builders lift very heavy weights for a short number of repetitions so that they can build large muscles. But you can achieve the same results, the new study says, if you lift light weights a large number of times.
The bottom line is to keep pumping iron until your muscles are totally fatigued. This is according to Stuart Phillips, PhD, associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University.

The study involved 15 subjects, fifteen healthy young adults with an average age of 21. Each subject was required to exercise with light and heavy weights and heavy weights with varying repetitions. As it turns out, for building muscle mass, it didn’t matter much if you used heavier or lighter weights.

The research findings will benefit people who have low levels of skeletal muscle mass and are unable to lift heavy weights. This group includes the elderly and others who suffer from a variety of medical conditions. Some of these conditions are cancer, stroke or accidental trauma. The research findings will also benefit patients recovering from surgery and victims of an accident who are undergoing rehabilitation.

The researchers said that their findings weren’t conclusive but promising as they did’t measure actual muscle mass. Instead the study relied on biological markers for muscle exhaustion. The researchers say that further work needs to be done in the area and that their findings need to be replicated.