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Forum The Big 7 Best plan for squats / deadlifts with limitied weight?

Best plan for squats / deadlifts with limitied weight?
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2:23 pm
February 10, 2010


Jeffrey343

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My wife and I do most of our workouts at the rec center where our boys have swim practice.  It's not the best gym around, but it's very convenient to get in our workout while they're there doing their swim practice.

The free weight area consists of dumbbells from 5 – 75 pounds, one curl bar (about 20 pounds), and 105 pounds of plates (2 x 2.5, 2 x 5, 4 x 10, 2 x 25).  It also has the latest model of Cybex weight machines.  That's not much, but it's enough for us to get a good workout.

My biggest limitation is doing squats & deadlifts.  The most weight I can use is either 150 (dumbbells) or 125 (curl bar).  There is no squat rack; I lift what I can onto my back and have my wife frantically run from side to side loading plates (I'm sure it looks quite funny).

Despite the hassle, I prefer the curl bar.  It's very narrow for squats and not terribly comfortable, even when we wrap a foam thingee around it (actually a "noodle" the boys have used for playing in the pool).   But it beats holding on to those 75-pound dumbbells for over 60 seconds.  I try to do 20 reps with 125 pounds; it's not a whole lot of weight, but 20 reps is a good challenge.  Same deal with deadlifts – not much weight, but I do what I can to make it a good workout.

My question is more for my wife.  She is not nearly as limited as me.  She can deadlift the 125 at least twice (maybe even 3 or 4 times), and she can squat 70 at least eight reps (possibly more).  Would it be better for her to also do lower-weight higher-rep sets like me, or to do higher-weight lower-rep sets?  Or alternate each workout?

We also do Romainian deadlifts and lunges, and we often do the leg press machine after all the free weight stuff.  So we can blast our legs pretty well.

Also, it is not my wife's goal to bulk up downstairs.  She wants what just about any woman wants – sleek toned legs and a perky butt.  We see a lot of teenage girl swimmers, and she says she wants to look like that again.

8:15 am
February 11, 2010


Darrin

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Whenever I'm in a gym with limited poundage, I go for unilateral (single leg) deads and squats, using dumbbells.  I also do bulgarian split squats instead (which I think is misnamed, as it really is more of a lunge movement). On a related tangent, Mike Boyle (a renoun hockey coach and strength coach that most strength coaches practically worship) has created some controversy recently by completely eliminating bilateral squats (2-leg, or the "normal" squats) for ALL of his athletes.

Anyway, a potential problem with regularly doing what you are doing is that you are never going heavy.  Doing 20 reps of an exercise builds endurance, not strength.  (And depending on many other factors, 20 reps may or may not stimulate hypertrophy – muscle size growth.)  So if your goals are to get stronger or bigger, 20 rep-routines probably won't do it.  Conversely, if you are just trying to add some endurance training to your non-running days, with running (an endurance activity) being your main goal, then you are fine with what you are doing.

For your wife, it all depends on her goals compared to her current condition.  Keep in mind that it's nearly impossible for a woman to "bulk up".  Think of how hard it is for us guys to bulk up – and we have all the right hormones to do so!  Yet most of us still can't.  Women, without those hormones, almost never bulk up – like 1 in 1000 who lift weights.  So she shouldn't worry about that.

Generally, think of it like this:

strength – heavy weight for low reps (like 3 to 6); lots of rest in between sets

hypertrophy – medium weight for medium reps (like 8 to 12)

endurance – light weight for high reps (like 15 to 20); short rest in between sets

fat loss without muscle loss – mixed bag but I generally suggest mostly "endurance" type training but with even more intensity/bursts, yet with a week of "strength" type training every 3rd week or so; "undulating periodicity" is popular now but I'm not a fan because of it's complexity for the average person who doesn't have a personal trainer

Hopefully others will chime in here too!
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