In Arnold’s Schwarzenegger’s The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding (pgs. 142-144), he states “…unless you include low-rep strength training, you will never achieve the hardness and density necessary to create a truly first-class physique … ‘If you don’t do heavy lifts,’ my friend Dr. Franco Columbu explains, ‘it shows immediately onstage. There is a soft look that shows itself clearly.’ There is abundant scientific and physiological evidence for why this is so. Power training puts tremendous strain on relatively few fibers at a time, causing them to become bigger and thicker (hypertrophy), and they also become packed much tighter together. This contributes enormously to that hard, dense look of the early champions … With high-rep training only, much of the growth is the result of transient factors such as fluid retention and glycogen storage, but muscle made as hard as a granite wall through power training comes as a result of an actual increase in muscle fiber size.”
On page 146, Arnold recommends picking one body part once or twice a week and testing out “your maximum strength”.
At the risk of blasphemy against the GOAT, this seems a bit outdated.
I was wondering if there are any true benefits of going heavy (I guess we can interpret this as <5 reps @9-10) for bodybuilders?