Quote:
Originally Posted by Nage Waza
Over the years more and more research has been done on lifting weights, and there are always new programs coming out. Yet the strongest people in the gym are simply lifting more weight, pushing more, even with poor technique. I think kettle bells are a good example of how adding more and more muscles to a lift can be a good thing, the cheating in a weight room may actually be good, as long as it isn't something that will injure you.
Keep in mind any advice I give is for power lifting, getting bigger and stronger so that you can lift even more weight. The amount of people I have met in the gym offering advice that contradicts simply how to get stronger is staggering, almost like the book smarts interfere with lifting weights.
In my opinion, figure out what you can lift regular sets for and add weight to that, maybe so you can lift it once with a spotter. Work on that until you can do it three to five times and then add weight again. New lifters will have serious growth during their first year (give or take) then they will see minimal weekly gains for the rest of their lifting life. You just need to figure out if you are on the initial gain period or plateaued. You get the odd freak that grows and grows, but they are very rare and most are not on that track.
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I can definitely see where you're coming from and what makes you say that but this is very bad advice.
The best lifters, the best runners, the best athletes, the best at anything physical
are the ones who don't get hurt. Sustainability is one of the best predictors of performance.
Think about how many amazing hockey prospects never made the show because they got hurt. And I'm not talking 4 concussions in 2 months, I'm talking just a 'regular' long term injury. Maybe a high ankle sprain that cost them 3 months of development in their key stage. They lost 3 months, then the slow return to full form was another 3 months (more?), and there goes an entire season. They lost fitness, they lost speed, hands, confidence.
Again, I can see why you're saying what you are. The correlation is VERY strong. It's obvious that every single power lifter does what you're saying, because their entire sport is "cheating". They are using leverage and "cheats" to lift the heaviest weight possible. Beyond that, any body builder I've ever seen does 1/2 range of motion reps. And clearly that works.
But what you don't see is the COUNTLESS athletes who didn't make it, or who aren't operating at their full potential. Obviously your advice is key for a power lifter since "poor form" is the essence of the sport. Because of the cheating, however,
the rate of injury in power lifters is extremely high.
Now take any study on epidemiology in power lifting with a HUGE grain of salt given that many people have "failed" becoming power lifters due to injury in the first place. What you're left with is the "survivors". They are already inherently more injury resilient because they're still lifting. And even then, that small study suggests 70% of them are injured at any one time.
Shifting to body building, the other problem is that weight lifting is accessible. Anyone can do it, and anyone can give advice on it. And it turns out trying to study strengthening and hypertrophy is extraordinarily hard because there are so many individual factors in what your potential as an athlete is. That's really hard to control for. So we're somehow left with half reppers, presumably because it's a bit of a default - it's "easier" to lift with poor form (and looks better with those heavy weights).
Lifting heavier with bad form will increase your risk of injuries. If you are injured you cannot get stronger or bigger. It really boils down to that.
Unless you are a power lifter, what you should be doing is leaving your ego at the door. Your goal should be to use the muscles of the desired lift in their full range of motion. For bench press, this means your lower back is flat on the bench, you're bringing the bar all the way down to your chest and all the way back up, and you're not using momentum. If you do this right, you will use much less weight. Less weight means less load on stabilizers and joints, those things that often get injured with lifting (rotator cuff and disc injuries are the most common I see).
My best example for why this is the right thing to do is treating achilles problems in runners. There are dozens of factors as to why they have an achilles tendinopathy, but a really common one is calf weakness. A common rebuttal when I tell my runners this is "but I run, my calves are super strong". Sure, in mid range where they're used. But then I get them to try full range, single leg, body weight heel raises off a step and the majority of them can't get past 20. "Normal" is 30. And turns out when they start strengthening their calf properly their achilles gets better as they are far better at dealing with the load of running.
Oh my god I'm still typing Another good example is cramping. Many people get hamstring, calf, and/or foot cramps. What you'll notice is these almost always occur when the muscle is in a shortened position (your covers pin your feet downward at night; you're trying a bridge exercise, etc). And sure, some people have nutritional deficiencies that lead to them, but the majority of cramping occurs because that muscle is weak in a shortened position and it's struggling to contract with a movement and over compensates and 'grabs'. Because you don't use it there ever. Unless you're doing full range of motion strengthening.
TLDR: your goal should be using the least amount of weight possible to still achieve adequate fatigue in the desired muscle.
Edit: I was typing so long it logged me out, yikes.