How and when to Increase the Weight Lifted in your Exercises
The amount of weight you lift in any exercise is directly correlated with your strength and muscle gain. The more weight you lift higher will be the tension on your muscles and stronger and bigger you will become. Unfortunately lifting more weight than what you can handle can cause serious injuries. Many of the guys who are just starting out and do not have a lot of experience with lifting weights therefore face a dilemma. On one hand they want to lift as much weight as they can so that they can make fast progress, while on the other hand they do not want to lift too heavy so as to not get injured. In this article we will describe how to figure out what your starting weights should be and how to increase the weight you lift so that you can continue to make progress.
Find your starting strength
Every one of us is unique in terms of strength and size. Some of us are inherently strong and can lift a lot of weight without any prior strength training experience; others however are not as strong and cannot lift a lot of weight while starting strength training. To complicate matters further, some of us are stronger in our upper body while others are stronger in the lower body, so the ratios of weight lifted for different exercises also vary a lot across individuals. Under such a situation, how do you know the weight you should be lifting the first time you perform bench press, squats or deadlifts?
Many guys often look for a formula where they can use their own bodyweight and height to calculate the weights they can lift. Unfortunately there is no such formula. Your best approach here will be to find it out by actually lifting the weights. We suggest that before starting off on any weight lifting program, we should dedicate the first week towards finding out the weights you can safely lift for each of your exercises. For each of the exercises start of at very low weights. As an example for the three big lifts, benching, squatting and deadlifting you can start off with an empty bar. If you are a girl then even an empty bar can be very heavy so you can start off with light dumbbells. The main point here is to just start off with some very lightweight and see how you feel performing the exercise with those weights. This first set serves the two-fold purpose of providing you a warm up and giving you an idea of your strength.
Now depending on how you felt in your previous set you can increase your weight for the next set. If you found the weight too easy to lift, increase the weight by 20 pounds or 10Kg for the next set. If you found that you could lift the weights but you felt little bit of soreness in your muscles you can increase the weight by 5–10 pounds or 2–5Kg and so on. If you notice that your muscles were shaking when you performed the last rep, then this is probably the maximum weight you can lift. Understand that on the first day your goal is to find out how much weight are you capable of lifting for the required amount of reps.
Things that you should always makes sure while performing all these exercises is that you are performing them with good form and you have all the safety equipment in place in case things go wrong. Always perform your big lifts in a power rack with safety catch bars so that you do not crush yourself under the weight. If possible perform these exercises with someone who is an expert. An experienced person can look at how you are lifting the weight and give you recommendations on how much weight you should increase. They can also look at your form and give you feedback. Finally they can act as a spotter for you as you keep increasing your weight. They can help you come out in case you get stuck.
One final note of caution, there is big difference between lifting a weight for 1 set of 5 reps and 5 set of 5 reps. Even if you can lift a weight pretty easily for 1 set of 5 reps, you might realize that as you perform more sets your body starts to get tired and you might find yourself failing. So even if you realize that you can lift a certain weight for 5 reps in the first week. For the next week when you will be performing the real sets, you might want to start off lower for the first set and then gradually increase the weight over the subsequent sets.
Increasing Weights as you make Progress
If you feed your body well as you workout, your will make strength gains, especially if you are a beginner. For the beginner it is not unusual to be able increase 5 pounds each week on the bench press and 10 pounds on squats and deadlifts. However to achieve this you need to feed you body well and really push hard during your workouts. A lot of people do not recommend increasing the weight that fast and that is a valid way of thought. It never hurts in being patient and cautious. There is nothing wrong in going a little slow and increase 5–10 pound weight over a month.
However if you desire to make fast gains then you will have to push yourself hard. Some amount of fearlessness and mental conviction will be needed in doing this though. Lifting more weight is not just physical it is also mental. There is no room for doubt here. You have to completely believe that you can lift more weight and then do it, if you are not convinced you will falter and fail. Keep in mind; here you will be performing the exercise at the limits of your failure.
The way we recommend you to increase weight is to perform pyramids. As an example let’s say you are performing 5 sets of 5 reps of squats. You determined in the first week that you could perform a set of 5 reps of squats with a maximum weight of 150 pounds. So for second week you will target to get to a set of 5 reps of squat at 160 pounds. You will do that by performing set 1 at 130pounds, set 2 at 140 pounds, set 3 at 150 pounds, set 4 at 155 pounds and set 5 at 160 pounds. Now for third week you will perform set 1 at 140pounds, set 2 at 150 pounds, set 3 at 160 pounds, set 4 at 165 pounds and set 5 at 170 pounds and so on you move forward. As mentioned previously it is extremely important to perform all these exercises with the safety equipment.
This rate of increase in strength is only possible for absolute beginners. After a few weeks though you will notice that it will be harder and harder for you to increase the weight. At that point you will have to decrease the rate of increase of your weight. The benefit of performing the pyramid is that the first set is much lighter than the final target and as you go up the pyramid you notice how you feel as you increase weight for each set. If you notice that you are finding it harder and harder to increase the weight then you can modify your final target accordingly. The clear sign of weight being too heavy is that your muscles and joints will start shaking. If you notice that your progress has stalled then its time to change your workouts completely and perform different exercises.
Amount of weight lifted in an exercise is the most important parameter for making strength and mass gain. Increasing the amount of weight you can lift in an exercise should always be your target. However it is a thin line that you have to always travel as lifting too much weight can cause injury. You need to always be aware of what your limits are and keep pushing gradually to higher levels in a controlled way. Always pay very close attention to how your body feels while performing your exercises. Never compromise your form to increase the weight and always keep your safety equipment in place in case you fail, as failure is inevitable.
Originally published at www.kaa-yaa.com.
