1. Not Training Hard Enough

To stimulate muscular strength and size increases you have to work your muscles harder than they are accustomed to, and the harder the better.

Specifically, you should perform each exercise until it is impossible to continue in good form, using a heavy enough weight that you are only able to perform between 3 and 12 slow, controlled reps (The slower the reps, the fewer you need to do. By slow I mean taking at least five seconds to lift and five seconds to lower the weight, but even slower is better; I recommend taking ten seconds to both lift and lower the weight.)

The exercise is not over when the muscles start to burn or when things start to become uncomfortable. The real valuable work is just starting. The exercise isn’t even over when your muscles feel like they’re on fire and your heart is pounding through your chest, you’re just getting to the best part. The greatest stimulus for muscular strength and size increases occur during the last few hardest reps, and if you give up at any point short of an all-out effort, you aren’t going to get nearly the same growth stimulation.

2. Not Training Progressively

As you become stronger you must attempt to lift progressively heavier weights to stimulate further improvement. If you continue to use the same weights on all your exercises despite increasing in strength, the weights will no longer be challenging enough to stimulate further improvements. Assuming you are using very strict form, attempt to either perform more repetitions or use a slightly heavier weight on every exercise, every time you train.

3. Doing Too Many Exercises and Sets

It is the intensity of muscular work that stimulates strength and size increases, not the volume. Doing any more exercise than minimally necessary will reduce rather than improve gains, by interfering with the process of recovery and adaptation.

In most cases, all you need is one hard set of only one or two exercises per major muscle group. More is rarely necessary, and usually counterproductive.

4. Training Too Frequently

The body must be allowed adequate time between workouts to fully recover and adapt, or gains will not occur. Exercise does not produce any improvements in the body, exercise can only stimulate the body to produce the improvements, if it is intense enough, or prevent the improvements from being produced, if it too much is performed, too often. The body produces the muscular strength and size increases stimulated by exercise, but only if it allowed adequate time between workouts to do so.

5. Not Keeping A Workout Journal or Progress Charts

Proper adjustment of training volume and frequency to avoid overtraining requires objective evaluation of progress. If you’re not keeping accurate records of your workouts, you can not objectively evaluate the effectiveness of your program and make the necessary changes to keep gaining or get your progress back on track.

6. Using Sloppy Form

Poor form reduces the effectiveness of an exercise and increases the likelihood of injury. While an entire book could be written on the specifics of proper exercise form, one of the most effective ways to improve exercise form in general can be summed up in two words: slow down. Moving more slowly makes it easier to maintain proper positioning and alignment, and allows for better focus on performing the exercise correctly and on intensely contracting the target muscles.

7. Switching Exercises or Routines Too Frequently

Real gains are made by consistent progress on the basic exercises over time. Changing routines too frequently prevents the body from getting past the initial, primarily neural/skill adaptation stage and into the more productive training that follows.

The belief that one must change their routines regularly to avoid plateaus because the muscles become resistant to further improvement with specific exercises is based on the observation that the fastest improvements in performance on an exercise routine occur over the first six to eight weeks after which it begins to slow down, and that changing the routine appears to solve this problem.

During the first several weeks performing a new exercise or routine a larger percentage of the improvements in exercise performance are due to neural or skill adaptations. After this initial period of neural adaptation, performance improvements slow down and the majority of adaptation is occurring in the muscles. This is where the real progress starts, however, and it is important to not change the routine at this point. It will be slower than during the initial six to eight weeks, but you will make progress if you properly adjust your workout volume and frequency.

Contrary to bodybuilding myth and uninformed opinion, the muscles do not stop adapting to a particular exercise, method, or routine – if there is sufficient overload a muscle will be stimulated to grow, and as long as volume and frequency are not excessive, and adequate rest and nutrition are provided, and one hasn’t already reached the limits of their potential, it will grow stronger and larger.

If you only performed a few, basic barbell exercises, covering all the major muscle groups, and trained hard and progressively you would eventually become as big and as muscular as your genetics allow. There is no need to constantly switch up angles, rep methods, or anything else.

8. Not Training Legs

Heavy leg work,  squats, deadlifts, leg presses, etc., can be brutal when done properly, and as a result many would-be bodybuilders avoid it, preferring to focus on the relatively easier upper body exercises. This is a huge mistake, as heavy leg work appears to have a beneficial effect on growth throughout the entire body, particularly squats and deadlifts.

Do not skip training legs. Doing so robs you of potential full-body size increases, and having a well developed upper body and chicken legs looks stupid.

9. Not Eating Enough Quality Food

Your body requires both material and energy to produce new muscle tissue. Often, when skinny guys complain they have a hard time gaining muscle mass, it turns out they simply aren’t eating enough food in general or protein in particular to support the growth they stimulate during their workouts. If you want to get big, you have to eat big. This doesn’t mean pigging out, but getting enough quality food and protein daily to add at least a few pounds per month, but not so much your waist size or abdominal skinfold increases significantly.

Just like your workouts, you have to keep track of your eating and make adjustments based on how your body responds.

10. Wasting Money on Bogus Bodybuilding Supplements

While stopping wasting your money on supplements might not make your muscles suddenly start growing, it will stop your wallet from shrinking.

There are a few supplements which have proven to be beneficial, but most provide little or no benefit. If you want to know which supplements work and which don’t, don’t read about them in the bodybuilding magazines – they make a large amount of their money selling advertising to supplement companies and are hardly unbiased sources of information on the subject. Almost everything you read in muscle magazines is bullshit. If you want reliable information on supplements or their ingredients, read the scientific journals, and even then, do so critically.

Many choices we make daily affect our health, fitness and appearance, either helping or hurting us. Some decisions affect us more directly and immediately, others more indirectly and over a longer period of time. We often make decisions that hurt us fully aware of the consequences, rationalizing them based on some immediate, short-term benefit.

“I knew eating/drinking this will make me feel horrible later and slow down my fat loss, but it tastes so good!”

“I know if I buy this TV I will be late paying bills, but the game is going to look great on it!”

“I really should wear a condom…”

When deciding between different courses of action we usually have some idea what the consequences might be, which can be evaluated based on our values. If you value being strong, fit, healthy, and looking your best more than you value the brief gustatory pleasure a particular unhealthy food provides you should choose to not eat it.

But, many times people choose to eat it any way.

It is common to rationalize having a little occasionally won’t hurt, and in some cases that is true, however if your idea of “a little” and “occasionally” is a serving or two a few times a week it is going to hurt you and/or your progress towards your goals.  If you find yourself doing this, when you are trying to decide whether to eat a particular item and weighing how much you value that experience against the potential negative effects don’t think of the negative effect of the single instance, but consider the negative effect of making it a habit over time.

Before eating or drinking something, ask yourself:

Is eating or drinking this going to help or hurt you in the long run, or help or hinder you in accomplishing your goals?

Are you really hungry or thirsty, or just bored or eating out of habit?

If you really are hungry or thirsty could you make a healthier choice?

If you value being strong, fit and healthy and looking good over the temporary enjoyment of eating or drinking certain things make a commitment to thinking and acting in accordance with those values. Post reminders to yourself. Ask friends and relatives for support. Hire a personal trainer.

A few weeks ago I talked about this with a client who wants to lose more fat before summer. In addition to the usual recommendation to purge the house of anything she shouldn’t be eating I suggested she have a photo taken in her swimsuit and post it on her refrigerator door. She says the reminder helps, and it shows. She’s gotten consistently leaner and is well on her way to looking great in a swimsuit this summer.

Whenever I am out with family or friends if I’m tempted to eat or drink something counterproductive to my goals I think about how the enjoyment of a food or drink is temporary while the effect on my body is long lasting. While it might increase my happiness momentarily, it will reduce my overall happiness by negatively affecting the higher value of having a fit, healthy and attractive physique.

A similar choice occurs during exercise. Properly performed high intensity training produces a variety of very uncomfortable sensations – painful muscular burning, significantly elevated heart rate, labored breathing, and even slight dizziness and nausea on occasion – which must be worked through for the best possible results. You can choose to quit when it starts getting hard and avoid the worst of the discomfort, or you can choose to work through it and train as hard as possible.

Which do you value more, being comfortable and avoiding transient and harmless physical discomfort, or getting the best possible results from your workouts?

Which do you value more, the temporary enjoyment a particular food or drink provides, or feeling and looking your best?

Think before you act and choose accordingly.

While the final book will be relatively thorough in its treatment of exercise form there will no doubt be questions. Probably a lot of them. To follow up there will be a Q&A book which is one of the bonuses mentioned earlier which all who pre-ordered will receive free.  If you have pre-ordered please feel free to email me at drew@baye.com with any questions you have as you read the book.

Also, reports of typos and grammatical errors are greatly appreciated. No book is completely error free, but I’d like for EoF to be as close as possible before it goes to print.

I have been asked to do several interviews for podcasts and other web sites once the book is out and look forward to sharing those with readers. I will announce them here as they appear elsewhere.

It’s almost 1:00 am here and I have to be up early for personal training appointments but will post more tomorrow.

Would you spend the extra time with your family and friends?  Participating in activities and hobbies you enjoy or discovering new ones? Catching up on the pile of books you’ve collected but haven’t found time to read? Achieving personal, academic or professional goals?

If you’re a regular reader this post is “preaching to the choir”, but if you’re new to high intensity training and have been following conventional workout programs, you’re wasting most of the time you’re in the gym. Time you can never get back. Time which is in limited and unknown supply. The odds against you existing to begin with are astronomical, and the relatively short time you have here is all you get. Every minute of your life is invaluable. Think about that for a moment before reading on. Not too long, though

If you follow the exercise guidelines of most professional exercise  and health organizations, the workouts in popular health and fitness magazines, or training programs like P90X you will spend around three to six hours per week working out, with many averaging around five (one hour a day, five days per week). Some bodybuilding magazines even recommend workout programs which take up to ten hours each week to complete.

At five hours per week you would spend over 250 hours working out per year, even if you took a few weeks off due to illness or injury or for vacation.  This does not including driving time to and from the gym, which adds about an hour if the drive only takes you five minutes, bringing the total up to over 300 hours per year, or a little over eighteen days.

In one decade you would have to invest over 3,000 hours. If you divide those hours by the time most people are awake each day – around sixteen to seventeen – it adds up to over 180 days.

That’s over half a year.

By comparison, most high intensity training workouts take less than thirty minutes to complete, and many HIT programs only require between one and three weekly workouts to produce better results than conventional, higher volume programs.

If you average two thirty-minute workouts per week you would only spend around fifty hours working out per year. If you live within five minutes of the gym drive time only adds about sixteen hours, for a total of sixty six hours per year, or four days.

In one decade you would have to invest 660 hours, which adds up to only forty days; almost five months less than most conventional programs require.

In one year a proper high intensity training program would free up two weeks of your time. In a decade it would free up five months. Over a lifetime it would free up years.

What if I told you you could free up even more time?

Earlier this year, the BBC special The Truth About Exercise generated a lot of buzz when it showed only three minutes of high intensity interval training  per week (not high intensity strength training, as some writers mis-stated) was required to effectively improve cardiovascular efficiency. The time requirements for improving muscular strength and size and through it overall functional ability (including cardiovascular and metabolic conditioning) with high intensity strength training are similarly low. The results you get from exercise are almost entirely a matter of intensity; if the intensity is high enough not only is very little exercise necessary, keeping your workouts brief is required to avoid overtraining.

There is a practical minimum, however. To have balanced strength development throughout the body you must minimally perform enough exercises to effectively address all the major muscle groups. This is fewer than what most people suspect – it is not necessary to perform separate exercises for every single muscle group, much less a wide variety for each, but just a few basic movements which provide meaningful work for all the major muscle groups.

This can be done with just a few basic exercises in a single workout, requiring less than 15 minutes to complete:

1. Leg Press (or Squat)
2. Pull Down (or Chin Up)
3. Chest Press (or Push Up)
4. Neck Extension
5. Neck Flexion

This can be alternated with the following to provide more direct work for some of the hip and thigh muscles, the lower back and calves, and pushing and pulling movements in different planes:

1. Trunk Extension (or Stiff-Legged Deadlift)
2. Leg Extension
3. Compound Row (or Barbell Row)
4. Overhead Press (or Standing Press)
5. Calf Raise

If you wish to focus on the development of specific muscle groups or areas of the body these workouts can be alternated with similarly brief “specialization” workouts with exercises directly addressing those.

If done two times a week your total weekly workout time would be less than half an hour; that’s less than twenty five hours per year. With drive time you might still only need to devote around forty hours per year to exercise. That’s 260 less hours per year, a half-year less per decade, and several years less over an average lifetime than conventional workout programs require. That’s time you put to better use living your life.

As I’ve written elsewhere, ”Proper exercise is a requirement for living the longest, happiest life possible. It is a requirement for self-actualization – realizing your full human potential and achieving the ideal of a sound mind in a sound body.”

Exercise can and should contribute to your enjoyment of life, not be the focus of or take up an unnecessarily large part of it. Train hard but train briefly, then go out and live.

Years ago David worked for a popular nutritional supplement retailer. One day, a morbidly obese man came into the store and told David he thought he looked like someone who could help him and asked for advice on losing weight. He weighed around four hundred pounds and was unhappy with how he looked and felt. He was making an effort, but was frustrated at how slowly the weight was coming off as well as how quickly he tired when trying to exercise.

While talking with the man David made two important points I want to share here; when you are severely overweight you have to take a realistic long-term view of and approach to fat loss, and you have to train hard and progressively.

When the man expressed frustration at how slowly he lost fat during previous efforts David told him that although he may lose more quickly at first a realistic and sustainable rate of fat loss to aim for would be around two pounds per week. He was upset about this, as two pounds seemed like such a small amount compared to what he had to lose and almost not worth the effort.

David asked the man’s age, and he said he was thirty five.  He explained that while two pounds a week might sound like a very small amount of fat to lose, that if he were to maintain that rate by the same time next year he would have lost over one hundred pounds. When asked how he would feel about that the man said he’d be very happy to be down that far. David told him if he maintained that rate for just one more year, he could be down two hundred pounds by the time he was 37, which was still relatively young.

No thanks to the exaggerated fat loss claims of fad diet books, weight loss product advertising, and certain “reality” television programs many people have unrealistic expectations of how much fat they can lose in weeks or months which can be a source of frustration and depression. While it is possible to lose fat more quickly for brief periods of time, in the long run it is safer and more realistic to aim for a rate of fat loss of between one and two pounds per week. Whether you have only twenty pounds to lose or two hundred you can do it, but you have to accept that it will take time and be willing to stick to it. It might take months, a year, or even a few years, but never lose hope and never give up and you will get there.

The man also complained he had difficulty exercising (walking on a treadmill) and tired very quickly. David told him exercise is supposed to be difficult, not to quit when it starts to get hard, and that each time he should attempt to push himself to work just a little harder, and go a little longer.

No matter what your current physical condition, if you can voluntarily contract your muscles you can exercise. Do what you can, as hard as you can safely, and gradually increase your effort over time. Again, accept that it will take time and be willing to stick to it. Hard Work + Consistency + Time = Results.

I generally do not recommend walking for fat loss as it burns relatively few calories and is a very slow and inefficient way to eventually produce little  to nothing in the way of improvements in fitness. However, in the case of the severely obese it is often one of the few options available due to body size or joint problems which may prevent the performance of certain progressive resistance exercises or use of certain types of equipment. Timed static contraction protocol is usually the safest and most effective option in such cases, but I will write more about that another time.

Whatever your current condition, whatever amount of fat you have to lose, you can do it. It may take you a few months or even a year or two, but if you start now you’ll be glad you did when you reach your goal .

How do you choose the right weights and reps on different exercises for a new client? Most of the trainers where I work either do one rep max tests or estimate one rep max based on how many reps they can do with a weight, then do a test with a percentage of that to determine rep range. I am not comfortable having new people do one rep maxes or even going all out with less weight, but I don’t want to just guess either.

Answer: 

When working with a new subject your first priority should be teaching them to perform the exercises correctly rather than working them hard.  The weight selection and rep count needs to be appropriate for learning and practicing proper form, and as their form and confidence improves the resistance can be increased and you can adjust the rep range based on their level of skill and response to exercise.  It is important that they learn to train intensely, but unless they learn proper form first they’re more likely to get hurt in the long run.

When learning a new exercise the weight must not be so heavy the subject has difficulty learning how to correctly perform the movement, but heavy enough for the subject to be able to feel the effect in the target muscles and to provide adequate reactionary force for the subject to learn to brace against to maintain proper positioning and/or alignment. A good starting weight will allow for the performance of a moderate to high number of repetitions with only the last few repetitions being somewhat challenging.

Through trial and error you will get a feel for roughly how much weight to use starting out on different exercises for someone based on their sex, age, size, appearance and previous training experience, but it is always best to err on the light side if you’re not sure. When you are instructing them, tell them the purpose of the first few workouts is to learn and practice proper form and you will be selecting a weight for that purpose, and that it should only start to feel moderately challenging after a few repetitions.

Tell them if the weight feels somewhat light that is fine and you will increase it by an appropriate amount the next workout, but if it feels too heavy after a repetition or two to set it down or go to the start position and let you know (but make it absolutely clear they are not to compromise proper body position or the neutral position of the head and neck while under load, by turning towards you to talk, for example). If necessary reduce the weight somewhat and have them start over.

When teaching a new exercise I recommend starting the subject with a slightly higher rep range. We use an upper repetition count total of 10 at first (which is high when using a cadence of 10/10) and reduce it to a range of 4 to 8 once the subject has become proficient at performing the exercise. More advanced subjects may use an even lower range, frequently 3 to 6 repetitions.

I realize some of you are still using more moderate rep speeds and may be hesitant to adopt a longer rep duration. I strongly encourage you to move more slowly for the sake of safety and efficiency, but if you use a different cadence then use a rep range which allows at least between 90 and 120 seconds TUL when starting out (e.g., 8 to 12 reps at a 5/5 cadence).

I strongly advise against one rep max testing as it is highly skill dependent, poses a high risk of injury and is completely unnecessary. A beginner’s lack of familiarity, skill and confidence with the exercise prevents the test from providing any useful information. I am aware of some personal training studios who do one rep max testing knowing the lack of familiarity will cause new subjects’ starting strength level to be understated because it gives them the appearance of having gained much more strength then they actually have when they are retested. This practice is highly unethical as it is both dishonest and dangerous for the subject.

Even higher repetition maximum tests should not be performed with beginning subjects. Although it is safer than one rep max testing, the lack of skill and familiarity with how far they can safely push themselves will result in an understatement of their actual strength. It is also impossible to accurately determine a subject’s one repetition maximum from a higher repetition maximum test since the relationship between the two varies considerably between individuals. One person might only be able to perform 3 or 4 reps with 80% of their 1RM, while another might be able to perform twice or even three times as many.

If you start a subject with a moderate weight and increase it gradually based on their performance they will eventually progress to the point where they are achieving momentary muscular failure within the prescribed repetition range. From that point on you have a relatively objective means of comparing exercise performance over time – the weight they are able to perform a particular number of repetitions with in the prescribed form (e.g., 8 repetitions at 10/10, 12 at 5/5, etc.). There is no need to perform separate testing. You just need to keep accurate records of subjects’ workouts.

While a wide range of repetitions can be effective some people will do better with slightly higher or lower repetitions. This can be determined by with accurate record keeping and experimentation without doing a specific fiber type or fatigue response test.

Subjects who may respond better to fewer repetitions often have difficulty performing an exercise for more than a specific number of repetitions or time under load without a significant weight reduction. If you increase the weight on an exercise by a small amount on a regular basis they are able to consistently perform roughly the same number of repetitions or amount of time, but not many more.

Subjects who may respond better to more repetitions may go up in reps regularly, but often have difficulty with weight increases and their form deteriorates if weight is increased before they are capable of performing some higher number of repetitions. If you wait until they are able to perform more repetitions before increasing the resistance they have no problems.

If a subject is stuck at a particular repetition count total on an exercise for a period of time despite everything else appearing to be in order (workout volume, recovery time, rest, nutrition, accounting for other activities and stresses, etc.) try adding a small amount of weight (2.5 lbs or 2.5%, whichever is smaller). If they are consistently able to achieve that repetition count total with the smaller increases and it is not too low for safety set it as their new repetition count total.

If a subject has a difficult time achieving a repetition count total within the prescribed rep range or if their form deteriorates with resistance increases, back the resistance down and wait until they are able to achieve a few more reps before increasing the weight. If they have no problem with the heavier weight after that, raise their upper repetition goal number.

I appreciate the patience of everyone who has pre-ordered and apologize for the multiple delays. I think everyone will agree once they’ve read it that it was worth the wait. I want to make sure everything is as accurate, clear and concise as possible and that there are no ambiguities. I have also been trying to address some of the questions people have asked recently as well as common misconceptions related to the chapter topics without going off on too many tangents.

I also have several Q&A posts coming up over the next week, and if you’re one of the people who has sent an email and hasn’t received a response yet your question might be one of those being addressed on the site.

How long should I rest between exercises if my goal is muscular strength and size increases?

Answer: 

As a general rule you should rest as little as possible between exercises, moving from one to the next as quickly as you can while:

• being able to properly and safely get into and out of correct position for free weight or body weight exercises or enter and exit machines
• being able to breathe and mentally focus well enough to perform each exercise with a high level of muscular effort
• not becoming so nauseous, light-headed or dizzy that you might vomit or be unable to complete your workout

Typical recommendations to rest several minutes between exercises or sets are meant to allow the use of heavier weights or the performance of more repetitions on subsequent sets, based on the mistaken beliefs that heavier loads and higher volume are required to stimulate optimum strength and size gains. However, while weight is a factor in stimulating muscular strength and size increases it is not heavier weight but higher intensity or relative effort that determines exercise effectiveness. Also, performing more than a single set of an exercise or more exercises than necessary to effectively target all the major muscle groups will not improve strength and size gains and can actually reduce them by using energy and resources the body could have otherwise used to recover from and produce the adaptations stimulated by the workout.

At first, when moving more quickly between exercises you may require a reduction in weight on subsequent exercises, but those weights will increase quickly as your strength and overall conditioning improve. As long as you continue to train with a high level of effort and take each exercise to a point of momentary muscular failure you will still achieve an optimum stimulus for strength and size increases.

While anecdotal, in my experience shorter rest periods appear to be more effective for improving cardiovascular and metabolic efficiency.

Have a question about exercise or nutrition? E-mail me at drew@baye.com

A quick update on the book and answers to some of the questions I’ve been receiving about the book:

Update: Some sections are being expanded as well to better address questions I have been receiving about rest pause, negative only, drop sets, forced reps, etc. I am also addressing concerns some people have been emailing questions about with regards to the safety of training to momentary muscular failure.

The book is nearly complete and most of the remaining work includes formatting and minor rewrites.

The e-book links will go out MONDAY, MARCH 12 and the print books will ship the following week. Pre-ordering ends tomorrow at midnight. Thanks to everyone who has pre-ordered the book, and to show my appreciation for your patience all who have pre-ordered will also receive, free of charge,  two additional high intensity training reports, valued at $17 each.

The print books will ship within two or three days after that. Prices on both the e-book and print book will be going up within a few days of release.

Yes, it contains workouts, but only a few. The focus of the book is on optimizing exercise performance, not workouts.

No, it is not just about machine training. It addresses free weight and body weight exercises as well.

Yes, rest-pause, negative-emphasized, negative-only, hyper, etc. are still covered, but they are not being recommended in the book. The training techniques described in the book are safer, more efficient, and more effective and make those and many other classical high intensity training protocols and techniques redundant and unnecessary.

While working around injuries is discussed, it does not deal with specific injuries as this would be way beyond the scope of the book. If you have questions about working with or around specific injuries I recommend scheduling a phone consultation.

No, there is no discussion of motorized machines. These sections have been removed due to the realization there is no practical way to reconcile some of the safety considerations with problems inherent in motorized equipment design, especially those machines which use a motor in conjunction with a weight stack.

The previous five-chapter preview is no longer being sent out because all that material has been completely rewritten. The pre-order videos are also being re-recorded and will be sent to those who pre-order within the weeks following the release of the book.

The book is not about high intensity training in general, but exercise performance specifically. The next book is a more general book about HIT but will not be announced or available until completion due to the scheduling delays and work problems involved with this one.

If you have any other questions please post below. I try to respond to all comments and questions within 48 hours.

My response, to a question about mechanical work and repetition speed:

“The most important thing to keep in mind is the key appears to be relative effort, and not load. A wide range of loads and repetition ranges have been shown to be equally effective for strength and size increases in the long run, provided they are used with a high level of effort. With this in mind, the ideal approach would be to use the lowest load required to get the job done. Rather than focus on how much weight you can lift, you should focus on how intensely you are able to get your muscles to contract with a given weight, how efficiently you can use that weight to fatigue the muscles, and only increase it when you are unable to achieve failure within a reasonable time frame.

Rather than trying to lift the heaviest weight you are capable of, you should be lifting the least weight required to effectively load the muscles and thoroughly inroad them within a reasonable time. While it may seem counterintuitive, the better you are at an exercise the sooner you will fail with a given weight.

Don’t mistake being better at exercise for being better at lifting weights or being stronger. Beingbetter at exercise means being more skilled at using the weight to challenge the muscles, to make the movement harder. Being better at lifting weights means being more skilled at creating favorable leverages and using momentum to make it easier for your muscles to move the weight. Being stronger means being able to produce more force, not being able to lift more weight, because the manner in which you lift it makes a huge difference in how much force is required.

If you want to impress ignorant people in the gym, learn to lift weights in the easiest manner possible so you can load lots of plates on the bar and make all sorts of noise.

If you want to become as strong as possible, learn to use the weight to make the exercise as hard as possible to create a stronger stimulus for growth.”

Responses to email questions:

Weight vs. lever

A few people asked how this is possible with the same weight. It is because weight is only one of several factors affecting the resistance the muscles encounter during exercise, the force they must overcome to lift, hold, or lower the weight under control. Leverage, which is affected by body positioning and alignment and range of motion, is a major factor. Acceleration and velocity are major factors. The ability to focus on intensely contracting the target muscles is a major factor. Depending on the exercise and equipment used there are many more. Depending on how you use it, a given weight can be harder or easier to lift, as well as safer or more dangerous.

For example, consider the effect of leverage during a leg press or squat. Despite the weight pinned on the stack or loaded on the barbell being the same over the entire range of motion, the lower half of the range of motion of a leg press or squat is harder than the top half due to the differences in leverage. If you don’t believe me, try a few reps in only the bottom half of the range of motion, then try a few in the top half, keeping everything else (speed, turnarounds, etc.) as equal as possible. The bottom half is more difficult because the longer levers (moment arms) result in more resistance. Weight x lever = resistance (torque, actually).

The goal of proper form is to use the weight to create a a level and variation in resistance that is both maximally challenging to the muscles being targeted and minimally harmful.

How much weight

Enough that you are able to recruit all the motor units in the targeted muscles and achieve momentary muscular failure within about six to eight strict, slow reps (around three minutes), but not so much that you are unable to perform at least three or four (at least one minute).

If the weight is too light you’ll keep recycling the more fatigue resistant fibers and not recruit and effectively stimulate the larger, high-threshold motor units. If the weight is too heavy form tends to fall apart and injury becomes more likely, especially when approaching momentary muscular failure.

Speed and weight

Moving more slowly in and of itself does not reduce the weight you can use. Your muscles are actually capable of contracting with more force at slower velocities (do not confuse the velocity/force curve with the acceleration formula – they are two different things). Moving more slowly makes exercise harder because it allows you to better control body position and movement and levers and keep the tension on the targeted muscles, as well as improves your ability to focus on intensely contracting them.

Criticisms of rest-pause, negative-only, and “advanced” training techniques

This resulted in more email than anything else. There are numerous problems with each of these, all of which are discussed in Elements of Form,  and I’m not going to repeat all of it here, but the main issues are the misguided focus on mechanical work (total weight or reps) rather than intensity of effort and various safety problems inherent in repeated loading and unloading and intra or interpersonal resistance transfer compounded by progressive fatigue.