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When Should I Lift Heavier Weights?
In this post, I break down the answer to a very common question: How do I know when I should lift heavier weights?
Today I wanted to share some coaching pointers we give members at the Gym:
How do I know when I should lift heavier weights?
First, let’s unpack WHY you’d want to go heavier with your weights…
Within reason, the heavier loads you lift, the more progress you make with your fitness outcomes:
- You’ll do more mechanical work and therefore burn more calories (which can contribute to fat loss)
- You’ll provide a bigger overall challenge to the body, which lead to a modest “afterburn” effect that increases total calories burned, as well as provides a training effect for the heart and nervous system
- You’ll provide sufficient stimulus to gain muscle (if you’re eating enough food and doing enough total volume of training)
- You’ll be stronger, generally more useful, and feel better about yourself
When your goal is general health and happiness, we don’t need to be powerlifters. And once you’re an intermediate trainee and been at it a few months, we don’t want to shoot for a personal record each and every workout. At a certain point, your strength gains will plateau unless you implement specific programming protocols (more advanced progressions, dropsets, the use of bands, more tempo work, very low rep sets, etc.).
On the other hand, if we get comfortable lifting the same weights all the time, we can inadvertently lull ourselves into fitness complacency. So if you’re a non-performance focused & using fitness to feel better about yourself? There’s still a time and a place for seeing what gas you’ve got in the tank and pushing up your weights.
So let’s now address this question: How do you know when the weight is TOO heavy?
When you’re using a well-designed program (like here at DM Elite) you’ll usually have a specific number of reps to hit in a given set when weight training. You may be working to timed intervals or more often than not working at your own pace and doing what you can do, personally.
How do we know when we should stop a set and not shoot for any more reps?
At DM Elite, we look for three things that suggest a set should end. While it’s helpful to have an outside eye to keep you honest, you can also look out for any of the following four signs:
- The weight slows down in a dramatic fashion
- The range of motion shortens/ you’re no longer doing complete reps
- You’re unable to maintain solid technique
- You cannot control the tempo of the weight when you need to
On the one hand, if your technique is letter perfect on the very last rep, you are almost certainly lifting too light for a true working set.
On the other hand, allow too much slack in your movement, subpar movement patterns can creep in that can lead to injury over time. Furthermore, we don’t want to push every single working set to failure. (Again, this is all a bit subjective; this is why having a coach is so helpful!)
And with that, we return to our original query: How do I know when I should go heavier with my weights?
Provided you’re not seeing any of the above-mentioned signs that your set should stop, the best way to know is to periodically “rep out.”
Let’s say a set we aim for for 10 repetitions. Your chosen weight feels kinda hard, but you suspect you may have more gas in the tank. This would be a great time to take a single set and see how many reps you can do before reaching failure and can no longer complete another rep.
If you were truly only able to do 11 or 12 reps before reaching failure? Then maybe the weight you’re using is ok.
If you were able to 27 before reaching failure? Definitely time to grab heavier weight!
REMINDER: Training to failure TOO OFTEN can serve its place in your training but will always have a cost on the body. We usually like members to leave a rep or two in the tank most of the time for most fitness goals. So while you can and should periodically “rep out” to make sure you’re not lifting too light, don’t get in the habit of doing this on every single set for the rest of your time in the gym.
A final point: there’s a massive psychological element to the weights people choose.
In my experience working with every day humans (non performance-focused athlete types):
- 20% of people tend to go too heavy, get too attached to numbers, and push past the point of acceptable technical degradation
- 20% of people tend choose the appropriate weight to create a solid training effect
- 60% of people tend to go too light; either because they’re not used to the discomfort of lifting with intensity, or they don’t want to/ don’t feel mentally safe to push as hard as they’re capable
And at the risk of making this all even MORE complicated…haha
It’s important to appreciate that “too heavy” or “too light” can be assessed best in light of progress towards the goal in question. A choice of weight could be too “too light” to make you a successful powerlifter, but totally appropriate to build bone density and enough strength to live your personal best life.
Admittedly, the above 20/20/60 observation is NOT a scientific breakdown: just my experience. However, the key point is that some people do actually lift TOO heavy, and the majority probably lift too light or could challenge themselves a little more.
That being said sometimes numbers aren’t a good marker for you on a set day.
Getting to the gym on a Monday after a full-on weekend and back into the routine is more important than pushing for personal bests.
Maybe stress is taking over life and just getting through the door is your biggest challenge…NOT how much you’re squatting today.
Sometimes you don’t need to up the weight – you just need to work on tempo more, do the basics and control it more efficiently/
Hope that helps you out
And as ever
Reply with any questions you may have or if we can help more
Dan