Lift lighter to get stronger?

Recently, my client Tom squatted 150kg for the first time ever.

What's interesting, is that Tom never put more than 120kg on his back in the lead up to this, and he didn't fail a single rep.

Heavy weights and strength gain

"If you want to get strong, you have to lift heavy".

Ever heard this before? While that is true, 'heavy' is a vague and relative term.

The rhetoric in the strength and conditioning field for decades has been that strength development requires utilising loads that are ≥85% 1RM. After all, it's in the NSCA textbook, so it must be true (see below).

A significant critique of this was first brought to my attention by Daniel Cleather, head of my Master's degree at St Mary's University.

You see, research does indeed show that people who train with ≥85% get stronger. The problem? Most training studies only last a few weeks, or at best a couple of months. In the real world, we train year round, and so our training loads need to account for that.

In Tom's case, it took 7 months of training to hit his squat PR. It's been my experience that using weights that are ≥85% for all of that time period without burning out is simply not feasible.

Why I think less than 85% works better

When you train with less than 85% of your 1RM, two key things happen:

1. You practice better reps

2. You can recover enough to do more next time

   
   

Now, you can certainly do do both of those things with weights over 85%, but for how long? Not much longer than those training studies in my experience.

Progress > 85%

I think the debate about lifting heavy is very similar to any debate about training variables (whether it's proximity to failure, volume, exercise selection etc.)

The similarity lies in the tendency to miss the forest for the trees. To overlook what it is we're actually trying to achieve: progress.

In the case of strength gain, progress arises from progressively lifting heavier weights over time. For maximal strength (i.e. a 1RM), this specifically means heavier weights in the 1-6 rep range.

Therefore I would amend the previous statement:

"If you want to get strong, you have to lift heavier".

You see, heavier could be 2.5kg more on the bar than last week. If that means we are 'only' lifting 77% of 1RM, does that really matter?

There's still a time for heavy

Now, this is not to say that there is no value to lifting heavy.

I'm a big believer that 1RMs are built with 3-6 reps, and realised with 1-3 reps. The neurological efficiency gained by practicing very heavy weights is not to be scoffed at.

It's for this reason that in the weeks leading up to Tom's 1RM attempt, the weights were increased and the reps were lowered. That said, he did not have to do more than 83% (120kg) for 5 reps, in order to lift 30kg above that.

Tom squatting