EVERYONE and their mother wants to lift heavy weights, but is lifting heavy weights the key to lifting heavy? It makes sense right, I train hard, I lift heavy weights, therefore I should be strong and keep making PR’s….
Clearly there is something missing, otherwise every meatball in the gym would be lifting or even squatting like Klokov…and if you’re not a Weightlifter- looking like him!
Every good Weightlifting Coach knows that it’s subjective to the person and depending on what the athletes needs are- strength or technique, I talk about this briefly Here.
Before I keep running in a different tangent, the point of this post is that to lift heavy weights you don’t necessarily have to always lift heavy. Many Coach’s have mentioned this and guys in the powerlifting-strong man- performance training fields have talked about this routinely too- Jim Wendler and Chad Smith are great examples.
The bigger the base- the higher potential for strength.
A great example of this was with James at his first Olympic Weightlifting competition. James was having problems with heavier weights leading up to the competition, so we had to keep him around the 90% in the classical lifts. Keep in mind that with his general strength, his lifts are far down, so he had more in him- his technique was the issue. While I could have pounded down missed attempts after missed attempts with the heavier sets, I knew the risk for him (he has a wrist issue) didn’t outweigh the reward.
The game plan was to keep building up his general strengths (squats/overhead positions) and technique in the lifts…to keep this short James ended up PR’ing with an easy 100k Snatch (+10k)- he’s never attempted anything above 90k.
While his general strength far exceeds his lifting numbers and everyone is different, the take home message here is that you don’t always have to lift heavy- especially if you’re injured.
Hope this was a helpful post for those out there training hard and not seeing PR’s, sometimes it’s best to take a step back and reassess.
Stay strong,
Team Fusion