At the gym, on YouTube, Instagram, & Facebook you will witness the dreadful ego lift. The ego lift is the tendency to grab over the amount of weight someone is able to correctly lift, in an attempt to compete with others to appear stronger than they really are. Adding too much weight to the bar or lifting too much weight in general without proper form is not beneficial to the one lifting or the audience. Weight lifting is obviously very competitive, we are constantly comparing ourselves to others we see around us lifting more or less weight. I find that being at the gym specifically breeds a lot of this negative practice.
I admit, in the beginning I was always comparing myself to others at the gym in terms of the weight they were lifting. The difference was I always used that as my next targeted weight. If I saw a guy benching 225 for reps, I would make that my goal to make that my working weight. Versus seeing a guy yanking his entire body trying to barbell curl 135 in an ego lift, not going to aspire to be that guy. Typically you can tell by a person’s body composition if they are actually capable of lifting said weight. Like witnessing a guy with bird legs step into the squat rack with 405 on the bar, you know that weight is not going full range of motion and its an ego lift. Don’t lie to yourself, there’s no cheating the weight or your muscles.
I talk about form all the time, and its crucial to learning stability and form in every lift before you start to go heavy. Going heavy out of the gate without getting the correct form down will be detrimental to you in the long run and can cause serious injuries. Even for isolation exercises, say cable biceps, you will want to ensure your body is still and rock solid, while only focusing the movement on the bicep keeping everything else static. Engaging your back or other muscle groups in an isolation exercise is only going to cause the rest of your muscles to engage and reduce the stress on the muscle group you are attempting to target, thus lessening the tearing of that specific muscle.
You see the ego lift a lot on shrugs or barbell rows. The tendency is to throw as much weight on the bar as possible and yank it up. If you can’t move the weight with complete flexion of the muscle group and range of motion, you need to go lighter to actually ensure the exercise is done correctly. Don’t be ashamed to go with lighter weight, master the movement and exercise first and foremost, then you can dominate with weight added.
Explosive movements are definitely beneficial when incorporated with negative reps. Most people cannot perform exercises quickly without hurting themselves or sacrificing form altogether. You will want to get that weight comfortable to perform the exercise exactly as intended to target that muscle group, while using slow precise movements. Once the range of motion and exact form is figured out, you can (and should) involve explosive movements on the concentric contraction (lifting the weight up) of the movement. You will be able to precisely hit those fast twitch muscle fibers and encourage tearing and growth of the muscle.
Using explosive movements without getting form down correctly is only going to make you look foolish and cheat you out of your goal of adding more muscle mass. You will see many people incorporating explosive movements with high volume repetitions. Light weight, high volume is not recommended if you are trying to burn calories and build muscle mass. Going faster with the weight overall is sloppy. The only time I incorporate light weight (weight that I can do over 15 reps of easily) is on superset pyramid sets. Burning out the fast twitch muscle fibers on your main sets, and then pyramiding down without breaks by dropping the weight while hitting those slow twitch fibers.
So don’t be “that guy” or girl at the gym doing things incorrectly with obscene amounts of weight to impress others. Most everyone can see and are not impressed. Swallow your pride and drop that weight, get strong and be the beast you were born to be!
Happy lifting, and remember RESULTS NOT EXCUSES.
Patrick Brouillette