 Sometimes the best way to build more muscle is to not add weight to the bar or get stronger. Let's talk about this. Yeah, what's that face for? Yeah, how old? Yeah. Say that again? Say that one more time? You know what, at a certain point, so I think this is especially true for, and there's a lot of context here, right? I think this is especially true for people who've been working out for a long period of time. Where the- That's the only metric they're focused on. Yeah, and adding more weight to the bar starts to change the risk versus reward ratio. I like it where you're going. Yeah, so like, you know, let's say like the other day, I did some squats and I went really heavy. And for me, really heavy is, I did 405. I think I did six reps, which is really, really, for me, that's a good amount. And after I was done, I was kind of like, oh, that was cool, but then I thought about it. And I said, you know, the risk versus reward on that wasn't worth it. Now, I didn't hurt myself. Everything was okay. But if my form is off just by a little bit, for me at least, with that weight, the risk of injury is so much higher than let's say if I put 315 on and slowed the reps down, paused at the bottom, squeezed. In other words, made the 315 feel like 405. So really what you're saying is that intensity might not be, you know, the focus always to pursue. Like in terms of like ramping that intensity to its highest point, which a lot of athletes get into this predicament of how, you know, where's that line? How can I always press that line to get maximum result? It's the delicate dance with the ego, right? I mean, you know that. You have the knowledge, you have the experience. Like if you were to pull yourself out of it and ask, you know, you as the trainer, who's training the guy, should you do X or should you do Y, you would definitely push that person in the right direction. But it's funny how we, doesn't matter how long you've been doing this for, you still have these moments of like where you do that. Yeah, I think, you know, I think this is where, I think all strength sports have some value and you can learn from, you know, athletes in those strength sports, different things, right? And one thing that bodybuilders with longevity, I'm gonna make sure I say that because some bodybuilders don't do this, but the ones with longevity, like people like Dexter Jackson, right? This is a guy that competed at the highest level up into his, I believe late 40s, right? Almost no injuries. I don't remember ever reading about the guy getting injured. And when you watched him work out, he wasn't using ridiculous heavy weights on the bar, but what you did notice is he was really connected and he made the weight feel much heavier. Now let's contrast that to other very successful bodybuilders with shorter careers with lots of injuries. Of course, the greatest of all time, most winning his bodybuilder ever was Ronnie Coleman and not taking anything away from the guy. I mean, I don't think anyone's ever matched his physique on stage, but he lifted so heavy with so much weight and there were so many injuries that followed that. Dorian Yates is another guy that had lots of injuries. Branch Warren's another guy, right? So I think at some point, and I think getting stronger, especially when you're a beginner intermediate, that's very important. Just add weight to the bar, do good form. It's a great way to get your body to progress, but at some point, especially if you've been working out for a few years, the risk versus reward doesn't, it stops paying off. Like, okay, I can add 10 more pounds to the bar or I could slow my reps down and squeeze more and make it feel harder. Like, I know I could do that, right? I know that if I wanted to, I could make a weight feel like it's 100 pounds heavier, simply by how I lift the weight. And it is an ego thing, because I like to see the bar with more weight on it, but if my form is off a little bit, if my knees move to the left or right, or if I'm not perfectly in the groove with less weight, I'm less likely to cause a problem that then I can't, now I can't work out for weeks because I hurt myself. Exactly, and every time weight is the major focus, you don't pay attention to a lot of those little nuanced things and signals at your body sending you while you're performing the exercise, which if you can slow the tempo even down and really pay attention to where you're losing, bracing and you're losing support and tension within that lift, that could be a breakthrough for you in order to then come back and then add weight. Part to blame is our space again too, I feel like, right? Like we always celebrate PRs. Of course. And strong as like, when was the last time you ever seen somebody do a post and celebrate the quality of somebody's movement? Think about that. It's boring. I mean, it is, and it isn't, like I mean, luckily I was introduced into the space and when I first got into fitness, like when I was 19, 20 years old, I was really into the mechanics and like quality, like just trying to have like perform fact. I used to get a kick out of being in great muscular shape and then lifting really lightweight. And I used to always go find like the buff dude in the gym that was grunting and groaning and lifting those heavy weight and go do my little 10 pound weights next to him, but look all jacked. Like, so I actually first fell in love with that side of fitness. That's too far though, I don't know about 10 pounds. Yeah, maybe a little bit of an exaggeration. But really though, I used to go do, I do movements like that and I'd use that as an example to my clients that listen, you don't need to go lift all that way to build a physique or a body that's incredible. I later on got into lifting heavy way later. And I've dealt with more issues, aches and pains in the last like five to eight years since I started lifting really, and it's not because I lifted heavy that I got those problems. It's because of the ego lifts. It's because when I probably should have pulled back and worked on more of the quality of the movement or worked on mobility or took a light day, I just didn't do that. I was so caught up in the getting stronger and putting more weight on the bar. And since I have gone in that direction, I've battled and dealt with more aches and pains in my life than I ever did. I'm way better. You know what's funny? I wanna ask you guys if this is true for you guys too. I'm better at that for certain lifts and certain body parts and worse at it for certain, for other lifts and other body parts. For example, when it comes to like doing rows, okay? I'm very good at pulling weights. I can lift a lot of weight if I want to. But more recently what I've done is I've said, okay, I'm only gonna go up to X amount of pounds and my goal is to get close to failure with 10 reps. And it's a weight that's way lighter. Like, if I do really heavy rows for 10 reps, I could probably go 275 or 250, right? Pretty heavy. I'll go down to 185 and slow down and squeeze. And man, that 10th rep is like, it's intense. It's heavy and it's hard because of the way I'm doing the reps. The side effect of that is I get better results. And you know, when it comes to adding more weight, it's just less forgiving. You know, if you're 1% off on a lift and you're lifting not your max load, you're less likely to hurt yourself. You're hitting your max load. Like with that squat that I did, that squat workout I did, right? If my form was off a little bit, you know what I would be complaining about right now? Oh man, I hurt my back. Well, I can't lift now for a couple of weeks, which of course it's less than learn maybe, or maybe I have to learn it again. I definitely think it's harder to apply to the lifts that you're strong in, right? Like, so for me as a bench press, and that was something I always like, you know, had pride in in terms of it being one of my stronger lifts. And then to reduce the weight was attacking my own psychology of, well, I know I could do more than this. And so I have to fight that sense of like, wanting to load it up and not really like work on all the nuances and the technique of it. But thankfully over the, so I started actually completely opposite of Adam. And so I was like more focused on like, whatever I could get to the number I could get to in terms of weight and like as intense as I could go. And then really kind of pulled myself out because it really started to deter my progress to a point where I just like flat line and then just started to kind of rebuild my body, work on all body weight, work on, you know, all the little details. And it took me so much further. And that's how I got into these kind of unconventional lifts that it's pure movement. And people ask me all the time, what's the bed? What muscle are you working with this? And that's such an annoying question. But at the same time, I get it because I was in that mindset a long time ago. What is this really doing for me? Well, it's really hard to create that type of fluid, controlled, amazing, beautiful movement. Good luck, you know, you're gonna suck at it. And that's why you're talking shit. And that's what I was doing. And until I started doing it, and then you realize the benefits that provides, it's a whole new world of support when you lift heavy. Yeah, for me, it was as a kid, you know, I got into it really young, I was 14. And then my first big impactful moment was, you know, learning how to squat from power lifters. And they told me, and they gave me the right advice, by the way, right? I was a 16 year old kid. And they did say, just get stronger at the deadlift, the squat and the bench. Now remember, I'm a beginner and I'm a kid. And it worked. I got stronger and I got bigger and I built muscle. But that's like, it doesn't keep working that way. Like you can't keep pressing that. But you know, for me, it's like identified with that, right? Oh, if I get stronger, I'll get bigger. If I get stronger, I'll get bigger. At some point, the risk versus reward doesn't work. And this is why you hear so many, this is why we would be in the gym. And I would deadlift as a, you know, 20 year old general manager and some 50 year old ex bodybuilder would come up to me and be like, oh, yeah, I used to deadlift, but now I can't because it hurt my back or whatever. It wasn't the deadlift that hurt his back. It's probably what I'm doing, right? Which is the, I'm not learning my lesson about, hey, I can make this weight feel harder and get better results and dramatically reduce my risk of injury. So I think if you're a beginner or intermediate and your form and technique is good, that's okay, keep pushing to get stronger. There's actually, it's a great thing to aim for. But at some point, you got to look at other stuff because you add another five or 10 pounds of the bar, the risk of injuries exponentially grows, right? It just, it might increase your risk of injury. If you go from 100 pounds to 150 pounds on a lift, you might go up by 2% with your risk of injury. You go from 300 to 350, now you're talking about 10% increase or 15% increase. And the heavier you go, the more that becomes a problem. So yeah, you can make, again, bodybuilders are good at this. If you see really good bodybuilders, they will lift and they often get made fun of this for this particular reason. Other strength athletes like to poke at bodybuilders for this, but it's a skill to be able to do a lateral raise with 15 pounds. And you know, be a 230 pound bodybuilder, right? And develop these incredible delts. Like that requires a level of connection and technique and form that you, that is valuable. And I'm not saying this is everything, but for those of us who are obsessed with strength, this piece right here can pay us dividends. You know, our buddy, Ben Pacolski is really good about this too. Yeah. Like Ben, Ben preaches about quality of movement and he's, he's one of those bodybuilders that's still lifting and going strong. And you don't see him really highlight like big PR lifts. Like he's always talking about technique and form. And so yeah, no, much, much smarter way to lift. And so I kind of was on one side and with the other, like, you know, one extreme to the other extreme. And like to think that I'm somewhere in the middle now, but I mean, I think the other thing that's probably why this happens too, is when you, when you build a lot of strength and we've all experienced this, like the gains come on fast. Yeah. It's a little bit slower process when you're, you know, diving into mobility and working on increased range of motion and slowing down the tempo and making your technique look pretty. I don't think you see the gains come on as fast. Yeah, as fast as you do when you start doing it. You increase your squat by 10 or 15 pounds or 50 pounds. Like you see the difference. You see the difference on your legs, like right away. Like you relatively quick where you might, you know, work on getting better and better at a technique for a long time before you see much progress. Like as far as the way the physique looks and we're so attached to that. I think that has a lot to do with it. Yeah. And to be honest, I think we're, I know all of us are kind of like at this point, we've all been working out for so long that this is now what we have to, this is now the hurdle. Which it wasn't 10 years ago. 10 years ago this wasn't the hurdle. Now this is the hurdle. How do I continue to maximize my progress because adding weight to the bar now is not necessarily pragmatic for some of my lifts. And also avoiding pain, you know. Totally. At this point because of all of the years of training and you realize like, you know, if you're doing the same thing too long, it's gonna add up in this repetitive stress which is inevitably gonna make it to the joints. So just to keep it going and be energetic about it and still have, you know, passion for it, you have to adjust things along the way. Hey, if you enjoyed that clip, you can find the full episode here or you can find other clips over here. And be sure to subscribe.