Today's Monday Madness is about lifting heavy. I have a motto and that is lift heavy or go home. Yes, I undersatand the need to periodize your training and that includes changing up the amount of weight you lift, but my motto takes that into consideration. If you are hitting the gym you need to do it with maximum effort and that is all my motto is saying.
I personally love lifting heavy weights. It is one reason that High Intensity Training (HIT) is one of my favourite methods of training. HIT has you doing 1 to 2 sets per exercise and taking those to complete and total failure. It makes you lift very heavy because you are using much lower repetitions. I love this style of lifting as the intensity cannot be faked.
With that said, if your program calls for you to lift at 50% of your 1RM, make sure you are doing it. Do not cheat to get the repetitions in. Push yourself. There is no point in training if you are going to take it easy on yourself. You only see changes in your body when you push it out of its comfort zone. That's what my motto will force you to do. It is saying “push yourself as hard as you can or don't bother coming to the gym at all.”
I've told you all many times before that there are many variables to training, but intensity seems to be the one I love playing with the most. No matter what else I am doing I like to lift with extreme intensity. The next time you are in the gym ask yourself if you could have done more reps. Undoubtedly the answer is going to be “yes” unless you are already pushing yourself as I am suggesting. If you find that you can do more reps, do them. As CT Fletcher would say, “It is still your motherf***ing set!” Quite simply put, don't ask how many reps you should be doing, just do as many reps as you possibly can. That's the true secret to training success and that's the madness I want to leave with you this Monday.
