Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1932: Lifting Heavy Vs. Lifting Light

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover the pros and cons of lifting heavy vs. lifting light. There are two main ways to strength train. The first one is to make heavy weights feel light. The second is to make light weights feel heavy. (1:40) Which avatar benefits more from switching lifting methods, the bodybuilder or the powerlifter? (4:12) The mentality MATTERS most! (10:04)   The Focus, Pros, and Cons of Lifting Heavy Vs. Lifting Light.   Lifting Heavy: Maximizes efficiency, focuses on movement, and doesn’t focus on “feeling” the muscle. (13:40) Focus: Psyching up, and perfecting the smooth movement. (16:55) Pros: Great for overall muscle, real-world applicable strength, and builds a solid body. (19:12) Cons: Higher injury risk, feeds the ego, and it's hard to bring up lagging body parts. (25:50) Lifting Light: Maximizes inefficiency, focuses on the target muscle, and it's all about the “feel.” (30:08) Focus: Calm collected, and visualizes the target muscle. (35:08) Pros: Brings up target body parts, and lowers injury risk. (41:25) Cons: Doesn’t build as much total muscle, and strength is less applicable to the real-world. (44:52) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit PRx Performance for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! October Promotion: MAPS Symmetry or MAPS Strong HALF OFF! **Promo code OCTOBER50 at checkout** Fire up your Central Nervous System to maximize Muscular Adaptation – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1765: Bodybuilding Vs. Powerlifting With Ben Pollack Mind Pump #1745: How To Pack On Muscle To Your Lagging/Stubborn Body Parts Mind Pump #1872: Eight Benefits Of Lifting With Light Weight Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Ben Pakulski (@bpakfitness) Instagram Ronnie Coleman (@ronniecoleman8) Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, hop, mind, hop, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we talk about heavy lifting,

versus light lifting, pros and cons to each, and yes, there are definitely pros and cons to each. And yes, there are definitely pros and cons each. So in today's episode, we break that down for you. Now, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, PRX Performance. This company makes at home gym equipment that is as good or better than the gym equipment you find in the gyms.

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There's two main ways to strength train. The first one is to make heavy weights feel light. The second one is to make light weights feel heavy. Both have tremendous value. I love this point and I know you did this as a fitness tip a while back. And I think it was our friend Ben Pekolsky, I heard, say it, like you lift like a body

builder one way and then you lift like a power lift for the other way and learning how to visualize what does that mean or what does that look like is I thought was really a powerful analogy for trying to teach the average lift or what you mean. Those are the two best examples because power lifters and bodybuilders both lift weights, right? They both string train, they're both build muscle. They both develop their bodies and they both do it is completely different. It is and they both do like similar exercises. I mean, there's definitely exercises bodybuilders do that power lifters don't do and you know, there's certain exercise that power lifters do that bodybuilders don't do much, but there's so much crossover, right? So in fact, back in the day, bodybuilders and power lifters

trained quite similarly back in the day. And they both develop tremendous physics, they both build lots of muscle, a lot of stuff. But boy, do they lift differently? And I don't mean differently as in different exercises and stuff like that, necessarily, but even when you watch them do the same exercises, watch a bodybuilder do a bench press, watch a power lift to do a bench press, watch a bodybuilder squat versus a power lift to watch

them do a row, watch them do even curls. Uh, where power is on a lot of curls, but some of them do lots of curls, we'll do curls to protect the biceps for certain exercises like deadlifts, the intent and the technique are very different. And it's literally it can be broken down like this. A power lifter is always trying to make heavy weight feel as light as possible. And a bodybuilder is always trying to make a lightweight feel as heavy as possible. It's a very, very different approach to lifting. Well, I was also say that bodybuilders very much pay attention to the feel of the muscle versus the power lifter, the movement in the technique.

Yes. But that falls in line with, yes, they're trying to get, if you're a power lifter, you're trying to move the weight as efficiently as possible with the least amount of, well, the maximal amount of effort that's necessary. And versus like a bodybuilder, you're gonna wanna make everything extra difficult for your muscle to endure. Yeah, no, this wasn't in your notes to talk about this,

but this conversation, I've thought about this conversation a lot and curious to what you guys think. Do you think that one of these characters, so you have bodybuilder, a powerlifter, do you think one of them benefits more from training like the other than the other one does? You understand what I'm asking? Yeah, really good question, right?

Who do you think gets to- When they cross over who has the biggest boss? Who gets to cross? So you have two different types of ways of training. And we obviously agree that both have carryover, both see benefits, but do you think that one of them gets a little bit more benefits than the other one? I do, I'm just curious what you got. Well, I'd like to hear what you have to say, because if I think super high level

competitors, it changes versus the typical like... Yeah, not at all. Now, let's say, let's make the argument for power lifters actually going to bodybuilding and only from a longevity perspective. So I believe the bodybuilder gets more benefit from learning to train like a power lifter than the power lifter gets from learning to train like a bodybuilder. Why? Because the power lifter does not care how he looks at all.

He could have a big old beer belly, whatever like that. So getting certain muscles to fire better for them does not matter so much as it does moving the weight as efficiently as possible for their sport. So even though I do believe that they would get benefit from learning how to control specific muscles and to move out of that phase and feel the weight. I do, I don't disagree with that.

I just think that the bodybuilder, though, would get tremendous benefits from learning how to just move the bar. I think that he will build more muscle. Yeah. He will build more, I'm building more muscle in the game of building an aesthetic physique tends to have more value than maybe the power.

That's my, I think you can make an argument for that. My argument would be more around in terms of like joint health and longevity and, you know, power lifters. It's just the risk reward goes up like quite substantially, especially over time. So to shift then into bodybuilding, I feel like they will be able to keep up their training Going up into their 60s 70s 80s like

Much more effectively than they would maintaining this like powerlifting. You know what's interesting about this conversation is because I followed Both sports quite a bit when I was younger and What's interesting is there's periods of time where bodybuilders will borrow or use more powerlifting techniques. And then there's periods of time where powerlifters will borrow or use more of the bodybuilding techniques. Like I remember there was a period

that were bodybuilder or excuse me powerlifters would talk about how just hypertrophy and growth contributed to their lifts. So you should definitely go through these bodybuilding phases. I remember when power lifters, it was a big debate as to whether or not training the biceps was even important. Then power lifters said, well, yeah, look at these bicep tears that a lot of guys are getting doing these deadlifts and so then they started incorporating.

Then there was periods where bodybuilders did lots of powerlifting cycles. And I mean, it was actually, you know, bodybuilding had a lot of powerlifting in the early days. And then it kind of went away to the point where bodybuilders didn't even do the big three lifts, maybe just bench press, but nobody deadlifted and squatted. And then you had periods of time when they did. You know, Ronnie Coleman famously squatted and deadlifted was also a power lifter before he was ever a bodybuilder. And today you're seeing more bodybuilders, high-level bodybuilders start to incorporate

those movements because they're getting these huge results. There's just a lot of carryover and there's pros and cons to both. Now, I think of the average lifter. When I think of the average lifter, I think it's pretty even because I think of the average lifter that adopts mainly bodybuilding stuff or the average lifter that adopts mainly powerlifting

type techniques and ideologies. They're both missing out, I would say quite equally, on what they could accomplish with their body. Even if your goal is just to be, I don't think there's any debate there. I don't think there's any debate around the general population getting equal value from both. I mean, you could throw in mobility and sports performance training in there right with

that too and make the same case. If you're just an average gym goer who is just trying to be healthy and strong and fit and mobile and active and, you know, minimal to no joint pain, then cycling through all those modalities is ideal for that person and miss in and not doing one of them, you're missing out on tremendous benefits. But I'm thinking at the highest level, who is, who would get the most benefit and for the carryover? So like, if you took a top level bodybuilder

versus a top level power worker. Right, and say they can see that argument. Right, and they both neglected that, you know, not training like the other one, who gets the most benefit from that. And I guess, I'm also speaking from personal experience because you were in the bodybuilding space. Right, I was always in that.

Even when I was not competing, I was always in the business of sculpting my physique or that's what I cared about the most. It is interesting how both spaces can almost sometimes show disdain or make fun of the other space. Sure, right? Like your bodybuilders are looking to power it up.

Oh look, you're fat or you're not developing this or I don't care how much you lift or whatever. And the power lifts look a bodybuilder. So you guys are weak. You know, oh, that's nice, you look good, but you can't do this. Yeah, I can't you do this or that. It's really interesting.

I do wanna be clear, because someone might get confused and think this is about exercises. Oh, power lifters, do these exercise body loads? To some extent that's true, but that's how we're talking about. No. What we're talking about is take the same exercises. How they move the weight. That's it.

I don't care what the exercise is. In fact, there is a heavy, make heavy weight feel light mentality, and there's a make light weight feel heavy mentality that you can apply to any exercise that you can do in string training. I don't care what the exercise, you can be a curl, you can make a heavy weight feel light with a curl, or you can make a light weight feel heavy with a curl. And that's what we're talking about. So, because I think we've made the case enough on our podcast that all these exercises have value and that the big compound lifts probably have the most value.

But man, can you do a squat, a deadlift, a bench press, an overhead press, which we consider like the big four, right? Can you do them with completely different intent, make them feel and look completely different based on what we're talking about? Yes. Absolutely. 100% yes, and so that's what we're talking about, yes. Absolutely. 100% yes and that's what we're talking about. And so what you could do with your workout is without even changing the exercises,

you could go in there with one type of mentality or another type of mentality and what you'll get out of both are pros and cons. And it's important to know what those strengths and weaknesses are because then what happens is you could take your programming and knowing the strengths and weaknesses, you can phase your training, you can mold your training

so that you, and this is what, this is always the goal with exercise programming. This is what makes really good coaches, this what makes great coaches great coaches is, they know how to maximize the pros and minimize the cons. Shitty programming does the opposite, minimizes the pros, maximizes the cons, right? So that's what we're really talking about, because I know people are going to think,

oh, well, it's the exercises. No, it's the intent. No, no, I mean, this really, to me, highlights a seasoned lifter, one that has this ability. And I know we're mainly talking about, you know, the power lifter in bodybuilder mindset, but I would throw athletic training in there also. Totally. Because I think that learning to come in with that, you could do, and again, with athletic training, if we were to add that to this group,

you could do all the same exercises, but they end up being completely different with the mindset you go into it. In fact, it's simply how you go about the exercise. In fact, I would compare heavy and light to what we're saying with that led to training to maximum performance to correctional exercise, because maximum performance

is very much like making heavy weight feel light. Correctional exercise is very much like making light weight feel heavy. So it's a very, very similar comparison. That's why this is such a good general category that applies to all strength training pursuits and depending on what your goal is and how you're working towards that goal, you'll spend more time in one versus the other, but everybody should spend some time in both. Well, and this is important because I've realizing that we get more calls of people that will apply

the same type of mindset going into other programs that have a very similar structure of exercises. And they're looking at it from the way that they would approach those same reps with that heavy mindset, right? Like they're trying to move the weight as effectively as possible. When in fact, we've increased the number of reps,

when in fact, the whole protocol is different and more geared towards, you know, that lighter mindset, making the lightweight heavy. So it's an important concept to bring into your workout. Totally. All right, so let's talk about heavy for a second. So what makes heavy weight feel light?

It's maximizing efficiency. Maximizing efficiency. So when I'm lifting a weight, by the way, again, I wanna be clear, in both scenarios, I am not talking about crappy form. In fact, good form is important for both of them. So again, I don't want people to get confused and be like, oh, maximizing efficiency,

I'm gonna make this shitty form so I can move the way. No, that doesn't work. In fact, if you have shitty form with heavy weight, you're going to hurt yourself. So it's always good form, but the intent's different. You're maximizing efficiency of the lift when you're trying to make heavy weight feel light.

So what does that mean? That means you're moving the bar in a way that allows you to max the lift as much weight as possible with this minimal effort as possible with this minimal effort as possible with your body. You're looking for no leaks in energy. You're not looking for feeling a muscle squeeze. When you're bench pressing a heavy weight and you're trying to make it feel light, what you're not doing is saying, let me feel this in this part of my pack or in my triceps or my shoulder.

You don't care about that. No. The goal is, how can I lift this weight feeling tight, controlled and efficient? How do I make this movement in a way to where I can move as much weight as possible with this minimal injury of wrist? And you are trying to organize your entire body from head to toe in effort, in that effort, which is the opposite of the other. You are with it. When you are lifting like this, you are literally thinking from your toes all up to your neck, how everything is engaged to now

move this bench press, this squat, this snatch, whatever. Yeah, well, it's my orchestra versus single instruments sort of analogy thing. Like you have to like make sure that everything is together and it's in unison versus, you know, really isolating and trying to find that one instrument testing. Yeah, what's funny, so we'll get to the other side here

for a second, but just to use a simple example I was thinking about, if you're doing like a row row, I say you're doing a barbell row or dumbbell row and you're trying to make heavyweight feel light, you've got to always use one example. You've got a hard grip on that dumbbell or that bar. You are squeezing the shit out of it and you're moving that weight. You'll often see bodybuilders who are trying to make a lightweight fuel heavy use a grip like this where the bar is at the ends of their fingertips or they'll do a curl sometimes like this with the wrist cockback with barely where you're not going to be able to lift nearly as much weight with that but

what they're trying to do is disengage certain muscles to feel other muscles whereas if you're making heavy weight fuel light you're like turn everything on let's go. I want all the muscles I can help me with this. Yeah I mean you're making heavyweight feel light, you're like turn everything on. Let's go. I want all the muscles I can help me with this. Yeah. I mean, you're considering when you're moving heavyweight to how you have to anchor your body and how you have to create these ground forces and create basically make sure that no rotation happens within any joint, you know, for certain types of movements.

And so it's like becoming as rigid as possible throughout your whole body. So that way, now we can perform a very vertical line as effectively and efficiently as possible. Totally. So what's the focus, feel like for this? Well, if you've ever watched a powerlifting meet, it can actually be kind of weird if you've never done powerlifting, maybe even intimidating, lots of face slapping and smelling ammonia and, you know, angry music. And you are psyching yourself, piping up. You are going in and you are like,

ah, because you're trying to do, is you're trying to get your CNS as fired up as possible. And then when you get under the bar, or you grab the dumbbells, it's like turn everything on and let's go, right? And lift the weight. It's a very different focus from, you know, when you lift a lighter weight to try to make it feel heavy.

You are going in there and you are like, go through this weight, make it happen and make it happen in a very efficient possible way possible. This is important to understand because the focus that goes into your lift will contribute greatly to the type of lift that you do and the kind of results that you get from it. Oh, I think that the rituals that people like to do before lifts, both themselves, well here, as in comparison to the other group. Like, in fact, I didn't even ever really get into that until I started powerlifting. Until I started trying to lift singles and doubles and did I ever get into this,

like, how I walk up to the bar, how I position my feet, my hips, what I do with my arms, like, need that to replicate. I never did that. I trained for over 10 years of just getting on the bar and actually thinking like what Sal said, relaxing a lot of parts of my body. Yeah. Like opening the wrist up, relaxing.

Okay, just think about the chest and not trying to tense up anything. So there wasn't this like ritual to get on the bench. Like so I bench so different today because it is this kind of combination of a power lifter and a bodybuilder. So I have this like, get out of there, get wedged under, get ground my feet real tight, but then pull off like a bodybuilder, relax, and like that.

So it's really, so someone were to pick me apart like that. They would totally make fun of me because I don't really identify as one or the other. It's that I've taken some things that I really like from what I learned from training like a power lifter and then things that I've learned from training like a bodybuilder and I've combined. It makes it and it makes it work out so much more faster. What are some of the pros of lifting like this? Again, we're talking about the average person here, okay?

Lifting like this really does a great job of building overall muscle. You're gonna build more general overall muscle in your body because of the sheer tension that's involved when you're moving maximum weight. It's not just that. It's something that you said, and I used to repeat it all the time after you said, because it was like the first time I'd ever heard anybody say it this way, and I haven't repeated it in a long time, is when you used to give the amplifier analogy to the speakers. I love that analogy and I never thought about powerlifting

and training like, you know, where you're trying to really fire the CNS and basically I'm investing in building my central nervous system. It's efficient. It's turning up that amplitude. And anybody who understands how speakers work knows that you can have the most expensive, baddest, huge subwoofers in the world, but if you have some cheap ass 200 watt amplifier, you ain't going to get shit out of those speakers. And in fact, most people that really understand stereosis would argue that the amplifier and tuner is the most valuable part of the speaker system.

And so that's why I love that analogy, Gail, in terms of I think, when you get into training like a power lifter, you are really learning how to build an efficient central nervous system. And that's what I felt I got out of training this way was, I now learned how to call upon my muscles, like I never have before, because I had never put a lot of effort towards the amplifier.

I'd always put this effort towards the speakers. Right. And you get so much more effective and efficient energy management. So when you're moving around, you are able to apply that instant, the maximum amount of force that you need, but not no more, right? And you're able to relax your body and move fluidly. So it definitely applies to athletics as well as it does powerlifting. So I mean, that's just something that will apply to a lot more real world situations too, because you have to organize your entire body a lot of times

to lift something off the ground, to put something overhead. So a lot more real world kind of functional strength. Yeah. So what would you mean by functional strength? I've heard people say that it's all functional. Yeah. Okay. Technically, that's true.

However, in the real world, when you're moving couches and boxes and your TV and whatever, you're not trying to make those things feel heavier, you want to make them feel lighter. So this kind of training, Lee, it lends itself better to real world applicable strength because if you've ever worked with a blue collar worker and you've ever done hard labor with them,

what you see with them, I mean, I've worked with men in their 60s, doing stuff like this. And what you see is incredible efficiency. Like they can do things that I can't because they've learned how to become so efficient. A lot to mention, they don't give a shit, how good your chest looks.

They want to make sure you can pick a purant. Yeah. You're living a cow. I don't give a shit your pecs chest lit looks. They want to make sure you can pick up your head. You're living a cow. I don't give a shit your pecs look good if you can help with your head. Exactly. It's a you lift the couch. You're not thinking like that. You're not like this. Hey, your chest looks really good, bro.

Nobody cares. Pick up the couch and let's move it. Let's make this happen. It builds a very solid body. I have no no like there. I don't think there's any studies to support this but this is this has been you know I don't know strength training anecdote or wisdom for decades which is training in this way tends to produce this very granite hard solid feeling body now bodybuilders in the 60s and 70s they would go through powerlifting

cycles because they would say the same thing like Arnold would say It gives me a granite look to my body So it does tend to build this really solid tight strong dense looking body from a visual standpoint I remember Adam when you were bodybuilding and you switched over to the style of training just for a short period of time You even commented that it made your body feel that way or look that way. So it's really interesting I would argue to the death of me that there's a huge difference. Yeah. And I don't know if it's more about the heavy lifting or it's more about

training for the pump is more about fluid that you're teaching your body to be able to hold in cells. And so that gives you this temporary, able to hold in cells. And so that gives you this temporary, temporary, temporary inflation or look to the muscle versus lifting really heavy weight gives you kind of this permanent look. That's, and that's how I would describe it to somebody on like what I notice a difference. Like when I trained like a bodybuilder for so many years, I used to always have this feeling of, eh, when I drank all the fluid and got in there and I lifted, I looked twice my size,

but then 20 minutes later, that would all kind of air out and then I feel like you could barely tell, I really lifted that much. That's how I felt, right? And it wasn't until I started powerlifting that I get this look where I built muscle and maybe I didn't look as filled out as the pump look gave me, but it looked like I built legitimate

muscle that didn't need to be aired up to look bigger. Right. That makes sense. That was the way. And so I don't know if that's more. That's the theory. The theory is the actual contractual tissue, the muscle fibers, grow more with this kind of training versus the other style, which also grows muscle fiber, but also adds to all of the non-muscle fiber structures and muscle glycogen, fluid, capillaries, all the, which also makes up the size, I mean, 70% of your muscle is not muscle fiber. It's all that other stuff. So that's the theory. We don't have any evidence, like scientific evidence to support it, but we've got decades

of strength athletes talking about, you know, this particular... Well, I think to that besides the back, that's definitely an obvious one to see, you know, different style of training. You could see somebody who's probably doing more powerlifting and compound lifts, you know, what that does to their back, but really their core is very much something that stands out and just seeing somebody that's, you know, a little more focused on the heavy end,

you could see what that does to their obliques, you could see what that does to everything, you know, and their back and their rectors. Like, it's just, it's one of those things that if you don't do it, you just don't see a pronounced visual representation of that as much. Right.

Now, so talk about the cons now. So what it's everybody's, oh, this is great. This is how I want to train all the time. Ah, that's so fast. There's some cons. One of them is a higher injury risk. For sure, this style of training is for more prone to injury,

far more prone to injury. Because with this style of training is reward is far more prone to injury far more prone to injury because With the style of training you're always pushing the limits of how much weight you can lift and yes You are trying to maximize efficiency But as the wakeets heavier and heavier the smallest of inefficiencies in your lift can produce high risks of injury. I mean if you're squatting 500 pounds and your technique is off by a half a degree, that could hurt you right away. I mean, you could totally get hurt. You're pushing heavy weight, you're pulling heavy weight,

you're firing your CNS, you're siking yourself off. You're, and so the risk of injury just because the weight, the sheer weight, even with good form, I mean, a perfect form with the same lifter, right? A perfect form, 500 pound squat has a higher injury risk than a perfect form, 200 pound squat, obviously, with the same lifter, even if they make a 200 pound squat feel heavy with what we're about to talk about. So the risk of injuries much higher, the other part is training this way tends to definitely,

definitely, stresses the connective tissue, the ligaments and the tendons much more, because those are the things that the muscle anchors to. And so what you'll find, if you train like this all the time, all the time, all the time, is you just start to get sore joints and you start to get sore at the insertion point. I would. I would add another con to this. I find this one feeds the ego more. Therefore, it's tougher for me to move away from it after I'm in it, if that makes sense. Because when I'm hitting PRs and I'm seeing weight on the bar more than I ever have, I like that. And I'm not even a powerlifting guy.

I'm a bodybuilder guy. And yet when I see like, oh man, this is the most weight I've ever squatted, this is the most I did live to. I want to keep going. I want to stay in that. It's difficult for me to tell myself like, I need to move away from this. I would, you know what? This is a good point.

Yeah, this is interesting. Yeah, but I'll say this. I'm going to agree, but I'm also going to bring it to the point because I think it could away from this. I would, you know what? This is a good point. Yeah, this is interesting. Yeah, but I'll say this. I'm gonna agree, but I'm also gonna bring one to the point because I think it could be both sides. Yeah. I think when you're bulking, this is great. When you're cutting, now mess with your ego. If I'm trying to get, if I'm trying to get leaner

and I'm trying to lift heavy, now my ego is getting hurt. If I'm trying to bulk with the make of the light, weight, feel heavy thing, and I'm all interested in body sculpting That's when it messes with my ego. So I think they both Can mess with your ego depending on the way you're training and maybe even the I do see the big ego attachment there of PRs Because it is a big focus is the loading of the weight and then put on the other end of it

I've obviously you'll see the ego come out through the size of your muscle and the control of it, right? So it's interesting to think about it, but it's definitely there. Well, I mean, obviously I'm speaking from personal experience, right? So everyone has probably their own journey. But I've lived in both spaces. I would think that I actually identify as a bodybuilder type of person more than I do a power lifter. Yeah, no doubt it's hard to see the way go down. Yeah, it is. And even for a guy who doesn't care about that as much, you can get in that race to keep

putting more and more when you start seeing numbers go up or seeing numbers that you've never seen before, even though I know better, it's time for me to move out. So personally, I would list that as an added con. I never have that problem with bodybuilding. When I'm lifting like a bodybuilder and I'm trying to make a lightweight, feel heavy, weight becomes arbitrary to me. So moving to low reps, high reps, being low carb, high carb, it doesn't matter. I'm always in my mind. I'm always weak.

Like I'm always trying to make myself feel weak no matter what is on the bar when I'm in full bodybuilder mode, but when I'm in powerlifting mode, strength guy, I am looking at the weight. And that's actually one of my best indicators of like, oh, I'm moving the weight good because I'm getting stronger and stronger. So I find that one of the cons is that it's hard to move away from it because the chasing the weight on the bar can become very different. Yeah, I can see that. All right. So let's talk about making lightweight, feel heavy. All right. So now what you're trying to do, okay, in the context of good form, rather than maximizing efficiency, you're actually trying to maximize inefficiency. I'm trying to make the weight feel as heavy as possible. Can I make these 20 pound dumbbells with this overhead press, fry my shoulders like if I was lifting 60 pound dumbbells? And you can do this if you get really good at this. Bodybuilders are the best at this.

A really, really good bodybuilder could work out with weight that you would look at and be like, why are they using such lightweight and yet they'd get a phenomenal workout and a crazy pump? It's all about maximizing the inefficiency of the exercise. So with that example, like you could see one way to achieve that is to not fully lock out, so they maintain this muscle tension.

That's why those start doing that. So they'll start doing things like that that will show up to really stress the muscle even more the entire set of reps that you're doing. And then also like tempo will show up in angles, lots and lots of angles. Well, tempo is a big one. That to me, that's what like,

go back to what I was saying before about, like, weight is, it doesn't matter anymore to me because it doesn't matter what exercise I'm doing, it's gonna be heavy. So, like, what I love about this is that, when I'm training with this mindset and I come to gym and I put weight on the bar, it actually doesn't matter if I got good sleep

or bad sleep with that. I can, and I can start with a, what could be, or maybe I got great sleep, bar. It actually doesn't matter if I got good sleep or bad sleep with that. I can start with what could be, or maybe I got great sleep, but I feel like it doesn't matter. I put 135 on the bar and 135, I'm gonna make heavy. Yes. No matter what, whether I had great sleep, not good sleep, is it naturally already heavy

because I didn't get those things or maybe I got great sleep and fully fed, and so it feels light, it doesn't matter. It's gonna end up feeling heavy because I'll mess with tempo, which is how I used to teach people with form. Like I would always when a client would ask me, oh, let's go up and wait. This is easy for me. I say, oh, then we'll just slow down the last three to four reps. Let's make it heavy. Let's take those last ones slow and I would manipulate tempo all the time to make these

weights. Actually, good two things things I wanna point out. One is, I forgot to mention this con with the heavy, making heavy weight feel light, which is it's hard to bring up the lagging body parts with this because you're making an exercise as efficient as possible. If that means when you squat, you engage your quads

more than your glutes, so be it, that's what's gonna end up happening. So then you may under develop your glutes and that's what ends up happening. Right. So then you may under-develop your glutes, and that's what ends up happening. And if you continue to train by making heavy weight, you'll light. Well, you're gonna continue to use this pattern that works best for your body. I mean, you're not gonna bring up the slagging body part. Well, now when we get to the lightweight, the goal is to focus on the target muscle. This is, so when we talk about tempo, and we talk about, you know, maximizing inefficiency,

really what this is, it's all about the feel. It's all about the feel. So if I'm doing a squat heavy to make it feel light, I don't care if I feel my quads hamstrings or my glutes or whatever. Let's just move it in the way that moves the weight the best. When I'm bodybuilding or I'm doing this make lightweight feel heavy, I'm thinking what muscle I'm trying to work. I'm trying to work my glutes. Alright, let's make the squat. Let's put this light weight on the bar and let's move in a way with a slow tempo, but also this is the most important part because you could do slow tempo and still do this wrong. You could go slow tempo and still train without

targeting what you're trying to target. It's all about the feel, 100% about the feel, not the feel like 100% about the feel, not the feel like, how do I make this weight feel light, but rather, how do I feel the muscles that I'm trying to work? By the way, studies show this, studies show this quite clearly that when people do this, they do activate target, quote unquote,

target muscles even better. So this is all about feeling the muscle versus heavy weight, where it's not about feeling the muscle at all, it's all about feeling the muscle versus heavy weight, where it's not about feeling the muscle at all. It's all about feeling the movement. So this allows you to target and squeeze specific parts of your body. This is when you can take an exercise like a row and I can make it hit my lats.

I can make it hit my rhomboids or metropesias. Or if I want to, I can even make a row of my biceps more than all those other muscles. Yeah, I mean, this is one of those things we talk about as the mind muscle connection. This is where I always got the most value from this, especially like introducing it to clients as well. It's just, yeah, you slow the tempo down,

but really, you do have a lot of control as to how many muscle fibers you recruit based on how much you're focused on that muscle group group and how much squeeze and feel that you can produce. So it's very valuable in a sense to figure out, if there are maybe some weak areas, maybe some muscle groups that are underdeveloped that we can then direct all our focus there and we can really make a massive impact by focusing my muscle to that area. Well, this is why, too, bringing us to the second point

why the focus is so different getting up to lift, right? So I'm getting ready to power lift, I have this ritual, you know, the way I step up, the way I grip the floor, what I do with my arms, what like this whole ritual to come in the bar, when I'm thinking of bodybuilder, I'm actually already thinking, I'm this whole ritual to come in the bar, when I'm thinking of bodybuilder, I'm actually already thinking, I'm already, before I can get to the bar,

I'm flexing the muscles that I'm gonna go hit. Cause I wanna make sure I'm, I'm so conniving him for it. Yeah, I'm already connected so well that I can activate my back just thinking about it. So I'm gonna get ready, I'm gonna go do a bit over row right now. And I'm already starting to fire my back

without any resistance because I know when I get under that bar, that's I wanna think about that the entire time. So the thought process and even the walkup to the bar is a different process than what it is when I'm getting ready to just rip the most weight. I'm trying to do it. It's calm focus whereas with the heavy weight,

it's like angry, you know, psych up. It's calm focus. Whereas with the heavy weight, it's like angry, you know, psych up. It's totally different. You're watch videos of lifters like, ah, and they yell, and ah, and that's like, let's go move some heavy weight. When it goes to like bodybuilding style, it's like quiet and it's calm and it's focused.

I'm not trying to get oversight. In fact, over-siking myself up with making light weight feel heavy ruins the exercise. If I go to do a squat and I wanna just feel it in my glutes, if I over-psych myself up, I'm gonna not feel it in the target muscles. I'm just gonna move the weight hell easy and I'm gonna have to add weight to it

versus I gotta go in there, calm. It's just still focused, but you're calm focused and I'm visualizing the muscle. I'm visualizing the action of the muscle. Okay, the glutes extend at the hips. That's the movement that I'm trying to really focus on. Even though I'm doing knee extension with a squat too, I'm focusing more on hip extension, right?

Or what I'm benching, right? Okay, I wanna feel it in the chest. What was the chest you, right? That's what's called adduction of humerus. It's bringing the humerus closer to the center of my body. So I'm getting under the bar, calm focused, and when I push the bar, it's almost like I'm trying to disengage the triceps.

So I'm trying to just make the chest do the work. I'm literally, like we're saying in this episode, making the lightweight feel as heavy as possible. I also focus way more on the eccentric portion than I do. Totally. Because, yeah, there's like no eccentric. Right.

Well, I mean, he's still eccentric, but it's all about the entire... They are, but it's not. Yeah, it's less important. When you're trying to move as much way as possible, you're not necessarily trying to resist it as low as you can and activate that muscle on the way down. If anything, you're trying to conserve energy

on the essential portion. You're trying to do what's called staying in the groove with your eccentric right? With this, I'm resisting it. Can I still feel the total muscle? I'm trying to resist it, which there is an art to that. Like it's relatively easy for the average lifter to fill a muscle on the concentric portion because they're contracting

that muscle. It's like, okay, yeah, I feel the bicep. But when you let it go down, can you resist it with the bicep? Or it's real easy to press with your chest as you need those muscles to press it off, but then can you resist it with the chest on the way down and not allow all those other muscles to kick in? There's the art to this. And there's where that focus comes in.

So when you come into a lift and I'm thinking like a bodybuilder, a lot of my focus is on the eccentric portion of the exercise and staying connected to that muscle during that entire. And to me, that is one of the biggest glaring differences when I look at like my power lift or friends standing next to a bodybuilder. That is one of the biggest glaring differences when I look at like my power lifter friends standing next to a bodybuilder, when if you pick apart their eccentric portion of the exercise, you go, oh, you can tell.

It's, and you gotta use compound lists for this example because I think it's easier to visualize because everybody's like, whoa, with a curl, I can feel it. Okay, try doing a row. And on the way down, can you feel the lats on the way down or do you just lower the, so what up would us when you're making heavy weight feel light what you're trying to do is you're trying to lower the bar in the efficient groove, get it into the groove so that I can push it up right when you're trying to feel the muscle you're like can I

lower this while still feeling the target muscle. This is a very, this is a skill by by the way. Both of these are skills. I want to be very clear. Both of what we're talking about are skills that you develop through practice. And when you develop them, and okay, here's your evidence right here. Take an athlete that always trains heavy,

put him in a bodybuilding workout and watch them do lifts. And bodybuilders will be like, man, that guy is not targeting the rear delt. That guy is not hitting his last. That guy is not, then take a bodybuilder, have him do powerlifting. And you watch him do a squat or a deadlift, and it's like, man, that guy is not targeting the rear delt. That guy is not hitting his last. That guy is not, then take a body builder, have him do power lifting. And you watch him do a squat or a deadlift and it's like, what are they doing? They're individual, they're making, they're moving each muscle individually.

Why don't they maximize the lift or whatever. It's a skill. So practicing both of these gets you good at both of them. By the way, this makes you a master at strength training, essentially. Yeah, if you can do that in a compound lift, you are, you are getting close to mastery, I think of lifting it. I actually used to teach it with an isolation exercise. Tricep push downs were my favorite. And I know you guys have had so many clients

that do a tricep push down, everybody fills it on the way down. But resisting it on the way back, they let the cable take it up, or they tense their bicep up, or they tense their shoulders up, and they're like, they they don't feel it and they're tricep at all. So it's one of my favorite ways to teach what I'm trying to communicate right now on what we're trying to do in every exercise. So if we are doing chest right now, all the checks are doing. I want you thinking on the

way down, resisting with the chest. We're doing these tricep pushdowns, resisting it with the triceps. And if you've never trained this way and you apply this, I swear you get massive benefits from, I mean, research has already shown that the eccentric portion is one of the most valuable portions as far as building muscles. But part of that research is taking into consideration you're doing it properly.

If you're not resisting properly with your triceps on a tricep extension, then you're not gonna make the case. That's the key right there is, yeah, you're doing a negative with heavy weight, but are you building the target muscle? Or are you just getting better at that exercise? Right, right? Because here's the pros of making light weight feel heavy. you wait, but are you building the target muscle or are you just getting better at that exercise? Right.

Right. Because here's the pros of making light weight feel heavy. This is how you bring up lagging body parts. By the way, people who have lagging body parts and they work out regularly, now sometimes it's because they don't train that body part. So sometimes it's like, yeah, my calves aren't developed, but you're like, well, do you work out your calves? Well, no, barely.

But oftentimes, it's like, man, I can't build my glutes, but I squat and I deadlift and I do single leg deadlifts, and I do this, and, you know, oh, but I can't develop my, my lats, but I do pull-ups and rows and whatever. I can't build my chest, I do all these different chest presses. And that's because they're not doing this very well, which is making that lightweight, full heavy and changing the focus.

This kind of lifting is great for being in a plaguing body parts. As opposed to what we talked about earlier, which can be terrible for bringing up plaguing body parts. If you could bench press a lot of weight, but you don't have a well-developed chest, just continuing to bench press heavy weight means your body is going to lift it the best way it knows how, which is not use the chest very much, right? If you could squat really well, but your glutes aren't developed, and going heavy isn't gonna make your glutes grow anymore because you're just gonna do it the way you've always

done it. So going light and focusing on those areas and the feel now allows you to really create that tension in that target body part. So this kind of lift things great, this is when you want to bring up a lagging body part. This is exactly what you do. As you lighten the load and then you focus on the feel. And here's another pro. This is much lower injury risk, much lower injury risk.

Like the bodybuilders who are still training in their 60s and 70s and whatever, with no injuries, this is how they always train. They always train by making lightweight, this is how they always trained. They always trained by making lightweight, feel heavy, they always trained with this type of mentality and they tend to not get injuries. The bodybuilders with all the injuries, I hate to say it, the ones that really went super heavy

all the time, talking extreme, because you can do both and keep them relatively safe, but to be quite honest, the injury risk is much lower with this kind of... Well, this is the most appealing part of training this way, in my opinion. It means that I could virtually sculpt the physique that I want with the least amount of risk. That's what makes it so appealing.

That's what made it so appealing to me forever. So training this way puts me at the least amount of risk. And I also have the capability to build the best body I could possibly get sculpting my physique, which it is way more difficult to do that with a power lifter. As I get older, because I like heavy lifting, I'm always like heavy lifting, as I get older, I appreciate this style of training more because of that right there. Because at some point you start to reach certain levels of strength where the injury risk

just gets higher if your form isn't absolutely perfect or whatever. And so this type of training because more appealing as I get older, where now I'm more focused on this style of training versus when I was in my 20s and 30s. Yeah, well to your earlier point, like you just start to feel that stress intention on your ligaments and your joints doing the heavy lifting over, you know, a long course of time. It just adds up and stresses it out versus this type of mentality. It's just, it's one of those things like because you're getting more blood circulation to and you're doing more reps, like there's,

there's a bit of a healing element there as well, that I've noticed like switching it over from doing that heavy high-risk style training versus this. Right, now let's talk about some cons, right? So it's great, you can hit those target body parts, there was this injury risk, but here's a deal. It's true, and this is more so for people who are beginner, intermediate, like once you get super advanced, then this is less of a con, but this is in the beginning, you're just not going to build as much muscle. It's just total muscle, right?

So if I take two lifters who are getting, you know, who only have maybe six months of lifting experience, and one person I talked, I teach them just to feel the muscle and squeeze the muscle with every single lift, and the other one I'm like, let's maximize your exercise efficiency and really learn how to lift as much weight as possible. The person lifting the most weight is gonna build the most total muscle, it's just the fact, it just does that. So this isn't as much of a big muscle builder,

which is probably why Adam you said the bodybuilders in the beginning would benefit a lot from powerlifting style training because they would just gain new muscle from training in this particular way. Yeah, and I also think that it's kind of compounding, right? If you get to, for example, like if I've never squatted over 225 trying to focus on, let's say,

building my glutes, because I trained always like a bodybuilder and I never went through a powerlifting phase that pushed me over 400. I could never go back and do 315 and control and focus on my squats. That's a good point. You understand what I'm saying? Like, if you always train with a, oh wait,

doesn't matter, like I did for so long, you never really pushed those boundaries to new limits on your body. I'm always floating around, let's say, with the 225 squats. That's true. Just slowing the tempo down. And so what it opened for me was, and I know you squats

and glutes, which was not really a focus moment, probably would have been better for me was my back analogy, right? Like it really opened up the amount of mass that I could build on my back because I had never pushed weights like four, 500 pounds in a deadlift. So all of a sudden, now I could,

it took me forever and I can't remember the exact numbers, but for this, for making my point, let's say I was rowing like on a seated row where I could really activate my lats and think about the muscles, you know, with, you know, 150, let's say, I would say that was like a heavy weight, but light enough that I could really control rolling the shoulders, feeling in my lats, and that was probably at my peak strength. After I stopped rolling, did

nothing but deadlifting got really strong. I got up to 550 pounds deadlifting, then I come back, I could do that same controlled rolling with like 225 pounds. And so it now allows me to train like a bodybuilder connecting to these muscles with a higher stress than I ever could before, and it opened that for me, where I don't think that bodybuilding would have done the same for the whole of it. Yeah, I think, I mean, it's that systemic effect, right,

versus sort of a localized approach. And there's a lot of muscle groups and stabilizer type muscles that you probably aren't stressing enough doing a more bodybuilder style training. Whereas everything gets affected because it's all up the kinetic chain. You have to ground yourself. You have to brace your spine, like there's just more demand going that direction, which you do get sort of that carryover of more muscle masses of results. I definitely think it's that, and I think a big portion of it is going back to the amplifier

analogy. Yeah. I upgraded my amplifier, like I never had before. I've had the capacity I built the big, you know, 12 inch, whatever subwoofers forever that were top of the line, that were awesome, because I put years and years and years into making those, but I had been running off the same amp forever.

And for the first time in my life, I upgraded my amp and I didn't just kind of upgrade it. I upgraded it to a whole other level. And now that amp could blow those speakers out the water. Now it gives me the opportunity to go build 18 inch subwoofers or 20 inch subwoofers. You know what I'm saying? That's what's so amazing about that.

So I think a lot of that goes back to the CNS morning. If I had to attribute what I think it was the most value. I would agree. And lastly, the strength that you build training this way is just less applicable to the real world because, as I said earlier, in the real world, the last thing you want to do when you're using strength, when you have to use strength, is make something

like feel heavy. You don't want to make light things feel heavy in the real world because in the real world, I'm not trying to develop my biceps and my rear delts and my rhombods and my traps when I'm moving a table or a couch or you know doing something that requires some strength. I'm trying to do the opposite but if I always train my body to feel heavy lightweight feel heavy then when I go try to move heavy things in the real world, I don't have the skill.

I don't have the skill to do so. And this is where sometimes body builders get a bad rap, where body builders will go and they'll go do something physical or whatever, and people will be like, my guy, that guy's 250 pounds, and he's not, he's not, you know, he looks like he's way stronger than he really is. Really what it is is, they got the muscle,

they just don't have the ability, they don't have the skill of doing what we're, you know, what we're kind of talking about. So if you want to build applicable strength then the other style of training is gonna give you more of that than this. But I think the big point to make is this, is if you plan on making strength training

something that you do for long, for a long period of time or hopefully for the rest of your life, these, both of these are equally important. Both of them have pros and cons. And again, the key is to maximize the pros, minimize the cons. In plain speak, what does that look like? Well, it looks like phasing in and phasing out of each one of these styles of training. Three to six weeks and one, three to six weeks and another one, and would you get with that

more consistent progress, less injury and a better looking physique. Look, if you like Mind Pump, you got to check out MindPumpFree.com. That's where we have all of our free guides that can help with lots of health and fitness goals. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump.

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