Indian_Iron’s BodyBlog

I will dedicate this post to all the "Big Men" trying to tear it hardcore at the gym. In all the years I have been training, it has been inevitable to spot people making weird and loud roars at the gym. It has always troubled me to the guts to see them train wrong and make their bodies injury susceptible.

I just want to place a subjective opinion on such situations. Apparently, such people fail to understand (or intentionally ignore) the difference between maximum load and maximum weight. The mere reason? Well, its what I describe as the Ego-litious Disease! Being an engineer I like playing with equations.

 Considering a situation of a guy doing deadlifts, lets say he does the following:

1st set - 200 pounds and 10 reps. It takes him 8/10 th of a second to complete one rep and lifts the bar 2 feet from the ground

2nd set - 300 pounds and 5 reps. It takes him one second to do one rep

3rd set - 350 pounds and 3 reps. He starts slowing down and takes amlost 2 seconds now.

4th set - 400 maxed out at 1 rep with 3 seconds.

Let’s examine the power equation, shall we? Most of you probably know it: power is equal to force times distance, divided by time.

P=Fd/t

Lets see the formula principle, then we will see what a waste of time his “max load” sets were.

1st set:

P = 200X2/.8 = 500 lb.ft/s

2nd set:

P = 300X2/1 = 600 lb.ft/s

At this point, looking at the numbers, it seems his progressive overload is right in line with an adaptive response.

3rd set : 

P = 350X2/2 = 350 lb.ft/s

Strange but true: his max load was increased, but his power output, or overload response, decreased substantially

4th set:

P = 400X2/3 = 266.67 lb.ft/s..You see what I mean?

Lifting heavy weights for the sake of lifting them won’t always get you the results you want. Assuming that all 10 reps are performed explosively and that is the maximum weight the person could lift when doing 10 reps, they’d generate far more power demand than would sets using heavier weights for fewer reps. I am not denying an adaptive response with a higher weight, but it wouldn’t be as powerful. I know I am wrong conventionally, but if MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT is the goal, yelling to lift more weight is a disaster!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 7:26 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.