How Much Weight is Best to Build Muscle? (SIMPLE TEST)

If you want to build muscle you have to ask yourself how heavy is too heavy when it comes to lifting weights. A lot of people will lift heavy weights in order to build muscle but not pay attention to how they are doing it. I would argue that lifting lighter weights will go a lot further towards addi

what’s up guys jeff cavalier athens. com so today i want to kind of take you right here behind the scenes to give you an answer to a question a lot of people ask and maybe get you down the right path finally and that is how heavy should you be lifting how heavy is too heavy because we all know that you should be lifting heavy weights i made a whole video about it a long time ago subsequently i made a video on why you should be lifting light weights but when it comes to heavy how heavy is too heavy the first thing you need to ask yourself is what are you training for because if you were training let’s say a squat a lot of us would say too heavy is when you just can’t lift the weight and i would argue differently it’s not just that you can’t lift the weight if you’re compromising your form and your morals with it in order to lift that weight then you’re not doing it right and i’ve always said that the real basis and foundation of strength is stability so if you are working on building strength upon an unstable body then ultimately you’re going to pay the price down the road they’re going to say wow that was an impressive lift but you really screwed us up in the long term and your body is going to hate you for it so always working on executing maximal lifts with good form is important but a lot more of us are sort of interested in just building muscle and so the issue is how heavy is too heavy when it comes to building muscle that’s a good question that’s what we need to figure out so to illustrate this i’m going to show you a couple exercises right the first thing that we have to understand is when a muscle contracts it does so in three ways it does a concentric where we shorten the muscle right the front delt is is is contracting to lift the way up isometrically it would freeze that dumbbell and hold it in position at any point in the range and then eccentrically it would control the slow lowering of that weight on the way down well if you want to know how heavy too heavy is if you can’t stop the weight at any point in the range then the weight you’re lifting is too heavy and why is that well again isometrically we’re stronger than we are concentrically we’re weakest in lifting the weight up isometrically we’re stronger so if we can’t stop a weight that’s moving at any point in the range of motion then the weight we used concentrically was too heavy and what means is it means that you just swung the weight up and swinging weights is not going to produce the muscle hypertrophy that you’re looking for ever because the accumulation of more momentum based reps is just basically diluting the work being done by the muscle itself so you want to make sure the work is being done by the muscle so i can prove to myself if i’m using the right weight that i can actually stop it at any point in the range of motion even in this case carry on a little bit of a conversation it doesn’t matter where i’m at in the range i can stop this it’s not that i swung it up and it’s falling okay maybe i have enough isometric i mean eccentric strength here to handle that but we’re stronger eccentrically than we are asymmetrically anyway so i want to be able to be able to stop it and hold it that’s the first thing however we take it to another level when we look at another exercise like a lat pull down now i can appreciate cheating through a concentric part of a rep like that in order to apply a better eccentric overload again the strongest part of a muscle contraction is the eccentric portion so if i cheat it down because i want to get a real heavy load for the eccentric overload okay i get that but if you’re not training for just eccentric overload which you shouldn’t exclusively then you need to be able to take that load and control it and stop it at any point in the range of motion i don’t care where it is now what’s the big mistake that people make here so i might take this weight and say okay jeff just told me i can control this weight at any point in the range of motion i could do exactly what he said this is the weight i’m going to use i’m using the appropriate weight we still got to train heavy how heavy is too heavy you have to test the upper limits of what heavy is so that i can control let’s put it up a little bit further let’s grab it again can i do the same thing can i stop this weight at any point in the range of motion and control this and the answer is yes once again i can so again i want to go up a little heavier i gotta test that upper limit of what i can control because if i stop there then sure i’m not using weight that’s too heavy but i may not be using a weight that’s heavy enough and again here i still have control of the weight so i work my way up that stack until let’s just say i get almost you know up to the point where okay can i actually control this i could stop it there i could stop it there oh i really can’t get it there without that extra momentum so i’d say i’ve reached my upper limit so i’d back off from there maybe one plate you know right in between and the goal here once again being can i take that and then control it through all parts of the range of motion once i found that weight that’s the appropriate weight for you because you know that it’s the muscles and not just the momentum that moves that weight and by making muscles do more of the work than momentum you’re going to supply the hypertrophy stimulus needed to grow and guys once you’ve answered that question then it’s just a matter of being consistent and getting the work in if you’re looking for a program guys i have step-by-step plans available over at athletics. com we put the science back in strength so you know how to train to get the most out of everything you do you can find them over there if you haven’t done so click subscribe turn on notifications so you’re never missing a video when we’re pulling out all right guys see you soon