Why Getting Strong Will Get You Hurt

Here’s What You Need To Know…

1. In an ego-driven fitness industry fueled on testosterone and stupidity, it begs the question, how strong is strong enough? If you want to lift for the long haul, you better be asking these questions or dare to pay the price.

2. Overemphasizing pure strength can absolutely cause more harm than good when your goals are centered around building muscle, getting staggeringly strong and training for the long run without debilitating yourself with pain and injuries in the process.

3. Continuing to get brutally strong doesn’t always coincide with long term health. Many times it can cause not only a void in optimal orthopedic health and wellness, but a gaping hole in non-task specific performances as well.

4. Once certain levels of strength are achieved, it’s pivotal to view strength through a new lens and find ways to challenge it without prioritizing the addition of load. Strict and steep progressive overload will only work for so long.

For too long, the strength and conditioning world has been living in the matrix. We have to realize that in the quest for muscular strength, hypertrophy, and overall “gains”, most of us are missing the point: Namely, acquiring sustainable results that contribute to a healthy, long life – a life not affected by most physical limitations in older age. There are probably going to be about 5 percent of people reading this who genuinely don’t care about this, and are willing to get big or strong at any cost. And I think those issues go far beyond the scope of one article to highlight.

For the remainder of us, it’s important to avoid missing the forest for the trees where our training is concerned. If you’re not a competitive athlete or lifter, then you fall under the “recreational” category by default. It’s a cool hobby to chase strength PR’s left and right, and it’s also a necessary tool for progression, but if you’ve been lifting for a while, it definitely does beg a question that most people are too ego-happy to ask:

How Strong is Strong Enough?

This isn’t a copout. By no means am I giving readers a bye to exempt them from doing hard work, making gains, and getting really strong.

But it’ll never escape my mind that the benefits of being able to squat or deadlift 700 pounds can’t far outweigh the benefits of being able to squat or deadlift, say, 500 pounds. After a certain point of experience, a corner is turned as far as the amount of real-world application of having this much movement –specific strength. The reason people overlook this is largely thanks to getting caught up in the same performance “matrix” I mentioned above. Chasing elite performance that competitors often use to gauge their chances of stacking up against the opposition can become entrenched in the mind of a recreational lifter, and the message is soon lost.

The truth is, additional measures need to be taken when it comes to experienced lifters looking to refine their strength and size. It’s a sign of a truly critical thinker when he realizes that he can’t simply look at more weight lifted as his only means of progression; and in some cases doing so may actually cause more harm than good as regards his goals for more muscle and better performance.

Stop Doing Heavy Assistance Exercises!

It’s one of my biggest pet peeves in the gym when I see someone doing Peterson step ups, face pulls, chest flyes, or rear leg elevated split squats with a stack of weight. If, for some reason, movements like these are the hub of your training, and are your “main lifts”, then have at it and load up. But for most smart lifters, they’re assistance movements that have their place in the program to zero in on weak links and improve the performance of the big primal lift that they correspond to. With that said, a movement that’s aimed to groove patterning, isolate trouble spots, and possibly create a good pump in the process shouldn’t be corralled to low reps and high loads. Heavy sets of any other movement expose the fact that it’s difficult to optimize range of motion and other forms of rep quality while trying to deliver such a neural output, and the truth usually reveals itself when a lifter asks himself whether such feats are ego driven or truly in the interests of improving his development. An assistance exercise is usually prescribed when a major lift exhibits dysfunction (if you’re a strength trainee), and to chase a pump or muscle hypertrophy that big lifts can miss or compensate for (if you’re a size trainee).

In my books, I’ve found great results chasing rep work and lower weight in the following movements:

• Rear leg elevated split squat
• Walking lunges
• DB Bench Press
• Face Pulls
• Single leg Deadlift
• Peterson Step Ups
• Single Arm Pressing Work

To add to this, in my experience with recreational lifters, I’ve seen limited added value from having a 300 pound single leg deadlift or rear leg elevated split squat as it correlates to the bilateral counterpart.

My Take on True Strength

I’ll never argue with a guy who benches 800 when it comes to strength training methods for a greater absolute max. What I will safely estimate is that the “shelf life” of a lifter who can push that much weight is significantly shorter than that of a lifter who takes a slightly different approach to (and view of) strength training; namely one for sustainability. The 800 pound guy may have a higher lifetime PR, but chances are he’ll only be moving those kinds of numbers for maybe 15 years – notwithstanding the likelihood of plenty of lifting injuries, chronic pain and other discomfort he has to deal with from the side effects of chasing such numbers in the weight room.

Personally, that’s where the guy who decides to bench no more than 385 gets the win in my books. I’d rather be able to push 4 plates for 50 years and live pain and injury free, rather than push 8 plates for 10 years and endure the side effects for the sake of the PR. At a certain point of advancement, it’s worthwhile to look at strength through a new lens and find ways to challenge it without prioritizing the addition of load. Once you’ve established your muscles tendons, ligaments and bones as legitimately strong and healthy, it would be a smart move to implement simple rep tweaks to make your top weight feel heavy, and back off from chasing a new max.

It speaks more for someone’s strength with how much they can control and manipulate submaximal loads. A haphazard max squat is far less impressive than being able to slowly control 85% of that load while pausing at the bottom using good form.

With that in mind, you may be surprised just what’s in store the next time you do decide to test your max after spending an appreciable amount of time training with such methods.

Size Training Doesn’t Take Heavy Weights

Don’t get me wrong – if you want to build muscle, at some point you’ll have to challenge that muscle with heavy resistance. But the truth is, in many instances, a case for hypertrophy can be made by gauging the muscle’s fatigue levels and cumulative weight lifted. It’s also worthwhile to note that muscle fiber distribution is not equal in all cases. Certain groups may have a greater distribution of slow twitch fibers compared to others that are more fast-twitch dominant. Common sense would make it safe to assume that muscles responsible for prolonged contraction (like those of the quads and postural muscles) would respond more favorably to higher rep work, and there are athletes that exhibit developmental support of this idea.

Advanced lifters can really benefit from reducing rest intervals and finding the best ways to fatigue muscle tissue. A big part of it comes from straying from “weight lifted” and focusing on a mind-muscle connection. That’s much more difficult to do when you don’t have much time to do it – like the duration of a heavy 2 rep set.

And, One More Thing About Getting Strong

Speaking of time, I should mark an important distinction: Lifters seem to be confusing training for strength with training for power. The latter involves muscles contracting to their maximum in the shortest possible time window. In its most absolute forms, that would be one explosive effort that only lasts a few seconds.

Simply put, doing sets of an exercise for 5 or even 7 reps is still strength training. Too often, a lifter gets stuck doing heavy doubles without recognizing that the skill he’s developing is only becoming more and more specific to that particular task. It’s fine for what it’s worth, but an everyday human being should be able to build proficiency and strength – yes, strength – using various rep ranges and lifting schemes to get the most of his training for bodily health. It’s a reason why lifting and programming phases exist in the first place, at least for my clients.

Final Thoughts

Somewhere, someone said lifting 2.5x your bodyweight makes you “strong”. Though I completely agree, this overlooks several other areas where strength can be recognized, simply because those methods are unquantifiable and immeasurable. Everyone agreed that progression should be identified by adding weight to the bar, and no one thought to ask too many questions once notable strength gains had been achieved. When you’re already deadlifting 500, it may be worthwhile to ask those questions – if you want to be in the lifting game for the long haul.

About The Author

Lee Boyce is no stranger to controversy, and his opinions and firm resolve to popularize the brutal truth about training have landed him countless features in some of the largest publications in the world, including Men’s Health, Esquire, Men’s Fitness, The Huffington Post, and Oxygen. Lee doesn’t care about the size of his audience, and that’s probably what’s made it grow at a steadily increasing rate over the years. The Toronto-based generalist is ready to give the fitness world a much needed voice of reason, and pull no punches while doing it. He’s making the right moves and creating a splash in the industry – and his often unpopular opinions will definitely make you think. He is 29 years old.

Visit Lee’s site LeeBoyceTraining.com

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