It Doesn’t Matter how Heavy it Feels!

We don't lift it because it's light...

“It doesn’t matter how heavy it feels!” If you’ve trained with me long, you have undoubtedly heard me say that (as well as ‘Stop shaking your head, if you can argue, you can finish the **** lift’, but that’s for another article).

I once (inadvertently) went from 490 lb to 650 lbs, 60 lbs over my max at that time, on consecutive squat attempts in a competition. Even walking it out 650 lbs felt impossibly heavy. Oh, wait, yeah that squat attempt crushed me, bad example.

More to the point, I recently had a trainee fail on a deadlift in training. It was obviously far too heavy, and wouldn’t even budge off the floor. So with the utmost concern for the success of her training, I removed a 10 lb plate from each side of the bar…and replaced each of them with two 5 lb plates. Encouraged by my ‘lightening’ of the weight, she easily completed the pull.