One of the most valuable lessons which strength training can teach you is that a new version of YOU is waiting around the corner every time you train.
Here's how:
Strength - in its most simplistic terms - is a number. The person who can lift heavier weights than another person, by definition, stronger. A woman deadlifting 100kg is stronger than a woman deadlifting 70kg - regardless of training experience, genetics, age, or anthropometrics. Those who are the strongest are simply able to apply the highest amount of force against the barbell or the floor.
To keep driving the numeric value of strength up, a lifter is required to move heavier and heavier weights over time. Not in sudden jumps - but slowly and steadily. This means that the weights you lift CANNOT get lighter over time, as this will not make you stronger. Got it?
Let's repeat this:
The weights you lift HAVE to get heavier over time for you to get stronger.
Point made?
There is still a common notion of "going easy" in our training. After all, we have no intention of gettting hurt, or "overdoing it", or - heaven forbid - picking up a heavier weight that makes us stronger from the previous session.
"Easy" is nice, isn't it? It strokes our ego like a little cat. "Easy" is comfortable. Almost too comfortable, shall we say - to the point where you never question your ability to lift a heavier weight which represents a threat to your last rep in your last set.
"Going easy" is, indeed, an easy route out. A route out of the discomfort, troubles, and stresses of our daily life. Understood. But that's exactly where you're missing the point.
What has allowed humans to survive on this planet for centuries is our ability to ADAPT to new circumstances and environments. This has guaranteed us not just survival, but achieving new levels in our physical, mental, and social capacities.
The caveat of this is that, in order to adapt, your body is required to be exposed to greater levels of stress over time. Failing that, you stagnate. Or regress.
"Going easy" is not an intelligent away to approach your training. It really isn't.
It gets you into a downward spiral of constantly shying away from new and neccessary challengs that lie ahead. It gets you to have an avoidance approach rather than tackling a new and heavier weight you haven't lifted before.
The "easy" approach has never gotten anyone strong. How could it?
But you want to be strong, don't you? Isn't that why you're training?
Time to override your autopilot mode of wanting to be "comfortable". In fact, comfort lies on the other side of getting stronger. There more you build your strength up, the more you can be "comfortable" that it will look after you.
Now get under the bar and make it happen.
Remember: do it consciously, with intention, and a little heavier than last time.
None of which has anything to do with going easy.
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