The question isn't-Do we even lift?
It should be-Do you ever lift heavy?
If the answer to that is no, I'm going to try to give you 5 reasons why you should start,
beginning today.
What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.
It's time to start lifting heavy, or at least I'm going to give you 5 reasons why you should
today.
Guys, lifting heavy needs to be defined, first and foremost.
I'm talking about 3 to 8 reps.
Why is that?
It leads us right into our very first point.
Our Number 1 reason of why you need to start lifting heavy is exactly that.
We need to create an overload, or you will be underwhelmed with your results.
Remember, there's things I always say here.
You either train hard or you train long, but you can't do both.
Guys, that's predicated on training intensity.
If you're training hard, you can't train long, but you got to be training hard if you want
to see results.
Well, let me give you another one.
If you don't challenge yourself, you will not change yourself.
You need to bring the intensity, and that's where I say, you got to start training in
those 3 to 8 rep ranges.
And when I say that, I say it with the understanding that a lot of guys watching this video don't
understand what true overload is.
The second they start to feel fatigue, the second they start to feel discomfort in their
muscles, what do they do?
They put the bar down, they put the dumbbells away, that's not going to change you because
that never challenged you.
You need to start thinking in this 3 to 8 rep range because what you're going to want,
or I'm going to want from you,
is to get that into the 5 to 10 because when you feel like you're done at 8, you still
got 2 more reps in you.
You can get it to 10.
When you feel like you're done in the 5 or 6 range, you've still got 2 reps in you.
You could probably get it up to 8.
Just put that gun to the head mentality of 'I'm not putting this down unless I get these
next 2 reps.'
Or, someone's pulling the trigger.
I guarantee, you'll put 2 more up there.
Train heavy, guys, you'll start to see that that challenge will definitely change you.
Number 2.
You're going to want to start training heavy if you want to expose your imbalances and
compensations.
Just like a car that is out of alignment, you drive that thing at slow speeds, guess
what happens?
You'll hardly ever realize that you have a problem.
But once you start to go faster, that's all of a sudden when the steering wheel shakes
and everything starts to show its true colors.
The same thing happens, guys, with your muscles in your body.
Unless you put yourself to the test, you never know how you actually stand, or where you
stand against yourself, and that's what will happen.
As you start to train a little bit heavier, you're going to expose those imbalances.
You're going to expose that bench bar that travels much easier on the right arm than
it does on the left.
Or, when you're doing dumbbells, where one just can't get off your chest and the other
one you can.
You'll start to see those the heavier you go.
You'll also start to see your compensations.
You'll start to see why you start to lean forward when you're doing your squats because
you don't have the strength in your quads to handle those weights.
Now, I'm not recommending that this is a way to hurt yourself.
I'm saying you're always doing everything in control.
So even when we talk about overload, it's controlled overload always.
You train in control.
That's what the gym is about.
Putting yourself in a trained, controlled environment, but in that environment it should
be like a lab to yourself.
And you're the subject because you're going to start to find some really interesting things
about yourself.
Reason number 3.
Let's look at a cellular level, and look at something called MTOR.
We want to maximize MTOR because guys, this is an enzyme that actually is a catalyst in
protein synthesis.
What that means is, muscle growth.
This is going to catalyze or enhance or speed up or make it more possible.
And that's exactly what we want.
Guess what though?
MTOR is maximized by the amount of force and stress that you place on a muscle.
The more force production required, the more MTOR you're going to produce in a given workout.
So, how do we do that?
We lift heavy.
You got to make sure that when you're pushing yourself and challenging yourself, as I've
said, that you have an eye towards your intensity.
The higher the intensity, the higher the force production, the more of this you're going
to get.
And as I said, the more protein synthesis, that's muscle gain.
Number 4.
Let's start filling up those fast fibers.
We know that there's 2 types of muscle fibers that are predominantly in your muscles.
Slow twitch which are smaller muscle fibers and the large, fast twitch fibers.
Well, guess what?
The fast twitch fibers are only activated or mostly activated the heavier the loads
become.
The slow twitch fibers are the ones that come into play early on under lighter loads, lighter
stresses.
They're also, as I said, the smallest.
These guys are the largest.
Not only are these the largest, but what they do is they have a larger capacity for glycogen
storage.
With glycogen comes water.
You get a cell volumization effect when you start to fill these babies up.
So, if you not only start to increase your percentage of fast fibers by recruiting them
through heavier training,
you also can start to volumize them and fill them up just by the nature of carbohydrates
and how they're stored in our bodies, and therefore increase muscle size.
So, this is where you want to be, but you're only going to get there if you start to train
the right way.
Finally, reason Number 5.
Let's say you're stuck at a certain weight plateau.
You just can't increase your weights no matter how hard you try,
or how many times you've tried to do a Bench Press or whatever exercise it is you're struggling
with.
Well, guys, it's time here to Touch Up so you can start to Trickle Down.
What I mean by that is, I've shown you before this concept that we use here at ATHLEANX
of Touch Up Sets.
A Touch Up Set is basically putting a weight on a bar that you're just not used to lifting.
And it could result in a 1 or 2 or even 3 rep max for you.
And again, probably something you're not comfortable with especially if you're not training heavy
already.
But what that usually does is it allows your body to feel the heavier weight.
What's cooler though is when you come back down to your working weights, they feel a
hell of a lot lighter.
So, we have this Touch Up to Trickle Down, so basically it takes all of your lower end
strength and it brings it up.
So, if you're having that hard time lifting heavier, and it is unique to you, what's the
recipe?
To lift heavy because you're going to start to see that all of those lower end sets are
going to start to come up and over time you're entire strength level will improve.
Wait! Before you go, we've just covered 5 reasons why you should be lifting heavy, but
I can't let this video end without telling you one reason why you should not.
And if you want to lift weights because you want to look like a badass, you're going to
lift hard and heavy in the gym and you want to look like a badass
but you have no regard for form or the execution of the rep, all you're caring about is getting
from point A to point B, well, guess what?
You're not going to look like a badass, you're going to look like a dumbass.
And most likely, you're going to wind up getting hurt.
Guys, you only lift heavy, you overload only under control.
I mentioned it in the beginning of the video.
When you train, you do so with a purpose.
For me, that's what the whole word means.
Training is working out done with a purpose.
Working out is just lifting weights.
Here at ATHLEANX, we don't just work out.
We train.
As a matter of fact, we train like athletes.
As I say, if you want to look like an athlete, you got to train like one.
Guys, I can help you start doing that.
If you haven't already, you got to head to ATHLEANX.COM right now.
Get the 90-Day Training Program so I can take you systematically from Day 1 to Day 90 in
a step-by-step progression.
I can tell you when we need to push the gas and start lifting heavier, and when we need
to actually, in the benefit of improvement, take a little step back.
It's just as important as when we do push that gas, and it all comes together when you
do this in a progressive way.
Guys, that's over at ATHLEANX.COM, that's the training program that I created.
In the meantime, if you found this video helpful, and you found those 5 reasons, and maybe even
this 6th reason helpful,
make sure you leave your comments below and a thumb's up.
And whatever else you'd like to see me cover, I'll do it.
Let me know down below, and we'll cover it in a future video.
Alright, guys.
I hope you found this helpful.
We'll be back here again in just a couple days.