[quote]SkyNett wrote:
ucallthatbass wrote:
Marauder Meat said, you don’t get big from liftin little weights with perfect form. I’ll listen to him since he rows 400+ for reps.
MM is a beast - he’s a huge & strong man, that’s for sure.
However, his laundry list of injuries is pretty daunting. Then again, he doesn’t care, and has balls of steel working thru some of the shit he’s had going on.
But, if you do care, then I’d say as heavy as possible with good form. I wouldn’t say perfect, but good enough so you can go just that extra little bit heavier at your top poundage and not get hurt. And I’m not saying MM has poor form, I’m sure his form is fine.
There’s no argument as to whether you should go heavy to build as much muscle as possible - you absolutely should. [/quote]
for the record, none of my injuries have come from heavy lifting. i’ve torn my adductor from doing high step ups with very light weight, i tore my pec after a very drastic weight loss to get down a weight class for a competition which left me very dehdrated and in the same comp. i torn my oblique because the pec was already torn and being hard headed, tried to deadlift.
i don’t want guys out there thinking that my heavy lifting lead to these things. I actually think that heavy lifting using compound movements have protected me from many injuries. there are times when a weight may get away from me and i need to catch it. all the heavy training that i’ve done has prepared me for this.
bottom line… go heavy as possible but keep the form respectible. each movement has certain aspects of safety that must be followed.
Keep the form strict to the point where you are still working what you want to work.
There was a good thread in the strength sports forum a while back about barbell row form and what muscles are involved even during a “cheat” type lift which still makes it a very effective exercise.
I disagree with earlier comments about doing the “kip” technique to help get a few more reps out for pull-ups. What’s the point? What are you actually working by that point? Hip flexors and abdominals in creating the momentum to help swing your body up…sure as heck not really working the primary muscles of interest (back and biceps).
This is like arguments between people debating Romanian vs Stiff Leg Deads, in that Romanian isn’t a true stiff leg dead and won’t work the hamstrings as hard, which is just nonsense since the core movement requires the hammie to work eccentrically to maintain the posterior pelvic tilt, and then if you can go heavier and you more than make up for a slight shift in form.
This does have to be balanced; swinging your back (hyperextending) to help throw up a bar for a bicep curl is a waste of time if the active bicep contraction is being minimized, but this doesn’t discount SOME trunk and shoulder movement (which technically isn’t a “strict” curl) which is involved with helping to get the bigger weights up.
As long as your muscles are growing, and you’re not getting hurt, go for it.
The problem with newB’s is that they don’t have the strength of either bone or muscle structure to be able to handle variations in technique that we are suggesting, which places them at greater risk of injury.
Example: if I’m training in the gym and I see some newB deadlifting 60kg for reps, and is rounding their back from the bottom, knees collapsing a bit on the way up, I’m likely to go over and stop them and suggest technique modification and probably other exercises prior to deadlifting.
If I’m training and some big guy is deadlifting 200kg for reps but is rounding their back as they are coming off the ground and legs are shaking on the drive up but is obviously not in pain, I’m probably going to leave them alone.
[quote]GluteusGigantis wrote:
This does have to be balanced; swinging your back (hyperextending) to help throw up a bar for a bicep curl is a waste of time if the active bicep contraction is being minimized, but this doesn’t discount SOME trunk and shoulder movement (which technically isn’t a “strict” curl) which is involved with helping to get the bigger weights up.[/quote]
I’ve done this for the last few reps of my curl sets sets and accentuated the negative on the way down and have liked it. I wouldn’t risk throwing out my back over it, but I don’t think it’s entirely useless if you really want to fry your arms and don’t have anyone around to help get the weight back up.
The same would go for the kipping pull-ups, I suppose.
I was just talking to a guy the other week who has been training over 3 decades(and actually looks it). He told how he has encountered many injuries by going over the fine line most of us travel on(due to ego mostly). He said you should know your body good enough to know when to back and when you can cheat some(which is always on my last set for me).
So he pretty much told me do both. Feeling good as fuck? go heavy with decent form, crank it out. Not feeling the best? Maybe scale back and work on form some but keep that intensity there…it’s all about finding that middle of the road like austin mentioned.
Everyone talks about “going heavy” and what I really hear when I hear “go heavy” is “lower your rep range”
I don’t think you can separate going heavy and perfect form. It’s a problem with the question, you have to be able to do both. Sure cheat a little on your last rep or two of your last set, but you better be able to use damn good form on your first few lifts with that weight, and it kinda depends on the exercise… T-bar rows come to mind, with a little leg drive at the start… Probably ok on the last couple, but I don’t know about increasing the weight to where you had to use leg drive to get it up from start to finish.
[quote]anonym wrote:
I’ve done this for the last few reps of my curl sets sets and accentuated the negative on the way down and have liked it. I wouldn’t risk throwing out my back over it, but I don’t think it’s entirely useless if you really want to fry your arms and don’t have anyone around to help get the weight back up.
The same would go for the kipping pull-ups, I suppose.[/quote]
If you are actually performing a full range negative on the way down, then fine, but when I’ve seen people “cheat curl” they generally are just cleaning the weight to get it up (and end up dropping under it and call it a curl), then hold it for a second at the top, partially let it down with eccentric control (nowhere near 90 degrees), then basically just drop it and tell me they did a controlled “negative” which makes it ok they used their back and cleaned it up.
I wish the form police told Platz to stop cheating. I’m sure his would legs would of been even better! :)[/quote]
I think somebody needs to hunt down steriodsR4loserz and wipe him off the face of the Earth. I looked in his profile and all his ‘friends’ have basically the same name. I’m sure they are all the same person. I think the only loser is him.
I disagree with earlier comments about doing the “kip” technique to help get a few more reps out for pull-ups. What’s the point? What are you actually working by that point? Hip flexors and abdominals in creating the momentum to help swing your body up…sure as heck not really working the primary muscles of interest (back and biceps).
[/quote]
Really? Let’s say with kipping your back/biceps were still doing 50% of the work, wouldn’t there still be some benefit as stopping and doing nothing. I don’t believe that the Hip Flexors and abs are taking 100% of the workload.
Really? Let’s say with kipping your back/biceps were still doing 50% of the work, wouldn’t there still be some benefit as stopping and doing nothing. I don’t believe that the Hip Flexors and abs are taking 100% of the workload. [/quote]
That’s the big if…assuming the back/biceps are still doing anything with a technique manipulation like kipping, I don’t think they are. Personally that’s what I find, and my friends who do crossfit training will say yeah, you feel them after doing one of their silly crossfit sessions where they do like 100 of them…not quite what we’re after here though is it.
With stuff like pulldowns, leaning back makes it into more of a horizantal row… which is something we also do for lats! So there’s not really any problem I can see with it. Definitely less risk with pulling, pulling finds its own groove. I think it’s pushing that needs more attention to form.
