by Tom Venuto
One of the biggest problems you're likely to face over your training lifetime is injury or chronic joint pain that stops you short of your full muscle-building potential, or even forces you into a backslide. The older you get, the bigger the concern. Few people escape lifting weights through middle age (40 to 60) without some kind of aches or pains. Having recently crossed the half-century mark, I can relate.
In youth, inexperience often leads us to bad decisions in the gym that hurt us on the spot or come back to haunt us later. But pain or injury are not always caused by egregious mistakes. Accidents happen (sometimes outside the gym), and most people simply start feeling wear and tear from years of heavy lifting, combined with normal aging.
The good news is, there are solutions that don't involve rehab, drugs, surgery, or doctors. You simply don't hear these ideas as much because many of them are not politically correct in the strength training community. In fact, some of these methods fly in the face of what most strength coaches teach.
The idea that we must continue striving to lift more and more weight is perpetually shoved down our throats. Experts tell us, "Just keep getting stronger and you'll keep gaining muscle." There's also been a renaissance in strength sports, where Olympic lifting has become mainstream, and powerlifting is more popular than ever. Even the formerly obscure strongman events now take center stage at huge fitness expos.
At the same time, we are faced with a challenge from within as we struggle with our own egos. This is not a minor point - it might be the crux of the issue - and it's worse in the age of Instagram. So called influencers, if they aren't busy flashing abs or glutes, feel obligated to max out lifts or perform fitness stunts on camera, and followers feel an obligation to imitate. The result of it all: Most people choose their weights based more on what other people around them will think than what it will do for the long-term health of their bodies.
What you need to know is that there are training methods where you can reduce your weight by twenty to thirty percent or more, and it actually feels more intense than the heavier strength workouts. To your surprise, you may find it builds muscle just the same, and there's no pain.
Many readers have told me that they get off track sometimes because life gets busy or their motivation wanes, but the biggest problem that knocked them off course and kept them off was an injury that took time to recover from or still bothers them occasionally, or even worse, chronic pain that never goes away.
I heard about compromised rotator cuffs, knee problems, low back pain, hip pain, elbow tendinitis, chronic muscle strains, and simply achy joints all over that make heavy weight-lifting feel unpleasant to excruciating. I replied by suggesting that if they rethink the way they train, they can feel better and keep training and noted that training heavy all the time could be part of the problem. The good news is, the heavy lifting that's hurting them may not be as necessary as they were led to believe.
You see, while bodybuilding and physique-style training usually includes heavy lifting, they don't require it. Bodybuilders have discovered alternate methods that maintain and build muscle size with moderate or even light weights. No, you won't gain maximum strength with these methods. That's part of the compromise - you may have to embrace training less for strength and power and more for physique and health. But it seems like a pretty fair trade-off, considering you can't do much of anything if you're in perpetual pain.
This is not a knock on heavy training of any kind. Powerlifting, Olympic lifting and strength training for sport are amazing disciplines to practice and witness. Even if you're a bodybuilder or physique enthusiast, not a strength athlete, if you can train heavier with zero pain, you should. Load progression is always the number one method for gaining both strength and muscle. But the fact is, many people can't do it as their primary focus.
If we were to describe in one short phrase what you will aim to accomplish, here it is: Make a light weight feel heavier. You can do this with classic bodybuilding and physique techniques.
The 10 Techniques: This is not an exhaustive list, but these are the most well-known, tested, and proven ways to build muscle with lighter weights and stay pain-free. I won't be including strategies like warm ups or mobility work, or taking de-loads. We'll chalk these things up to common sense. In addition, while good form is on top of the list, I am not reviewing technique for individual exercises, these are general strategies that apply to all exercises.
1. Train with stricter form (eliminate all cheating): If you want to stay pain free and make the best gains, your number one strategy is to become a strict form fanatic. Good form is usually thought of as perfect technique for each exercise, including full range of motion, but it also means using a controlled tempo, with no swinging or extraneous body movement. If you heave or bounce a weight up, or if you drop a weight down without resisting on the negative, you can lift more, but the injury risk goes up, and the only thing the extra pounds build is your ego.
To tighten up your form, you'll need to reduce the weight, but many people resist because they worry they won't gain as much muscle. You have to look at it this way: With loose form, the muscles you intended to build weren't doing all the work in the first place - momentum and gravity were taking over. Secondary muscles were kicking in to help as well.
When you tighten up your form, the primary muscle you want to target can actually get more stimulation with less weight. You'll feel higher quality muscle contractions than ever before, your muscle growth will be the same or better, and your injury risk will go down.
Most people aren't aware of how much they're cheating because it's so unconscious. Your body's natural tendency is to seek out the path of least resistance. Especially when you near the end of a set and the velocity of the bar starts to slow down and you feel the sticking point coming on, if you don't consciously counter the urge, you will lean, twist, or shift your body into any position that gives you a mechanical advantage, or you'll swing the weight up just enough to keep it moving.
Since so much cheating is habit-driven and goes unnoticed, the first step is to pay attention to what you are doing every second of every rep and make every effort to remove extraneous body movement or use of momentum.
2. Use the continuous tension principle: In practical terms, continuous tension means don't let the target muscle rest or relax in the middle of your set (don't take pauses between reps). You especially want to avoid pausing at the bottom or in any "dead spots" in the resistance curve. You will be forced to reduce your weight, but the continuous tension gives you the muscle-building stimulus you need.
Even though the weight is lighter, continuous tension sets are intense, as the burn continues to build up. That's exactly why so many people pause between reps in the first place - to let the burn dissipate, which makes the set easier. Again, it's your innate tendency to choose the path of least resistance and avoid discomfort.
Standard advice is to use the full range of motion, but on certain exercises, continuous tension means not locking out. Because you eliminate that brief rest between reps, continuous tension squats can light your muscles on fire - they are so much harder, you have to reduce the weight substantially, often 20-25% or even moreBecause it's so metabolically stressful, you can still build muscle with the lighter weight.
3. Perform your reps more slowly (but not too slow): Performing your reps a little bit slower is one of the easiest ways to improve your form and stimulate muscle growth with less weight. A slow repetition, by nature, is a strict repetition, because it automatically removes some of the momentum and swinging that occurs with faster reps.
The main idea is simply to lift and lower the weight under complete control. Resist the weight on the way down ("fight gravity") and initiate the upward movement of the weight purely with muscular force and no swinging to get the weight started or accelerate the speed of the weight.
On the other hand, don't slow down too much. When you slow down to an extreme, it forces you to cut the weight too much, plus super slow reps take longer, they are boring to slog through, and simply less practical.
4. Improve your mind-to-muscle connection: Studies have shown that putting your attention on the muscle you're working and focusing on feeling it contract can increase activation of the target muscle, reduce the involvement of secondary muscles, and in turn, increase growth.
Where you place your attention (what you think about) during an exercise is known as attentional focus. Your focus can be internal or external. During an exercise, you might concentrate on feeling your muscles contract and saying to yourself, "squeeze." That's an internal focus. An external focus might be thinking about driving the barbell overhead during a heavy lift.
In one study, a group of football players were hooked up to an electromyograph (EMG) machine while doing the bench press and given specific verbal instructions to "focus on the chest muscles." With a simple verbal cue which shifted the lifter's mental focus, the muscle activity (measured by EMG) in the chest increased by 22%.
Another study lead by Brad Schoenfeld compared the results in two groups of lifters who were given different instructions during their workouts. One group was told to focus internally and "squeeze the muscle" while the other was instructed to focus externally and think about "getting the weight up." After 8 weeks, the group that focused internally had greater biceps growth (12.4% vs 6.9%).
Strength athletes lift heavy and focus on lifting the weight. Bodybuilders lift a little lighter and focus more on feeling the muscle. If your goal is gaining muscle, the better you get at using internal focus, and strengthening your mind to muscle connection, the more muscle you can activate and grow, even when you train with lighter weights. These are learnable skills that improve with practice.
5. Use the peak contraction principle: During certain exercises, like the dumbbell lateral raise, there is no tension on the muscle (deltoids) at the bottom, and during some exercises, like the squat, there is no tension on the muscle (quads) at the top. In either case, you're just resting if you pause there. If you learn which exercises maintain tension at which point, you may want to do the opposite, and pause in that position to contract and squeeze the muscle. This may be only for a split second - just long enough to stop moving and flex the muscle, or it could be one to three full seconds. This is known as the peak contraction principle.
Holding the peak position under maximum tension is much harder, so this will force you to reduce the weight. Yet despite the poundage reduction, you will be feeling a stronger contraction that can produce equivalent or even greater growth. It's going to require greater effort, as it's not easy. For every peak contraction exercise, a good cue is to say to yourself, "squeeze".
6. Use the reverse order training principle: Sometimes the best way to feel less joint pain during a workout is to train backwards. The traditional rule for the ideal order of exercises says to do the larger muscle groups/compound movements like squats, deadlifts, presses and rows first, because they take the most energy and give the most bang for the buck when you are fresh and at your strongest.
However, these compound exercises and powerlifts are among the ones most notorious for aggravating joint pain. What if you reversed the order and did the isolation or accessory exercises like leg extensions on leg day, and lateral raises on shoulder day first, then put the bigger movements later in the workout?
Many experts would tell you that's wrong because if you do squats and presses last after pre-exhausting them with isolation exercises you won't be able to lift as much. In this case, that's the whole idea. Heavy squats might make your back ache. Heavy presses might tear up your shoulders, but you might be able to keep doing squats and presses without pain if you do them last when you are pre-exhausted, which forces you to use lighter weights.
In addition, if you do the compound moves first, you need to do a thorough warm up beforehand, otherwise, you'll be hitting those heavy exercises cold. If you train a body part with isolation or accessory exercises first, then when you get to the compound exercise, your muscles are already warm, your joints are all lubed up, and the compound exercises may feel better for that reason alone.
7. Reduce your rest intervals: In traditional strength training, the short break you take in between sets is an important variable to think about. You're usually advised to take at least 2 minutes between sets, sometimes even 3, if you want maximum strength gains. For muscle gains, you're advised to take at least 2 minutes between sets of compound exercises and at least 1 minute for isolation exercises and smaller muscle groups.
The reason for these guidelines is because if you rush through your workout by taking under a minute between sets, your muscles can't fully recover for the next set, and your reps drop off or you even have to reduce the weight. The longer rest intervals let you lift more weight and increase your strength more.
Some people shorten rest intervals, often to under a minute (30 to 60 seconds) for time efficiency. If you shorten rest intervals, and do the same number of sets and reps, you'll finish your workout sooner and achieve the goal of saving time, but there's a trade-off. To get the same workout done in less time, you almost always need to reduce the weight. This means the total volume load of the workout goes down. You might still maintain or even gain muscle, but not as much as you would with the longer rest periods with heavier weights.
When all else is equal, the longer rest intervals do win, so on the surface, using shorter rest intervals seems to run contrary to best practices. But what if you cut your rest intervals to a minute or less, and used that time you saved to do extra sets (or exercises), so you did more work in the same time or less time? (Increasing density). This could allow you to equalize or even increase your volume load for the workout, and even though the weights were lighter, you might gain the same amount of muscle or even more, and with less strain on your joints.
8. Use same-muscle supersets: A superset is where you perform two exercises in a row back to back with little or no rest in between. After the second exercise, you take the normal rest interval, before repeating the pair of exercises again.
Pairing opposite muscles, like chest with back or biceps with triceps, is known as an antagonistic superset. For strength training, this is considered the most effective method because one muscle is resting while the other is working, so there's no interference and you can still lift your usual poundage.
Supersets can also be done for the same muscle group, like doing dumbbell flies and followed by a bench press as both exercises are for the chest. Strength coaches often point out that same-muscle supersets force you to use much less weight (you can't bench press as much after your pectorals have been pre-exhausted by flies first).
However, what if your shoulders hurt when you bench heavy, but you've found that you can still bench pain free if you go lighter? If your goal is not maximum strength in the first place, and you need to train around pain, then same muscle supersets could be an ideal technique. Same muscle supersets are metabolically stressful and may induce more micro-damage to the muscle fibers, so they can still stimulate muscle growth despite the lighter loads. In addition, supersets can be used to save time, or as mentioned above, they can be used to allow you to do more work in less time (increase density).
9. Train with higher reps to failure: The first thought that people have about changing their lifting style to avoid pain is simply to do higher reps. The traditional ideal strength training range involves heavy sets of 3 to 6 (low reps), and the ideal muscle-building range is usually quoted as 8 to 12 (medium reps). High reps are usually considered 13 to 15 reps, and occasionally as high as 20 to 25 or more.
Doing sets of 15, 20 or 25 reps means by definition that you have to use less weight, and almost everyone will agree that a benefit is less stress to the joints. For example, I have trouble with elbow tendinitis that flares up every time I train lying tricep extensions or pushdowns heavy. Even sets with an 8 to 10 rep max can cause pain. But I've discovered that I can continue doing those same exercises for sets of 20 to 25 because the weight is so much lighter it doesn't aggravate my joints.
The concern many people have about doing high reps with light weights is whether you can build any muscle. High reps with light weight build endurance, not maximum strength, but high reps can indeed build muscle. Research has found that you can build muscle with any rep range if the volume and intensity of effort is high enough.
One recent study published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research found that reps as high as 25 to 35 can trigger muscle growth, and it may be especially targeting the type I muscle fibers. They also emphasized that training to failure is important to trigger the growth when you're doing high reps. That means to make this work, you have to be prepared to train through the burn.
10. Include a combination of heavier and lighter training instead of heavy training in singular: Many people don't need to forego all their heavy training, they simply need to moderate it. If you can continue training heavy without injury, that's the ideal scenario. If you have on and off pain or occasional injury, it may be in your best interests to avoid training heavy all the time. Many people use the combined heavy and light approach hoping to stimulate every type of muscle fiber. From an injury prevention point of view alone, using a combination of loads and rep ranges makes all the sense in the world and is reason enough to do it.
Conclusion: In a perfect world, we'd train for both - strength and muscle. No one is questioning the benefits of heavy strength training, but it's not a perfect world. To stay in the game, maintain a great physique, or even continue lifting at all as our training age advances, sometimes we have to let go of the always maxing-out, powerlifting, progressive resistance-only mentality, and take on a more physique, fitness, and health-oriented approach.
It's a somewhat ironic and funny twist in the ongoing fitness industry narrative, because bodybuilding-style training has had moments in history when it was criticized as being about form over function. Yet when bodybuilding techniques are properly understood and used, they become the secret weapon of people who stay functional (free of injuries) for a lifetime.
Train hard and expect success, Tom Venuto
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