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If I Lift Heavy Won't I Get Hurt? The Truth About Safe Lifting Techniques · Your Strongest Body

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: You are listening to your Strongest Body.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Betsy Foster, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and certified nutrition coach.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I've worked as a personal trainer for over a decade, helping people build strength, speed, muscles, as well as a deep appreciation for their bodies and confidence that helps them live their life to the fullest.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness, nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of your Strongest Body.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being here Today.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: We're talking about one of my favorite topics and one of the more misunderstood topics out there, especially for folks who haven't lifted yet, and this may not be you.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: So, if you're listening, you may be a person who feels very comfortable in the gym or has been in there enough where you have seen the benefits of lifting heavy weights.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: For other people even, like you know, people are well-educated, well-informed, and there's still a lot of fear about lifting heavy weights, specifically around getting injured, and so that's what I want to talk about today.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: You know I could also talk about the lifting heavy and getting bulky, but I feel like I've had that conversation a lot about the lifting heavy and getting bulky, but I feel like I've had that conversation a lot.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: So this is for anybody who might feel on the fence about increasing their weight, increasing the amount of weight they're using in given sets within their resistance training workout.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: That might be you.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: You might be hearing it and not being able to sort of like put it into action.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Or this may be for somebody that you know and you've been trying to figure out how to articulate to them.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Like, no, it's fine that I'm lifting heavy weights.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Here is the deal.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: So I thought that could be useful in both terms.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Also, because when I am putting out content, particularly on social media or to my email list or anything, I tend to focus on why I feel like people need to lift heavier, particularly women.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I think they really shy away from lifting weights heavy enough to elicit the kind of change that they are trying to create, and there's a lot wrapped up in that.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: There's body image.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: There's just generally being told and taught for years and years that you're not as capable.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: But then there's this fear of injury and I realize I don't want to come off as cavalier when I say just lift heavier, because usually my answer for people is like oh no, you just need to lift heavier weight.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: But I don't want to become, I don't want to come off cavalier and I want to kind of assuage your fears around the injury, the nature of injury as it relates to lifting heavy.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: What we do to lift heavier weights, that not only mitigates the risk for injury but also prepares us, strengthens our body for the future, making it more resilient all the time and there's a lot of the nuance there just doesn't quite fit in a quick blurb and usually the thing I want to hammer home to people is that they need to lift heavier than they think they can.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Most women are underestimating themselves in terms of lifting and I think maybe you know I don't want to make a gender stereotype Maybe there are more men out there who are quote unquote ego lifting, so lifting heavier than they're capable of doing.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: But in general I just feel like everybody in most cases, if you're doing full range of motion resistance training and you are easily getting through each set, it is time to increase weight.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: And particularly for women, I just don't see them lifting at the kinds of loads that are going to create the change that they want in their bodies and in their strength, and I think it's because they're underestimating themselves and I think it is because of this fear of injury.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about what's going on here.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Lifting heavy is, first of all, it depends entirely on the person, right?
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: So every person is going to have a different heavy relative based on your lifting experience, your own height and body weight, your training age or the amount of time you've been training.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: So when I say heavy, what I'm talking about is effortful, effortful, and the term that we tend to talk about in resistance training circles is this idea of close to failure, close to being unable to complete a repetition.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: That tends to be a little bit more descriptive for folks than working hard or effortful, and it helps you understand that what we're trying to create is the idea that it is going to be hard for you to complete this repetition.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Doesn't matter if you're sweating, doesn't matter if you're going fast, what matters is that you're, that you are doing the whole repetition, and it's going to be hard to complete in good form.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: We tend to confuse effort with sweating or feeling a high heart rate or any of that, and in this case what we're focused on is sort of that momentary, acute muscle failure For every individual.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: That point, just shy of failure is going to be at a different weight.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: So you have to consider what you're doing.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: I like to use rate of perceived exertion, so the idea of you feeling how difficult this is, and it's typically on a scale from 0 to 20, but you can kind of use whatever scale you want.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: I tend to use 0 to 10.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Or reps in reserve RIR how many reps do you feel like you still have left?
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, depending on the program, we might ask you to have a few more reps in reserve or have a few less.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: But like general rule of thumb if you're working on your own training is to, if you can do more than two repetitions at the end of a set and you feel like you can confidently do more than two, it is time to probably increase the weight.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Now let's talk about how we increase the weight without getting hurt.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: I want to say also we never want to get hurt.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: We are asking our body with any kind of training whether that be running, whether that be swimming, whether that be dance, whether that be walking on the treadmill, whether that be resistance training all at varied levels we are putting stress on the body Depending on how we recover and how we support refueling ourselves.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: We always have the potential of getting to the point of fatigue, where fatigue and or overworking something, underworking something, where we feel discomfort and or pain.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: We always want to take it seriously and I think for most people, if you're training hard, you're going to come up on some hiccups.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: They're inevitable.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: They're really inevitable because life isn't perfectly packaged and balanced.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: So all that work that you're doing in the gym, getting stronger, but you are putting yourself under stress, and then you go and you do your activities of daily living and you don't get a great night's sleep and something bugs you in your hip or in your shoulder or in your knee.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: We don't want to be cavalier about it, but I want you to know that sometimes those things are going to happen and what we have to do is be proactive about those sorts of potential hiccups, address them.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: That's typically not what people are talking about, I think.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: When they think about lifting heavy, usually I hear like oh, that's going to be bad for my back or bad for my knees, and the idea of, like one, you're going to throw a barbell on your back and you're going to snap your spine or, right away, slip a disc or tear an ACL, not to say those things don't happen, but they truly don't happen if we do these things.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: And so these are the strategies for helping us to increase weight so that we can see the results we want safely as we lift heavier One.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: We're learning good form, so I'm never suggesting you just go lift heavy weight with bad form.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: We've got to learn drill and become comfortable with good exercise form.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Now, good exercise form, there's a range.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I think everybody wants this perfect picture or they want some like am I doing this exactly right?
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: I like to think of it as a continuum we are aiming for as close to the ideal as possible, but ideal on different bodies is going to be different.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Imagine that you I don't have a good analogy for this, but every person's body is different If you look to the left and look to the right or look amongst your family.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Some people have longer legs, some people have longer torsos, some people have wider hips, some people have wider shoulders, some people have wider shoulders.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: These kinds of anatomical and structural differences between people is going to impact the kind of form someone can do on an exercise, and then ideal is going to be within the wheelhouse of that individual's particular structure and body size.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: So you're aiming for optimal form for you.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: That may shift and change, but if we're focused on that form, we are already reducing that risk of injury.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Then the idea when I say you should lift heavier, I'm not saying you go over to the weight rack and jump up by 70 pounds.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: You were using 10s and now you're going to go to 70s.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: But if you are comfortably using those 10s and they don't feel like you're struggling at the end, I want you to go to the 12s or the 15s.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: And if the 15s are still struggling or not all that hard, I want you to use the 15s for that whole workout and then the next workout.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: I want you to use the 15s for that whole workout and then the next workout.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: I want you to go back and increase and then, once you get to a place and this is what people don't understand once you get to a place where you're working hard and you are at the edge of failure with a certain weight, you are going to know that you're not ready to move up to the next weight yet.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: It is going to be clear and you might stay at those 20s for three weeks until there's a time where you're ready to go to the 22.5 or the 25s.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Again, we're slowly increasing over time.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: But you can be doing heavier than you think you are if you are really easily recovering, if you don't feel like you need a lot of rest.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: And that's going to be my next or one of my next things.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: We're slowly and incrementally increasing the weight.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: My clients, when they're adding weight, they're not surprised by how hard or heavy it is, maybe on some day when you're a little tired, but we're slowly and methodically increasing the weight.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: And when you're following a resistance training program, you can actually see that over time because you're tracking how many sets, how many reps, how much weight, and so for once you get to that place where the weight is challenging.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: You might spend a few weeks only adding a rep or two every set, staying at that weight, and then you increase later.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: So the idea of lifting heavier is lifting heavier with good form and slowly over time.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Just like I said, in a program or when you're working with a coach, you're going to keep track.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: You should be keeping track of the weights you're using.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: You should not be surprised by how an increase feels more difficult, or that's another way to ensure that you're staying safe, because if you jump weight and then something hurts, you go oh, it's because I increased the weight so much.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: We want to just adjust the variables slightly so that we're able to see if that thing feels good and if we can train at that intensity.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: Taking enough rest is another way that you are going to be able to increase the weight and stay safe.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: If you are finishing a set and you are feeling like you can go right again, you're either rushing it because you're like anxious, or it is because it's not heavy enough.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: When a weight is heavy, you will have to wait for the rest period and you, in a lot of instances when you are lifting heavy enough, you will bemoan the start of the next set.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Not always.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Some people don't necessarily like the pace of that, but if you're lifting heavy, using that rest time to be as refreshed and as restored to start again is going to be essential for keeping you safe, and I know that the rest feels antithetical to the workout, but it is going to be the difference maker in you being able to lift heavy enough to make a difference and change your strength, change your physique any of that.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Then listen, we don't just beat our bodies down every single day and we lift heavier every single day.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Just like I said, once you get to a place where you got to stay there, you might have to stay there for a little bit.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: And I know with my clients and with my programs, I make it so that some of our exercises are aimed to have a heavier load and as the workout goes on, I am giving you the number of sets and reps so that you can actually decrease weight.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: As we're going, as we're getting tired, some exercises are going to be designed to use a little bit lighter weight versus exercises that are going to be designed to use a little bit lighter weight versus exercises that are going to be used to have higher weight.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: I stack my clients' workouts so that their harder workouts are at the beginning of the week, when they feel fresher, and their easier workouts are toward the end of the week, when life has happened.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Unless they have a different kind of schedule and they've let me know unless they have a different kind of schedule and they've let me know All of these kinds of things we don't just go hard, high intensity with every single exercise, every single day of the week.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: There is a kind of periodization we're doing that's what it's called in training a periodization where I'm changing the intensity for you so that you're able to recover and able to come back stronger.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: That's really, really important.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: And lastly, we're figuring out opportunities for deloads.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Same thing I'm not asking you to keep lifting heavier and heavier, and heavier and heavier every week.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: You're never going to get there.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: We're going to lift heavy.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: We're going to stay there for a little while.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: When it starts to get easier, it's going to be our sign to increase weight.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: After we've worked out that consistently for 12-ish weeks, I'm going to insist that you take a week where we either lighten the weights or we change the workouts up and we deload, so that we can let your body recover, refresh, and then, when we come back, we're going to get back to it.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: We might start where you were before.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: We might increase a little bit.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: It is all part of a bigger picture that is looking at how we can minimally tax your body effectively, so that what we're trying to do is use minimum effective dose.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: But the effective dose in this case, when we're talking about resistance training, has to be heavy.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to give you heavy weight for as little as possible, only to the point where you are going to feel refreshed, re-energized, but trained.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: And for a lot of women in particular, you have been conditioned to do more, more, more, more, more, more, more, sweat, sweat, sweat, sweat, more sweat, sweat, sweat, sweat, sweat, sweat, sweat.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: And, of course, if that's the kind of training that you are accustomed to, it is going to be really difficult to lift heavy weights with that because you can't maintain it.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: So it's a whole mindset shift.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: It is a different approach, maybe, than you are used to, and so I just want to encourage you to you know, if you are on the fence about like, should I be lifting heavier?
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: I want you to take these tips, I want you to think it through, and then I want you to slowly progress over time.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: These are the ways I promise that we can do this.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: We can do it safely and effectively.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: We are not just talking about tossing around heavy weight.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: We're talking about doing methodically and we're talking about using it as an effective tool to elicit the change that you want.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: And if you are already on the heavyweight train or the pushing yourself train thanks for listening If you come across somebody and they're like, won't you get hurt.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: These are the things that you can talk about.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: You can talk about how you pace yourself.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: You can talk about the rest periods.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: You can talk about slowly increasing weight over time.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: You can talk about lifting with great form, all of these kinds of things to help people understand where you're coming from, and then, if they want to change their mind, great.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: If not, you just get back to your workout.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Well, that's all I have for you today.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I hope it's helpful.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Like I mentioned before, the Built Bodies program waitlist is open and the program is going to start in September, but for folks on the waitlist, I'm going to be sending out some info ahead of time.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Of course, there's no obligation to purchase, but if you're on the waitlist, you get early entrance and some sweet, sweet deals, and we use all of those strategies in the Built Bodies program.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Until next time, go build your strongest body and I'll talk to you later.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Bye.