INSPIRATION, PROGRESS

What Is Light Weight?

Here at WB Fitness we talk a lot about the benefits of lifting light weight for massive volume, but what constitutes “light.” You’ve all heard Ronnie yelling “LIGHT WEIGHT BABY” as he sends some ungodly amount of weight for a ride. It gets the blood pumping just thinking about it.  The problem is you soon remember that Ronnie is going in for his umpteenth surgery and can barely walk and Arnold just did a bicycle tour of Europe at 70 years old.

So what exactly is light weight? This is why we use the RPE system. So here I will define light weight. If you can take the weight for a ride for 20 reps without missing a rep, it is a light weight (even if the last rep is 10 RPE). Here is my promise to you….if you keep track of that number it will go up. Once every few weeks load up the bar and do a set of 3 (remember, that is just for fun) and that will go up too.

The classic thinking that you will not get stronger, but only more lean or more aesthetic but using volume sets is just plain wrong. This is a myth propagated by people who either have too much ego and need to see more weight on the bar, even at the cost of their own gains and health, or people who are too lazy to put in the work it takes to build a real physique with real strength and want to make excuses for being overweight.

This guy has absolutely said “do you even lift bruh”

I talk a lot about the virtues of not ego lifting. Please understand that in no way do I suggest that your ego, as well as your veins, ought not be totally pumped, but only that you should be realistic with what you can lift for the volume required to get your full workout in. By all means, walk through the gym like a pro wrestler and stare right through the trainer who is half your size as if to say that he better fucking jump out of your way or he will be your next meal.

Move Bitch Get Out The Way

20 Reps Nice And Calm

So today I am going to bring a little bit more ego into the field. Let’s hear some of your max lifts bruh! But not you pansy ass 1RM. Save that shit, no one wants to hear it. What is your 20RM. You pick the lift. I will give you guys my dumbbell bench press. As you know I am still off the weights until Jan 15, but as of a few months ago my 20RM of flat DB Bench Press was 2×110.

To give you guys an idea on how fast strength grows, 3 years ago that number was 2×40 I was about 20 pounds lighter, but the same general physique. I was doing DB Bench Presses at that point with 2 160 pound dumbbells (for 1 or maybe 2 reps). A very good friend, trainer and my current coach asked me if I could do 20 reps with them. This was at a time when I knew and cared about my raw score.

So as it turned out it was 40 pounds per dumbbell that I was able to move 20 times and my pump was great. What did I tell him? You guys know. I told him “yeah that’s awesome, but I want to get bigger and stronger not just leaner blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.” Took him about a week to get me into a high volume drop set routine and not only did I get bigger, but the numbers kept going up! It flew in the face of all the bro science I’d heard for years. In 3 years my 20RM on that particular lift when from 2×40 to 2×110. One of my personal goals is to see it pushed to 2×160 so I can finally say “yes I can.”

Back to the question at hand about light weight and ego lifting. Yes I want to push that 160 for 20 reps. Yes I will be an obnoxious douchebag when I do. Yes I will drop the weights and jump up and march the length of the gym with endorphins swimming out of my head.

Light Weight

Yes, I will stare through the trainer and will him out of my fucking way with a look that assures him that I will not veer off path and will go right through him. What I will not do, under any circumstances, is incrementally aim towards that goal. I will keep my eyes on what is important….the muscles and not the weight. What the muscles require is that I do proper 20 rep sets at 9-10 RPE. The goal you are aiming towards is your body, not towards some number. Trust the system, trust your body and pay attention (AND FOR GOD’S SAKE RECORD) to your numbers and when you hit little personal milestones take a victory lap but never, ever, ever sacrifice your body for that number. Keep lifting those light weights.

So what is it guys? Pick a lift and let me know your 20 REP MAX. Whatever it is, trust me it is only going to go up. Just writing this gives me an idea for the future….the massive volume raw score challenge. You guys who are planning on starting with me on the 15th are in a lot of fucking trouble.

T-32 days and counting. Go #teambeater

 

Inspirational Quote Of The Day: “I want to rip out his heart and feed it to him. I want to kill people. I want to rip their stomachs out and eat their children.” –Mike Tyson

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5 Comments

J.Nyx

I’ll give you my current 20RM at 9RPE for a few of the lifts that focus on muscles I want to grow:

Barbell Shrug: 3×150 (DEM TRAPS!)
Lateral Raise: 3×20 (weak ass delts)
Tricep Kickback: 2×30 (Seriously want to build my tris this year)

Obviously I want to build my whole body, but these will be my focus area. Also, since I’ll actually have access to a gym, It will make it much easier….but I know better

WB Fitness

We will get those delts fired. I realize a lot of the fault is mine here. It seems to me that a lot of my strengths (delts, triceps) are places you have had weaknesses. When I design programs I tend to under-emphasize areas that I have an easy time. Now that I am conscious of it I can make some changes to the way I customize programs. We are all here to grow and learn — me especially!

J.Nyx

No worries, I’ve seen the results WITHOUT the emphasis of my weak areas. My Lats, Biceps, and Quads explode rather quickly but Tris, Delts, and Traps are what I really want to build up to even things out.

Old Goat

I’ve never been a fan of only doing the lift portion of a deadlift. This year I began doing Dorian deadlifts (sometimes called Yates deadlifts). You lift the weight in regular deadlift fashion, but instead of dropping the weight to the floor you lower it under control to your knees & then lift again. With this method you need to use a much lower weight that you can control. Since I’m following 5/3/1 I only do AMRAP on the last set & my best so far is 275 for 25 reps. Doing deadlifts this way has allowed me to work around knee pain & eliminate all lower back pain that I used to have.

This modification has helped me to add a lot of mass to my entire back from glutes to traps, including shoulders & forearms. This is one lift where the more masochistic you are the more you get out of it. On the last rep, when the forearms and fingers are cramping & it feels like the bar is about to slip out of my hands I’ll lean forward slightly at the top of the last rep & engage every muscle in my back to hold on as long as possible.

WB Fitness

Thanks for the comment Old Goat. Dorian deadlifts are great as is Dorian Yeats himself. There are a couple things about deadlifts that people tend not to realize — a subject for an upcoming post I am working on. There are 2 separate lifts in the traditional deadlift. The movement from the floor to just under the knee (starting position for the Dorians) is a hamstring/glute move and the top half of the movement, the Dorian, is more of a back movement.

Dorian correctly saw that the traditional deadlift ignored the eccentric motion of the top part of the lift and because of his innovation found a way to really isolate the back. The one problem with the Dorian lifts is that while it does focus on the back it does so by ignoring the hamstring (one of the least trained parts of the body I think) and the glute. All deadlifts, whether they are RDL or ADL or Straight Leg or Dorian or Traditional focus on a hip hinge, so yes, there is always some ham and glute involvement, but only when focusing on the full ROM do you get the full benefit. So if you forgo transitional deadlifts for Dorians to reduce lower back pain (a fine idea) I would def recommend adding some isolation moves to your hamstring work as well as your glutes. One other thing is you might want to look at retracking your hip hinge if you are feeling lower back pain.

For people who want to stick with traditional deadlifts I would absolutely suggest they bring at least Dorian’s thinking into their lift. While a deadlift is technically said to be completed once the lock out happens and a dropped weight is still a lift, I would say that returning the weight to the ground in a controlled manner is just as important. Dorian Yeats himself pointed out that the order of failure on a lift should go concentric then static then eccentric. This goes on all lifts. The eccentric part of the movement should be the absolute last thing to fail. As I write my program for this year and put the finishing touches on it, little details like this, like tempo and other minor details are becoming more and more important.

Finally, I applaud your masochism wholeheartedly. Forearm cramping in one of my great weaknesses. If you ever want to dial up the masochism hit me up and we can talk about getting you onto my Repetitive Action Performed Energetically (RAPE) program. Start date for the insanity is 1/15

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