It is a common belief among people who lift weights that in order for a person to get stronger he must progressively lift more weight. While there is truth to this weight lifting philosophy, people often do not understand the ramifications of incorporating this idea into ones training regimen.

Accordingly, it is widely believed and even taught (by some YouTube fitness enthusiasts) that in order to get stronger you have to “push through your 1 rep max.” In other words lift your 1 rep max so often that your body will adapt and get stronger, so that eventually you can lift even more. Even though, in theory, it seems to make sense, this is not how human physiology works.

In general, the human body is highly adaptable, however when it comes to adaptability and survival, muscular strength and size are not high priorities for the human body. That is why, when your body is in an anabolic state, on average, it will tend to store fat while building muscle. When your body is in a catabolic state, your body will tend metabolize muscle as it metabolizes fat. Moreover, contrary to popular opinion, when most people stay in an anabolic state an irregularly large amount of time, they tend to look like the Michelin Man man as opposed to Simeon Panda. So, what I am trying to say is that people who do use resistance training need to be more sophisticated with how they choose to force  strength adaptation. One rep maxes and PRs are not as beneficial for strength gains as we have been lead to believe.

For one, as you approach 100% of your one rep max, your body begins to utilize muscles that are not primarily used for this particular movement. For example, say you are doing a front raise. As you lift you should be using the deltoid for the exercise. However, as you get heavier (maybe too heavy) your body begins to incorporate the traps into the movement. Before you know it, you are not training your delts efficiently anymore because the other muscles are doing some of the work. You can transfer this concept to other exercises like the bench press, military press, pull-ups, etc.

So, when you go to the gym and you start working up to your 1 rep max while thinking that your workout is going to make you a beast, it may look and sound good  but there are better ways to go about becoming a beast.

Good Luck