Yes, I see that there’s a limit that will eventually be reached in all such sports but we haven’t run up against that limit yet in any of them, have we? And surely an average joe in a gym isn’t going to run into any wall that can’t be eventually demolished, if he cares to put in the required training and development of his body?
Some good advice here. I just wanted to add that you will hit a lot of walls if you keep lifting. The best way to avoid this, I find, is to switch up the exercises you do for each muscle group every 3 or so weeks. For instance, switch from benching with the bar to benching with free weights. For whatever reason if you don’t keep things fresh you muscles tend to get into a rut where you can do each exercise a little easier but you have certain limits you just can’t get past.
One of my bodybuilding books once said that the average person could increase his strength 4x after extensive training. So, if you could bench 75lbs before you started your bodybuilding program, you could expect to max out at around 300 lbs. I personally found this number to be about right - when I started, I could barely do 55 lbs, and I never broke 250 lbs, even after years of training. Of course, there are always going to be exceptions, but it’s probably a useful rule of thumb.
I had this discussion yesterday. I call the bar a bar and what you (apparently?) call free weights I call dumbbells. But, to me, they’re all free weights, because nothing is guiding them but you.
I’ll give you a call when I’m benching 720. I’ve been able to do a plate and a quarter (185) since I was 16. Most people who played football with could, too. Is that number quoted for a complete beginner?
Yes.
I think it was in one of the Darden books. Basically, take the average guy off the street, who has never done any weight training, and put him on a program, and that’s what you can expect. Although, YMMV…
The number of factors that contribute to “gain” are so complex and inter-related that nobody can easily predict them. Here are some to consider:
[ul]
[li]How old are you? Adolescents and young adults, who are still “growing”, may show the most gains and may be able to give themselves lifelong advantages. Start early![/li][li]Conversely, as you age, your ability to progress will decrease. Nevertheless, strength training will slow down the your rate of “loss.”[/li][li]You don’t get stronger when you’re working out. You get stronger when you recover. In other words, periodization. If you’ve “hit a wall”, back off for a week; don’t stop cold, but reduce your weight/sets/reps for 7 day7s. Be aware. You should, within that week, sense that you’re so eager to attack the weights that you’re antsy. After 7 days, move up 5-10% over your previous “top”. See what happens.[/li][li]Define your goals. What do you really want? How much are you willing to sacrifice to get it? An example: triathlons. In 8-12 months you can train to complete an Ironman in a reasonable time. But, you’ll have to progress to the point where you’re working out 6 days a week for at least an hour a day, and probably 2 hours a day at the minimum, with weekends devoted to workouts for 6 hours or more. You’ll be in incredible shape, but you won’t have a life.[/li][/ul]
My own personal opinion of weightlifting is that it’s fun but demanding. I don’t try to balloon up my arms or pecs, cuz I’m not doing this to look like a pathetic Arnold wannabe. I do core training to strengthen myself for skiing and cycling. OK, so my biceps aren’t as big as some other people, but on the other hand, my quads are bigger and I can do stuff that guys half my age can’t.
Exactly. That’s the periodization that 633squadron talked about. Routines kill the effectiveness of any workout program after a while. Your best bet is to always be doing something different so that your body never falls into an efficiency rut. Whether you’re working out for looks or performance, you should try to mix things up.
It’s entirely possible to make progress with lifts that you aren’t working directly. I do CrossFit and one month I was doing mostly deadlifts and overhead lifts, along with runs and other stuff; the program is deliberately somewhat random. When a bench press workout came up, I found that I was able to do about 5–7 kg more than my previous best even though I hadn’t done any direct chest exercises other than pushups in at least a month. I don’t think there were more than about one or two pushup sessions during that period either.
You don’t get jumps like that all the time, but the fact that you do get indirect benefits from training other muscle groups shows that treating your muscles as isolated parts instead of elements of a system is probably not the way to go. If you want a big chest, doing squats and deadlifts could actually help you get bigger faster, gain more absolute and overall strength, and in the bargain you’ll be more evenly developed than those guys who do nothing but bench presses and curls. There has been a strong movement away from isolation exercises and machines because of this.
Yeah, I guess you are right. I never really put much thought into it before.
Hmm, wondering about all this advice being tossed around.
First off, it’s a “plateau”, not a “wall”.
Secondly, as CookingWithGas beat me to, you don’t see dumbbells or other freeweights outside of the gym do you. The advantage of machines is that you can work a muscle to total failure without a spotter. And those muscles that are used to stabilize free-weights are working isometrically which doesn’t increase muscle strength or mass significantly.
Train pushing and pulling muscles and you’ve got it covered.
What does this have to do with anything? You don’t see weight machines outside of a gym either. While free weights have convenient handles that some real-life objects don’t, they are a decent analog of things around you. Machines…not so much. When both the National Strength and Conditioning Association (PDF) and a fad-tabulous publication like Ask Men recommend free weights over machines for most training, it tells you something. Namely, that there is practically no disagreement on the issue.
Training to total failure can be counterproductive. It can lead to overtraining, injury, and isn’t any more effective than training to positive failure, i.e.: the point where form starts to break down when performing the exercise with unsupported free weights. In fact, training at such a high intensity all the time can exhaust your CNS to the point where you can’t actually perform exercises with anywhere near your maximal efforts even after your muscles have fully recovered.
The training methodology which hyped isolation over compound movements was concocted to sell machines. Those machines never seemed to produce the results that they were supposed to. Beginners flock to them because they don’t have to learn anything much to use them, and they are perceived as “safe” even though many machines force you into unnatural movement paths that can actually increase injury. Serious weightlifters and bodybuilders never stopped using free weights, though they use some machines as an adjunct to their other training. In my opinion, machines have two good uses: for the injured who can’t perform compound movements while they’re recovering, and for elite athletes who need to work on a particular weakness. For everyone else, they’re practically useless, a waste of time that you could better spend on working a multitude of muscles.
If you want to see how strong pure free weight training can get you, take a look at Olympic lifters. They’re not all fat hogs, and they are incredibly strong. Can you get more than your body weight over your head? I’ll bet that either one of those girls could lift more than you can on any machine you’d care to pick, and I’m dead certain that they can lift more on a barbell than you.
Isometric exercises absolutely do increase strength. In fact, they will increase the absolute power of the muscle contraction more than a dynamic movement. Besides which, without having strong support muscles you won’t be able to lift a heavy weight in real life without hurting yourself. Learning how to lift properly with free weights has the added benefit of teaching you good lifting form.
You might be able to move 300 lbs. on the leg press, but that doesn’t do you much good if picking up a 40 lb. weight is enough to throw your back out because you’re not used to bending over and picking a weight up off the floor. I can deadlift about twice my body weight, which makes me a piker compared to most serious weightlifters, but I can guarantee that anything I can actually pick up is not going to hurt my back, and anything I can’t get off the ground isn’t either, because I’m approaching it with good form and my core and other support muscles have been strengthened by training with free weights.
Uh, yeah, because by doing so you’re only training all the muscles in your body.
I can’t even imagine how ignorant you’d have to be about basic anatomy to write this sentence.
Interesting thread. My information is that I’m a 28-year-old female, trying to lose weight, who has heard again and again that weight-bearing exercise is important in the process. So, I’m doing it. I understand that women don’t get big muscles (thank Og) and don’t really care about increasing strength beyond… well… whatever I’m “supposed” to be doing.
I have, at this point, levelled off on most of the machines… I’m finding it difficult or impossible to add weight, most of the time. If it’s okay for me to just stay at the weights I’m at, that would be okie-dokie with me.
Some numbers off the top of my head… I’m leg-pressing 260, vertical press 35, crunch 95, preacher curl 65? 80?, and rotary torso 65. I’m doing all the machines… those are just weights I remember off the top of my head.
[del]If by “vertical press” you mean “military press” or “overhead press”, no possible way you’re curling more 65, much less 80. I usually military press around 135, and preacher curl about 105. If your biceps are strong enough to support twice as much as your shoulders (and actually even more than that, since preacher curls put the weight on quite the moment (i.e. lever))… it just doesn’t make sense to me. Unless, of course, you’re talking about the amount of weight you put on the machine (which I’m guessing is the case, since you listed weights for leg pressing, crunching, and rotary torso). If that’s the case,[/del] listing and comparing weight [on machines] is all but meaningless, different models, even within the same brand, are too different. For example, I usually do skull crushers with 105, but do 205 on tricep push downs on the machine.
I don’t know if you came across fluiddruid’s thread on weight lifting for women, but the site www.stumptuous.com came highly recommended, although I haven’t browsed it.
The rest of your post has been discounted already, so I’ll just say that either metaphor is apt. Wall works fine in the sense that you’ve run up against something that you just can’t get past.
You were right that the weights I gave were all off (turns out I’m doing about 50 on both disputed machines–checked my numbers tonight).
But don’t mess around with the Ph.D. in semantics.
Regardless of what you are doing the important thing is to keep doing it. Many different types of workouts work for different people. If that weren’t true there wouldn’t be a market for all those magazines. The most common cause of failure to anyones fitness routine is caused by stopping it. I know first hand. I started lifting weights when I was 17. I’m now 41. I hate to even think about where I would be fitness-wise if in between I had continued to work. There were just too many years of lost time. The best advice I could give was to repeat what someone said briefly upstream, vary your routine. After several weeks doing the same thing you’ll get bored. In my experience switching up routines also helps push you through that wall (to answer the OP).
I think the free weight/machine argument is crap. Variety is the key. I use both and switch around my routine often. A good friend of mine is a professional body builder. He very rarely uses free weights. There is not one answer for everyone.
What does this have to do with anything? Guess you didn’t bother to read previous posts. Training with free weights pepares you to go out into the world and do what? Lift free weights. Somone who trains on machines can lift a box or push a piano as effectively as the free weighter. An effective program should include periods of sets to failure and preiods of sets lifting to targeted numbers of reps. Say two to three months of one then shifting over to the other.
Pushing/pulling can be accomplished on machines.
Except that lifting free weights is more similar to lifting a box or pushing a piano than lifting with a machine is.
You do in a modified way*. You pick up little kids and toss 'em into the air, you haul heavy grocery bags in from the car, you push to move that heavy dresser across the room, you have to twist really tightly-sealed jars ;), etc. All those are basically free weights. It’s just that it’s in a real-world form.
- Which is why my favorite strength training is still more based on using your own body instead of even free weights.
Which, in effect, is pretty much what any weight you may lift in real life is.