This may be a strange question, and it may be impossible to answer objectively. In addition, I have no reason for wanting to know the answer except for sheer curiousity, and I can’t think of any way that this knowledge will help humanity in the slightest.
But for the fun of it: if a person were to start lifting weights…
Let’s say on day 1, the max a person can lift (in any way, this is not restricted to any particular exercise) is 100 pounds.
Fast forward a year or so, and now the person is strong enough that they can lift 200 pounds.
Here’s the question: do those 200 pounds that person can lift feel the same as the 100 pound max that they could lift the previous year? That is. do both require the same relative effort – pushing the person’s muscles to their maximum load capability, which in theory would then make the 100 pound weight feel half as heavy as it once used to?
Or does it actually feel – to that person – like they are really lifting twice as much weight, but their muscles can just handle the heavier load? In other words, 100 pounds still feels just as heavy as 100 pounds felt the previous year, but they can just work harder for the additional weight now?
Like I said, not sure it’s really answerable, but if it is, this is the place to do it.
I personally think that it is pretty close to the same relative effort. For instance, I used to max out at around 185 pounds. Now, I can sit down and bench 185 around 8 times without much trouble. It seems much lighter now. Similarly, 135 used to be difficult, but now feels quite light. On the other hand, the higher weight feels heavier in your hands, but not on your muscles. The muscles adjust to the weight relative to max, I’d say, but the pressure on your hands is always the same…so 100 pounds still feels in the hands like 100 pounds a year later, but only to your hands. Make sense?
The 200 lbs. feels like the 100 lbs. used to, effort-wise that is.Back when I was gaining a lot, I used to be amazed at how the weight “just went up”… as if I didn’t try at all.
A) the sensation of weight: you can estimate how much weight you are lifting reasonably well. 200lbs doesn’t “feel the same” as 100 lb did and if you moved to a desert island for a few months of nothing but intensive weight training, you’d still be able to guess the weight of a box of wood or sack of grain pretty accurately when you returned. This is a measurement of absolute force.
b) the sensation of effort: at near-maximum effort of 200lbs, you feel like you’re exerting a similar effort as you did lifting 100lbs last year. This is a more subjective measurement, involving a personal estimate of discomfort, your own abilities, etc.
These equivalences aren’t exact, of course.
Those months of intensive weight training probably will throw off your ability to estimate weights a little bit until you recalibrate with new experience in your new condidtion. Estimating weight is a judgement call based on many different types of sensory data., including “how much effort (not force) am I exerting in lifting it?”
Similarly, though we say that 100% effort feels like 100% effort, it isn’t quite the same experience after a year of training as it was before you trained. On some level “it feels different” to erxert yourself maximally (or you feel differently about it) because you’re more accustomed to doing so, even if you still believe you’re at your limit. We’ve all seen neophytes at some activity who will swear they are at their limits (when we know that other activities in their daily life may be more demanding on the same muscles) but in days they will grow accustomed to exerting themselves, and increase their apparent comfortable capacity far faster than their actual physical strength could possibly increase. There are many names for different aspects of this complex phenomenon, like ‘mental toughness’. There are also factors involved that are unrelated to “how the effort feels” - for example, they unconsciously learn how to use their muscles more effectively for that once unfamiliar task.
I hope that was the kind of answer you were loking for.
Well, I’ve got a few dozen cousins who’re younger than I, and a lot of them like piggyback rides, so over the years, I’ve done a lot of relative weight lifting, and…