“I can lift that much.”  That is what I thought when watching a video of Martins Licis and Hafþór Björnsson lift some weights and they were doing some pulldowns.  These two men have won the last two “World’s Strongest Man” competitions.  So am I saying that I can lift as much as the strongest men in the world, or that I am a world class athlete?  No, I am not saying that at all.  I just noticed that these two men were lifting a modest amount of weight.  Seeing them do this just reminded me that it’s not always about lifting the most weight.  An important lesson that is easy to forget is that we should use the right amount of weight.

In the video I am talking about Licis and Björnsson were using 200 pounds on a lat pulldown machine.  This is not a massive amount of weight.  If you walk into any YMCA in the United States there is a good chance you will find a few guys that can use this much weight.  What these men were doing in the video was working with a weight that helped them do the job they were trying to do.  They were using the right weight at that time for what they wanted to achieve, something more gym goers should be doing.

Too often in the gym we all want to load up on every exercise and go heavy.  This is a component of how progress is made.  Lifting heavier is how you lift heavier.  The thing is we don’t always have to lift heavier to make progress.  If we are just training a muscle for growth, we can use all sorts of weight to get the desired effect.  Moderate weight for a good number of repetitions can just be enough.

Moderation is boring though so we like to skip that part of our training.  Moderation should be used and cycled in and through our training in different ways.  Sometimes we can use moderate weights while recovering from more intense efforts.  Sometimes a more moderate weight seems to work better for hypertrophy, bodybuilders are the biggest, but not the strongest after all.  Moderation while boring can be productive, and productivity is never boring.

Learning to implement moderation is just another step on our journey.  It is a boring step, but boring steps still matter.  Larry Bird spent countless hours shooting free throws, which I’m sure was boring to him.  Doing the boring is humbling ourselves and a step forward.  In all things we should remember to do the work we need to do, not more or less.