If you have been lifting or pushing too much weight to impress your friends, opposite sex or other members in the gym, but take it from me it’s not gonna help. In fact, chances are that you may end up injuring yourself. Also, let me tell you that it’s not just the beginners who make this mistake, there are many experienced lifters, too, who make the same mistake. So no matter what level of training you are at, this blog post will certainly help as it shares the potential risks of ego lifting and ways to get over it. Let’s take a look.
Here’s How Ego Lifting Harms
First, let’s take a quick look at how ego lifting can hold you back from achieving your goals.
1. Lower Time Under Tension
Mechanical tension, muscle damage and metabolic stress are the primary mechanisms responsible for muscle growth. Lifting excessively heavy weight means not letting the muscles remain under stress for the time that is actually required for their growth. When you are more focused on lifting heavy weights all the time, you are reducing the time under tension that is a key driver of hypertrophy.
2. Lack of Controlled Eccentric Actions
When you lift too heavy weight, you want to complete the repetition, and miss out on a controlled eccentric movement that is required to get optimal results. Eccentric is the downward phase of exercise when you go on a squat position to lower dumbbell during bicep curl or lower the bar to the chest during a bench press. As a lot of muscle fibers are damaged during eccentric movement, they become stronger if you take a nutritious diet.
3. Less Focus on Target Muscles
Lifting too heavy weights means involvement of other muscles as well. For example, anterior deltoid is involved during heavy barbell curl. Though it isn’t bad, won’t help in meeting the goal that you are trying to achieve with weight lifting. The reason being that using other muscle groups results in the reduction of metabolic stress and accumulated pump that is required for increasing the muscle mass in the specific area.
How to Get Over it?
- If you are not accustomed to lifting heavy weights, start with light weights. Don’t attempt to lift more than you can handle, or it might lead to a severe injury that may take a lot of time to heal.
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- Instead of concentrating on lifting more weight, focus on mind-muscle connection, which will ultimately benefit your body.
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Lift light and stay healthy, especially if you are a beginner. You can eventually aim for lifting heavy weight without putting yourself under the risk of a severe injury.
Wrap Up
Remember, you are not in the gym to show off, but to help yourself grow. So, instead of competing with others, leave the ego behind, and focus on making incremental improvements to the body.