When it comes to strength training, being able to lift heavy weights seems to be an overwhelming priority for many people. Maybe it’s to try and impress others; maybe it’s a genuine belief that weight is the primary contributor to muscle growth. Unfortunately, this often leads to a common mistake known as ego lifting. Well, what is ego lifting and why is it bad?
Although load is important for muscle hypertrophy, it’s certainly not the only factor. In fact, when you consider everything else that plays a role in building muscle, it’s not even the most significant. However, ego lifting causes you to prioritize weight to a point where you’re overlooking these other factors and detrimentally impacting your own progression.
What Is Ego Lifting?
Ego lifting is when someone tries to lift more weight than they’re really capable of. By capable, I mean being able to effectively leverage the weight to build muscle.
If you’ve read some of my other posts, you’ll know that for an exercise to effectively strengthen a muscle, other things that are important to consider besides the weight you’re using include whether you’re using good technique, targeting the right muscle, and training with enough intensity.
The problem here is that when you focus too much on using the heaviest weight possible, you end up sacrificing everything else. Sure, you might be able to move a heavy weight, but if it’s at the expense of proper technique and everything else that’s required for muscle development, it’s not going to do you any good.
Why Should You Avoid It?
As I mentioned before, a major issue with ego lifting is that it isn’t conducive to achieving significant muscle growth, since you’re not able to isolate and engage the right muscles, utilize a full range of motion, and experience enough time under tension.
To be fair, the negative impact of ego lifting mostly affects more experienced lifters, but even if you’re new to working out, this is still a practice you should avoid. This is because ego lifting severely increases your risk of injury. By trying to lift a heavy weight that your body really isn’t ready to handle yet, you’re highly prone to straining a muscle or hurting yourself in some other way.
Lastly, you’ll have an easier time in the long-run if you just learn good habits from the start and build a proper foundation. You won’t have to worry about correcting bad habits later on, at which point it’ll be incredibly difficult if you’re already set in your ways.
What Does Ego Lifting Look Like?
It’s pretty easy to tell if you’re doing an exercise effectively or just ego lifting:
Bad Form
Instead of lifting the weight with just the intended muscle, you’ll find yourself swinging excessively and generating momentum to move the weight. There may also be a lot of unnecessary motion if you’re recruiting more dominant muscles to help move the weight, such as using the whole upper body to perform a bicep curl.
Limited Range of Motion
In trying to lift a heavier weight than you should, you might cut corners by not performing an exercise with a full range of motion, whether intentionally or not. You might not bring the weight as high or as low as it needs to go, which results in your muscles not stretching out or contracting in enough to be properly stimulated.
Rapid Movement
The amount of time that a muscle experiences tension during an exercise (also known as time under tension) is another factor that plays into muscle growth. To a certain extent, it’s recommended that you perform exercises at a slow-to-moderate pace in order to extend a muscle’s time under tension. However, the longer it takes to perform a rep of an exercise, the more energy it requires. Therefore, if you’re ego lifting, you might be doing your reps fairly quickly in order to save some energy that can go towards lifting a heavier weight.
Lack of Control
Not being able to keep a weight steady during an exercise is an indication that your muscles aren’t yet strong enough to support the load. Struggling with a weight near the end of a set is normal and expected, but if the weights are shaking and traveling in an erratic path during the motion of the exercise from the start, this means you probably shouldn’t be lifting that much weight.
How to Prevent Ego Lifting
Now that you know why ego lifting is detrimental, what can you do to prevent it?
First, whenever you’re trying to learn or progress with an exercise, always check that your technique is correct and that you feel the tension in the muscle you’re training. Make sure you’re using a full range of motion and are able to perform the exercise in a controlled manner. Essentially, you want to maximize the effectiveness of an exercise before you decide to increase the weight. To get you on the right track when it comes to good technique, check out my post 6 Tips for Achieving Proper Weightlifting Form.
Secondly, it’s important to understand that in order to increase muscle mass, there needs to be a balance between the amount of weight you use and the number of reps you perform. Doing endless reps with a light weight won’t be very effective at making you stronger, but neither will constantly doing one-rep maxes with the heaviest load possible.
Although occasionally testing the maximum weight you’re able to lift can be a nice challenge, for the most part you should be training with that balance in mind. In other words, just because you’re capable of lifting heavier doesn’t mean you always need to.
Let Go of Your Ego
Having said all this, hopefully I’m not discouraging you from progressively increasing the weights you train with. When you’re at the point where you feel the need to use a heavier weight in order to continue effectively stimulating your muscles, that’s certainly something you can experiment with.
You can increase the load as long as you’re still capable of using it properly; however, as soon as you begin to show signs of ego lifting, that should be a sign to lighten up. If this happens, don’t panic; contrary to what ego lifters believe, you’re not going to embarrass yourself if you can’t lift a particular weight. In reality, it’s probably more embarrassing if others can tell that you’re ego lifting.
There are also other options if you’re looking to enhance your training, but aren’t quite ready to go up in weight. For example, pushing for a few more reps per set or increasing the time under tension can make an exercise drastically more difficult without needing to use heavier weights.
In the end, as tempting as it may be to strive for as much weight as possible, try to resist this urge knowing that ultimately, you’d only be steering yourself away from making real progress.
