Until you have treated strength training as a movement practice, please don’t give up on it.
I have heard people say they have given up on lifting heavy because they keep getting hurt. Hearing that always deeply saddens me because I understand all of the benefits that come with moving weight around. However, I think lifting “heavy” is often villainized mainly due to the lack of understanding of how to lift weights. Often what I hear is “I tried CrossFit for a while, and it was great, but I kept getting hurt.” Or “I was pushing hard trying to squeak out one more rep and felt a twinge.” If these are a familiar story for you or someone you know, I beg you to give strength training a second or third or 100th try.
I remember I kept having aching pain in my left shoulder every time I bench pressed, lat pull downed, or overhead pressed. I had to finally swallow my pride and admit my shoulder had something going on. I spent many months rehabbing my shoulder and continuing to strengthen other parts of my body. Once I finally was able to move my shoulder in all ranges pain-free, I decided I did not want to run into the same situation down the road. Up until that point, I had been training either like a bodybuilder or a football player. This was at the same time that I was helping people through their injury rehab process and helping “older” people feel and move better. I stumbled across this philosophy of practicing skills and applying that to strength training when I attended my first StrongFirst course with Phil Scarito. This idea of strength training as a practice had been in front of my face yet I was blind to it until I was searching for it. I started to apply this idea of practicing movements and immediately felt my body begin to feel better and oddly enough, my strength and mobility soared.
For many of us who wish to train to enhance our lives, there is not a good reason to frequently attempt to lift something we aren’t sure we can do. If you are practicing a skill, you want to be able to have a high focus on what you are doing and confidence that you can do what you are doing. Like meditation or yoga, you want to practice mindfulness with your strength training. Being entirely focused on what you are doing in that present moment is a great way to avoid injury and build strength.
I believe you should rarely do as many reps in a set as you can. Instead, aim to do half as many reps as you could in a given set and do more sets of it. This way you can practice picture-perfect technique and also avoid unnecessary fatigue that can often lead to the sloppiness of movement which is when most people feel a twinge.
The most important aspect of treating your strength training as a movement practice is it gives you the chance to focus on moving well. If you can create an ego around not wanting to have a bad rep and putting that on the pedestal, you can probably lift pain-free. But if you want to lift as heavy as you can, and as many reps as you can, and never focus on movement quality, then expect to keep running into injury.
Remember, using a lighter weight but performing the task with better technique is not taking a step back, rather, it is taking a step forward towards true growth, towards true mastery. No one is considered to be a master at their craft by doing it poorly. A basketball player who puts up 1000 shots a day with no attention to detail, with no mission will never master the craft of shooting. You must be purposeful with your movement. Understanding the importance of patience, consistency, and intention will always lead you to success no matter what you are doing in life. Weight training is no different.
Treat your strength training as a practice. Treat your strength training as a way to feel better. Treat your strength training with patience. You’ll be surprised by how great you will feel mentally, physically, and emotionally.