Benefits to Lifting More Weight

The main objective of many gym goers is to progressively lift more weight, something that requires self-improvement. This forces athletes to give more of themselves in order to surpass their own limits.

There are many benefits to lifting more weight. What are they? There comes a moment in everyone’s training where their body becomes accustomed to all of the work that it has been doing. This means, if you do not make any changes, the benefits of exercise will decrease. The reason for this is that your body no longer needs to make such a big effort to complete these exercises.

This is when the need arises to start lifting more weight. Another alternative would be to increase the number of repetitions that you do in the gym. However, the reasons for doing this are slightly different. Today, we are going to discuss adding weight to your bodybuilding routine and the benefits that it can provide.

What are the benefits of lifting more weight?

1. – Greater progress

Lifting more weight is the key to advancing your training. If you stick with lifting the same weight and doing the same number of repetitions for more than six or eight weeks, you are simply wasting your time. 

When you add weight to your workouts, you start burning more calories, because your body is not used to the extra effort that you are asking it to make. This process of learning is produced by your body’s ability to adapt to routines in order to conserve energy. Therefore, you must increase the demands often.

2. – Greater resistance

By increasing demands on your body during training, you will start to see some benefits for your muscles. Among these are an increased tolerance to lactic acid and an increased lactate threshold. This is the intensity of exercise in which lactic acid accumulates and fatigue occurs.

Additionally, you also gain aerobic resistance. This has a positive effect on your body’s cardiovascular functions and allows for better athletic performance.

3. – Increase in muscle mass

As we all know, the more weight you lift, the greater the gain in muscle mass. What happens? Basically, there is an increase in the size of your muscle fibers. Therefore, the muscle increases its resistance to heavy weights.

Scientifically, the explanation lies in the fact that this increase in fibrillar size, is due to the increase in the concentration of the contractile proteins actin and myosin.

4. – Greater calorie burn

Gaining muscle mass causes an increase in your basal metabolism. If this does increase, you will burn calories (and fat) even while resting.

That’s why we often talk about stress, as avoiding it is equally as important as the training sessions themselves. Therefore, if you have been working out, it is important to get your necessary sleep quota. If, on the other hand, you know that you will not be able to rest as much, it is better to not train because the anabolic period occurs at night.

Other benefits of bodybuilding

In addition to the benefits that we’ve already mentioned, by being strict with the weight that you increasingly add to your workouts, you’ll enjoy the following benefits:

• Reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes
• Help to prevent high blood pressure
• Burns fat, so you can avoid gaining weight
• Prevents heart problems
• Combats mobility disorders by increasing bone density; prevents osteoporosis

Tips for lifting more weight

Although it may sound easy, lifting more weight week after week is actually not easy at all. The reason is logical: your body has a limit and you should not overload it. So, what can you do? Here are some tips:

• Slow progression: the ideal process is to not burn through stages or move on quickly after each exercise. Therefore, it’s important to increase weight progressively and as you get closer to that point of adaptation. That is, when your workout finally starts taking less effort, it is time for you to lift more weight.
• Vary sets and repetitions: before increasing the amounts of weight that you lift, you can try doing more repetitions with the same amount of weight first. It would also be a good idea to do less sets or repetitions with more weight. Everything will depend on your physical condition and the advice of your trainer. Again, the goal is to move at a slow, but firm and constant pace.
• Do not lose sight of the technique: lifting more weight but doing so incorrectly will have both negative and serious consequences. You must be able to control the weight that you lift, so that your posture and the movements you make are correct. Once again, listen to your trainer.

To all of the above, we must also add the already known benefits of physical activity and, of course, we must also emphasize the need to have a healthy diet. The next time you go to the gym, try to put these tips into practice and start to see the benefits.