We frequently have heavy lifting days in the gym.  There are different strategies to pace met-con workouts and similarly, there are different strategies to tackle heavy lifting workouts.  Here’s a few things to consider.

He lifts things up. And puts them down.

Establish a 1-rep max.  If you don’t know what you’re capable of lifting, you’ll never know what you should lift or if you’re getting stronger.  If you haven’t hit a max in a long time– or you never have– take the opportunity to figure out what the most weight you can lift is.  You can then use that to determine what weight you should be aiming for in a workout.  A rough guideline is that you should be aiming for 90% of your one-rep max for sets of 1-2 reps, 80% of your max for sets of 2-4 reps and 70% of your max for 3-6 reps.

Figure out your timing.  There’s two ways to time heavy days.  I recommend that most people take 2-5 minutes between lifts.  This allows the maximum amount of time to replenish muscle fuel, without giving enough time to completely cool down.  The trick here is to be strict with the amount of time you take.  Set your watch, or look at the clock so you don’t cheat because you will feel recovered before you actually are.  The other way to time heavy days involves setting up your area ahead of time and speeding through.  You’re still going to give yourself some recovery time– say 30-seconds to a minute– but the goal is to do the lifts explosively to maximize your power output.  The tricky thing with this method is that you have to know what you’re going to lift and realize that you’re not going to attempt a max.  When the weight gets so heavy that you slow down the lift, you stop increasing the weight.  To get the most out of this method, you have to have a solid understanding of what you’re capable of lifting and you have to have really good technique.

Light and full range of motion vs heavy and partial range of motion.  There’s a place for both options.  If you have poor flexibility or problems with range of motion, you’ll get more out of going with lighter weight and focusing on your technique.  But if your problem is raw strength, you could get quite a lot of benefit from putting lots of weight on the bar and training partial ROM or the eccentric portion of the lift.  The stimulus that you get from just holding a heavy weight can do wonders.

Remember, our prescription is constantly varied functional fitness.  If you always do your lifts in the same way and similar weight, you’re going to adapt to it and get stuck on a plateau.  Mix it up and you’ll see better results.