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Have you ever had one of those days where you walk into the gym, unrack your barbell from the stand and it feels heavy as shit? Of course you have, and so has everybody else. Maybe you’ve not had the best night sleep, you’ve had a bad day in work or you’ve not eaten right, but regardless that bar feels twice the weight it should do. Is this a sign that you should take it easy today? Not necessarily. 

Let’s say your session for the day starts off with a 5RM Back Squat. So after a good warm up you head over to the rack and begin to build up. You hit a set or 2 with the empty bar, and then you begin to add plates. The first couple of sets feel awful. Even though you have warmed up, the weight feels heavy, nothing seems to be contracting as tightly as it should and the session is not looking promising. After several sets you reach 70% of your previous 5RM and it feels like gravity has been turned up to x10. What happens next?

You can A, leave it there for the day. After all that felt heavy and you have technically hit a 5RM for the day, or B, you can add more weight. My advice, go for option B, and here’s why.

Let’s say you have a 200kg Back Squat 1RM. You hit this after a full warm up and build up, all the way to that final lift. Your body was totally ready and primed to overcome this weight. However, if you were to roll out of bed at 6am, walk into the living room and attempt to squat 200kg with no warm up, it’s not going to happen. Your body at this current moment is not primed to move such a load. Although this is an extreme example, the principles are the same as building to a max. 

Going back to our 5RM that was only 70% of our previous 5RM, based on the principles we have just mentioned, no wonder it felt heavy as hell. By definition we’re still getting warm. Research suggests that the body doesn’t actually get adequately primed for near maximal loads until upwards of 90%. Now before anybody starts squashing their spine like an accordion under loads that they can’t lift, there is obviously only so far that this can go before failure. 

So how can we implement this? Next time you’re lifting heavy, whether it’s a Clean & Jerk or heavy squats, as you build up remind yourself that your body is still getting warm. It’s ok for the lighter weights to not feel light. Rather than feeling the weight and thinking “I’ll just stick at this today”, see what you can actually hit, you never know what gains and progress you’re actually doing yourself out of in that session. You’ll probably even find that the heavy sets actually feel better and easier than the lighter ones, go figure right!

You’re capable of more than you think, happy lifting guys! 

If you enjoyed this post, check out my next post “Should You Wear Lifters?“