How I Got Stronger By Lifting Less Weight

It’s no surprise that you have to lift heavier weight if you want to get strong, but what if I told you there was a way to lift less weight to get stronger?

Let me jump straight into an example to explain what I mean:

Back in 2015 I had this big mission to get as strong as possible.

And spoiler alert… it worked.

I was squatting 275lbs at the time, and before my strength shot up to the mid 300s, I did one particular thing that really helped me.

Normally, I’d do the typical progressive overload of 275lbs one week, 280lbs the next week, 285lbs the week after that and so on…

But here’s what I did instead:

I actually dropped the weight back down to 225lbs and practiced pause reps where you stop momentarily at the bottom of the squat before going back up.

Then I build my way up to around 255lbs with that same technique.

By the time I started focusing on regular reps again, my strength rose well beyond my former capacity quite quickly.

Within a month I was able to squat 315lbs.

Then 320.