Variety is the spice of training gains...
BIGKIWI said:
Interesting thing I have found over the last 3 months my weights have been down around 15% but I am growing better now and have been getting the most painful pumps ?? a ( I had never thought this way before always gone as heavy as poss ) Then again it could just be a temporary thing as I am shocking my body .
Kiwi is onto something here:
Using lighter weights allows you to lift the weight using the muscle(s) you're trying to train. E.g., DB side laterals can be done with 70lb'er, using momementum generated with the lower body, the traps and even wrist extension, in addition to the delts - OR - you can train in a more controlled fashion and use your mental focus to drive the target muscle into oblivion, rather than expend neural drive trying to move the weight throw space by any means possible. BUT, both ways of training can elicit gain, b/c even when doing the same exercise (same name at least) the nervous system must use a different strategy to lift the weight and therefore the fiber recruitement pattern is different, the stimulus is different (novel) and you get growth simply from changing programs!
At 2 ends of the spectrum: Lee Priest is slow and controlled on everything. Ronnie C. is very ballistic, some might say sloppy. BOth guys are friggin' impressive as hell.
Ronnie is, granted, an exception, but I have found that doing slow, controlled ("perfect form") lifting (DB side laterals as above, presses as if doing flies and not using the triceps to lift, tryiing to remove the low back from SLDL's, etc.) is a way to get away with a larger training volume without taxing the nervous system so much. This sort of training (slow controlled "feel" training) of course lends itself to machines and isolation movements pretty well, too.
My take: do both. I also like the idea someone else mentioned of occasionally (withing a workout or as a seperate workout) having training heavy (Ballistic "sloppy" set) so that the wt. feels lighter during the controlled training.
I think Milos Sarcev calls this "contracting" the weight (or something like that) vs. lifting the weight in one of the Battle for the Olympia videos.
-Randy