The Dr. Chalmers Show Season #3, episode 13 - Lifting lighter: Is it an oxymoron, or can you get more benefits? 

There are different schools of thought on lifting, training, and performance. Today, on the podcast I cover some of the differences between heavy, lighter, and form. There are significant health benefits to understanding the difference.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:00:10] So one of the other things I always try to get my athletes to do anyway was just trying to be healthy, we always talk about lifting lighter. If you go slow and you practice perfect form, you can use a lot lighter weight and still look and feel great and have all those things.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:00:30] If you're the type of person who has to be the strongest guy in the gym or the strongest woman in the gym, cool knock it out like, that's totally awesome I'm not saying that you shouldn't do that that's fantastic go set your goals and train for them. You train properly, work on, you know, the damage and stuff. I have tons of guys and women who are in that boat and that's fantastic if that's your thing.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:00:51] But if you don't really care about being the strongest person in the room, I don't care at all about that. Drop your weight, you can still look really good, you can still get big, you can still feel awesome and you're going to feel awesome more if you drop your weight.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:01:07] Because here's the deal Your muscles will grow faster than your ligaments and tendons and your joint well, so what that means is that you can make your muscles strong enough that they'll tear up your ligaments and tendons, and that will destroy your joint. And if you tear your ligaments and tendons and damage your joints, you're going to hurt possibly forever, so keep that in mind.

Dr Matt Chalmers [00:01:28] So if you're like, you know what? Feeling good, looking good and being functional is more important to me than being the strongest guy in the room. Cool. Drop your weight and then increase the amount of time it takes you to lift it. Don't just go like this slow down and curl really slowly, press really slowly, do your flies, do your squats really slowly.

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