Commercial gym, ~5 years back, there was this guy who did nothing but yoga, slow deep dips, and a super slow clean and press with the empty barbell touching it to his feet at the bottom, and easily taking 30-45 seconds to lock out the press before reversing at similar speed.
Fast forward about 3½ years…
I was hanging out with my buddy, we were in the back yard, and instead of going to the gym like my usual, I broke out the barbell and we pulled in the yard.
I was doing super slow reps with 225, going as “fast” as 10 seconds up, 10 seconds down to as slow as 30/30. He didn’t buy that I was honestly putting in effort, he thought I hamming it up, until we dropped the weight and had him attempt.
Fast forward a few years…
Time : Recently
I’m laughing at myself. Doing dumbbell deadlifts with a pair of 35s, I can’t help but laugh noticing the college age chick near me is pressing 25s, and thinking how about a week ago I saw this super petite college chick wearing straps for her dumbbell deadlifts with either the 30s or 35s.
I’ve regressed to using girl weights, something I remember joking about in person to a fit asian all those years back (place of the first anecdote as I was on the down half of a pyramid on cable rows) , but in reality…I’ve progressed.
If you can’t go heavy an easy way to increase the difficulty is slow it down, slow your rep speed down.
The dumbbell deadlifts, technically rdls, with 35s the other day were mostly sets of 20, and the negative I was countng 1-10 (probably 6-8 seconds) from lockout back to knee, before violently thrusting to lockout, some of the time with a pause at the bottom.
Making reps super slow gets it to a place kinda analgulous to static postures.
Usually only a more advanced trainer has a solid mind-muscle connection, but super slow reps are going to be like isometrics in teaching you how to fire the musculature pronto.
While moving it is on the isometric scale of physical effort.
My training at current between the combination of super high reps, normal high reps (10-20 per set), slow reps, and high volume is resulting in lots of time under tension.
Time under tension is the truest key to physical strength.
I can see the Sandow recommendation of light bells being done on the assumption that you’re going to go all out with them between reps past 100 and speed slowed down.
I see myself muscling up right now with the super high reps and the super slow rep speeds (both, and/or, it depends on the exercise). I have this hilarious vision of being the strongest presser you know just boggling people’s minds getting lots out of the 10lb or 15lb dumbbells for one arm military pressing as the small fit chicks are pressing the 25s.
You can get a lot out of a little.
Relatedly dig into anecdotes of how top bodybuilders truly train…you’ll find a lot of screaming with ridiculous intensity, and…tiny weights.
It’s more the rule than the exception.
Food for thought.
Train hard. Eat well.
You’ll be good.
Persistence & Tenacity