When it comes to making progress in the gym, you’ve most likely heard of training intensity.
And how you should be training intensely to see the best gym results.
This is especially true for anyone who lifts weights.
Now, this is good to know. However, no one ever really tells you exactly what it means to be train intensely.
In this post, I want to talk about how to maximize your weightlifting results by training intensely in the gym.
In this post you’ll find:
What it means to strength train intensely
Training intensely in the gym means that you push your body a lot closer to it’s actual limits.
This is different than pushing yourself to the limits you have set for yourself or the limits of your mind.
A lot of us usually hold ourselves back during our workouts, without even realizing it.
How we might limit ourselves in the gym
For example, typically when we workout, our minds give out long before our muscles do.
This is especially true for strength training workouts. Since you usually have a pre-determined number of reps you’ll do for each set already in mind.
Because of this, our minds usually dictate when we end a set. And, without training intensely, we’ll usually stop a set for two reasons.
First, because our muscles start to burn more than we’d like them to and the exercise becomes uncomfortable.
Or second, because we hit the specific number of reps we told ourselves we’d hit.
You can see how in each of these examples, we hold ourselves back a little.
We’re not stopping because our muscles are so tired and fatigued, but instead we’re stopping because our mind is uncomfortable or feels like stopping.
Training intensely means to stop letting your mind hold you back
As a result, the basis of training intensely is breaking this mind-barrier we have when we’re training.
The focus of intense training is to end a set when your muscles give out, rather than when your mind gives out.
As you can imagine, this takes a lot of mental practice.
Especially if you’re someone who’s not used to pushing themselves in the gym.
However, the more you practice listening to your actual body and not your mind yelling at you to stop, the easier it’ll become over time.
The importance of intense strength training workouts
When it comes to weightlifting, and any exercise really, the more you push yourself, the more progress you’re going to see.
This is because most progress comes when you leave your comfort zone and push yourself beyond what you believe to be your limits.
This helps you continually progress during every workout.
As a result, the main reason it’s important to train intensely in the gym is because it’s the best way to get the quickest results.
I’m not saying it’s a quick way to get results, and I’m in no way saying it’s the easiest.
However, if you want to make your time in the gym worthwhile, then increasing your training intensity is the best way to do that.
This will allow you to stimulate the most muscle growth and maximize your results from every workout.
Training intensely stimulates maximum muscle growth
When you train intensely in the gym, put tons of tension and stress on your muscles.
It’s important to note that when you do train intensely, you increase your risk getting hurt during your workouts.
That’s why it’s so important to learn how to prevent injuries from working out.
Besides that, training intensely and correctly is the best way to stimulate muscle growth.
And not just stimulate muscle growth, but stimulate the most muscle growth you can from a singular workout.
The reason for this is because your muscles grow when you put them under stress and tension.
As a result, the more stress and tension you put your muscles under, the more they’ll grow.
Additionally, the more tension you put your muscles under during a single workout, the more muscle growth you’ll stimulate during that singular workout.
All of this is what you do when you increase the intensity of your lifts.
The best techniques to increase weightlifting intensity
Although I’ve talked a lot about what it means to train intensely and why it’s important, we still haven’t really covered how to apply any of this to your workouts.
And, as I’m sure you can imagine, much of what I just said wouldn’t be very helpful without actually applying it to your workouts.
Here are the best strategies to increase the intensity and effectiveness of your workouts.
Train to failure to increase weightlifting intensity
Training to failure is one of the most fundamental tips to increase the intensity of your workouts.
We know that training intensely means you push beyond your mental limits and push towards the limits of your body.
Well, the same can be said for training to failure.
Training to failure is when you push to the point where your muscles physically can’t do anymore reps during a set. Or, as close to that point as you can get.
Meaning you stop your set when your muscles stop, not when your mind stops.
As a result, training to failure allows you to keep your muscles under the most intensity you can during every set you do.
Implement time under tension for intense weightlifting workouts
Increasing your time under tension is another great way to increase the intensity of your weight lifting workouts.
To increase time under tension means to increase, well, the amount of time your muscles spend under tension.
The part of an exercise where your muscle is under the most tension is in the eccentric portion of the exercise. Typically when you’re muscles are stretching out.
I mentioned earlier that the more pressure and tension you put your muscles under during an exercise the more growth you’ll see.
Because of this, it makes sense that time under tension helps stimulate more muscle growth.
How to increase time under tension
The best way to increase your time under tension is to practice slow and controlled movements, with proper form.
The eccentric portion of an exercise is the portion during a rep when your muscles are under the most tension. This is also when you’re muscles are stretching out and getting longer.
Since the eccentric movement is the portion of the exercise when your muscles are under the most tension, this is where you’ll want to slow down the movement to increase your time spent under tension.
As a result, slowing down the eccentric portion of an exercise, while keeping the concentric portion faster, is the best way to increase your time under tension.
Lifting too heavy makes time under tension harder
Since time under tension requires your movements to be slow and controlled, it’s crucial that you’re not lifting a weight that’s too heavy for you.
Usually, when we lift a weight that’s too heavy, we start to compromise our form and rush through the movement.
This allows us to use momentum to help us carry the weight and takes the tension off of our muscles.
So even though you might think you’re doing good lifting the heaviest weight possible, it’s not always best when it comes to your gains.
No matter what you do in the gym, you always want to be lifting a weight that you’re able to control and maintain proper form with.
Practice isometric holds to boost weightlifting intensity
Isometric holds are another great way to increase your time spent under tension and therefore the intensity of your workouts.
An isometric hold is when you pause an exercise when you get to the point of the biggest stretch and most tension.
This would be the time at the end of the eccentric movement, and just before the beginning of the concentric movement.
For example, to perform an isometric hold during a squat, you’d pause and hold at the bottom of your squat just before rising up again.
Doing this allows you to stop and hold a big stretch on your muscles, putting your muscles under more tension.
As well as adding a little more of a challenge to every rep and stimulating more muscle growth.
Add in partial reps for more effective weight training
When training intensely in the gym, it’s important to keep proper form during each rep.
Especially when training to failure.
That’s why people usually hit failure when they can’t do anymore full reps with proper form.
However, a great way to increase the intensity of each set you do is to start implementing partial reps.
To do partial reps means that you don’t do full reps, but instead you do just a portion of the rep.
You’d do as much of a rep you can until you can’t complete even the tiniest bit of another rep.
If you do this after you reach failure with full reps, it’ll helps you get much closer to true failure during your set.
A couple things you should know about partial reps
First off, it’s important to keep proper form even if you’re only doing a small portion of a singular rep.
For example, if you start doing partial mini reps on the leg press, you still don’t want your knees caving in.
Just like you wouldn’t want with full reps.
Secondly, you might feel pretty funny doing partial reps in the gym.
You might feel like you look funny doing the tiniest little baby reps. Or that people will just think you don’t know what a proper range of motion is.
However, just know that as funny as it may look, all you’re doing is getting yourself a lot closer to true failure.
And giving yourself a lot more potential for muscle growth!
Increase the amount of weight you’re lifting to increase weightlifting effectiveness
The more weight that we lift, while still maintaining good form and time under tension, the more we challenge our muscles.
Additionally, the easier it becomes to hit failure in a reasonable rep range.
As a result, increasing the amount of weight you lift is a great way to increase the intensity of your workouts.
We often underestimate our strength
For a lot of us in the gym, we often times don’t give ourselves enough credit for how strong we are.
Because of this, we lift a weight that’s way too light for us, without even knowing it.
Many of us though are a lot stronger than we think.
But if we don’t try and challenge ourselves by lifting more, we’ll never know how strong we actually are.
How to know if the weight you’re lifting is too light
For example, you might be able to do 8 reps of a certain exercise at your current weight. But if you were to increase the weight, you might still be able to do 8 reps with ease!
This is an example of the weight being way too light for yourself. But you never would’ve known if you didn’t try increasing the weight.
To know you’ve successfully increased the weight you’re lifting enough to challenge yourself, the number of reps you’re able to do should slightly drop.
For example, if you were previously able to do 12 reps at a certain weight, after increasing it, you should now be able to do 8 to 10 reps.
This will help you know that you’re increasing the weight enough to progressively challenge yourself.
Remember, you should always be lifting a weight that’s heavy enough where you struggle to complete your last few reps.
Versus lifting a weight where you only start to feel the burn during your last few reps. If this happens, then you know the weight is way too light.
Increase the number of sets or reps you do for more intense workouts
The final, easiest strategy to increase the intensity of your workouts is simply by doing more sets or reps.
By adding more sets or reps to your workout, you increase the amount of work your muscles are doing during a singular workout.
Therefore increasing the amount of muscle growth you stimulate during that workout.
How to increase the number of reps/sets you do
Increasing your reps can be as easy as just adding a few more reps to each exercise you do.
For example, if you normally do 8 reps of an exercise, try doing 10 reps of that exercise.
Increasing your reps is especially critical to do if you find you don’t struggle to complete the last few of them.
Another strategy to increase the number of reps you’re doing is to not count how many you do at all.
Instead, just keep going until you can’t do anymore.
This helps us get over the mental block I was talking about earlier. The one where our mind wants to quit once we’ve hit a certain number.
By not counting at all, we can’t stop when we hit a certain number, because we don’t know what number we’re at!
However, this isn’t something you’d want to do with every exercise. Since knowing what rep range we hit at what weight we’re lifting is crucial for us to continue progressing.
Takeaways
If you want to maximize your progress in the gym, then increasing the intensity of your workouts is crucial.
The main aspect to increase the intensity of your workouts is to overcome any mental blocks holding yourself back.
By practicing training to failure, increasing your time under tension, and lifting heavier weights, you can push yourself to what you’re bodies actually capable of.
Not just what your mind thinks you’re capable of!
Then, before you know it, you’ll be training more intensely and see more progress than ever before.
More of my posts on women’s weightlifting and fitness:
Why weightlifting WON’T make you look bulky