Why Your Weightlifting Sets Are Too Easy And How to Fix Them

I saw a guy in the gym today bench pressing 95 pounds.

He was doing sets of at least 10, and they looked easy. The first rep moved about the same speed as the last. He finished the set looking like he had plenty left.

My first thought was, “He’s lifting too light.”

But that’s not really the issue.

Ninety-five pounds might be heavy for one person and a warm-up for someone else. The number itself doesn’t matter.

The problem was that the set was too easy for him.

If you’re trying to build muscle, you have to give the muscle a reason to adapt.

That means your working sets need to be hard enough that you’re getting reasonably close to failure. You don’t need to take every set to absolute failure, but if you finish 10 reps and could have done another 10, you’re probably not doing much for hypertrophy.

People get hung up on rep ranges.

Eight reps. Ten reps. Twelve reps.

There’s nothing magical about any of those numbers.

You can build muscle with higher-rep sets too. Research shows that even sets of 20 or 30 can produce hypertrophy if you push them hard enough.

But that’s the important part: you have to push them hard enough.

And for most people, doing a moderate number of reps with a heavier weight is simply a more efficient way to train.

In the case of the guy I saw, if 95 pounds for 10 was easy, maybe he should have been using 115 or 135 and doing six to eight hard reps instead.

Not because 135 is some special number.

Because it would have challenged him more.

One simple way to judge your sets is to ask yourself:

How many good reps did I have left?

If the answer is eight or ten, the set was probably too easy.

If the answer is one or two, you’re much closer to where you want to be.

You can usually see it, too. As a hard set progresses, the last few reps tend to slow down. They require more effort. You have to work.

That doesn’t mean your form should fall apart. It means the weight is actually challenging you.

And if you want to get bigger, you should be trying to get stronger over time.

That doesn’t mean chasing one-rep maxes or trying to impress people in the gym. It means that six months from now, you should be able to do something you can’t do today.

More weight for the same reps.

More reps with the same weight.

That’s progress.

A lot of people spend years going to the gym and basically practicing weights they can already lift.

They’re exercising, but they’re not really training for adaptation. It is why they look the same year after year. 

So stop worrying about whether the weight on your bar looks heavy to somebody else.

Ask whether it’s heavy enough for you.

If you want to build muscle, get stronger.

And don’t waste your time in the gym.

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