Something magic happens when you start lifting heavy weights. A big piece of it is the sense of accomplishment; when you surprise yourself with what you’re capable of, it offers an unrivaled dose of empowerment.

Oh, and there are tons of health benefits, too. A lot of them come with any level of strength work. “Resistance training is important for any individual's long-term fitness and health goals, particularly as we age,” says Peloton instructor Katie Wang. “Developing your muscles helps prevent injury, improves your balance, stability, and flexibility—all things that are more at risk as we age.” But there are a select few that you only get when you push your limits with heavy weights. 

“To build muscle it's key to progressively lift heavier weights,” Katie adds. “Not only does lifting heavier weights help you build muscle and increase bone density (particularly important for women who are more at risk for osteoporosis as we age) but in some cases, it has also been shown to help increase your metabolism and even cognitive function.” 

The thing about lifting heavy weights is that you can’t just stroll up to a dumbbell rack and pick up the big ones. If you’re new to strength work or currently engage in resistance training but want to work your way up to lifting heavier weights, you’ll need to follow a calculated approach. Ready to trade your 10s for 50s, or your empty barbell for a loaded one? The five simple steps can help you get there—the essentials of how to lift heavier weights, ahead.

1. Know Your Level

Check your ego at the door. Before lifting heavier, you need to be honest about where you are, ability-wise, right now. Understanding your current fitness level as it relates to resistance training can help you pick a program and progress appropriately when lifting heavier weights.

If you’ve been engaging in resistance training consistently for less than six months, you’re considered a beginner by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). You're intermediate if you’ve been consistently training for more than six months, and advanced if you have years of resistance training experience and have made significant improvements in your muscular fitness.

2. Master Proper Form

There’s one prerequisite you need to meet before picking up a heavier weight, no matter which level you are: form. “First and foremost, every strength athlete, casual or professional, has to employ perfect technical execution,” says Bill Clark, world champion powerlifter and lecturer in the Binghamton University (SUNY) Health and Wellness Studies Program. “This technical proficiency is one of the key signs that someone is ready, or not ready, to move ahead.”

Form is fundamental when you’re trying to lift heavier, since using poor posture or technique can put undue strain on joints, ligaments, and muscles, increasing your risk of injury—and this is only compounded by the fact that heavier loads also pose a greater injury risk. For example, “if the shoulders untuck and the elbows drift in the bench or the lumbar spine unlocks in the deadlift or squat, you have an exponentially higher risk of injury,” Clark says. 

If you’re training by yourself at relatively low loads and feel confident about your abilities, you can keep an eye on your form using a mirror or camera. If you’re serious about lifting heavier, you may also want to enlist the help of a trainer or coach who can give you feedback in real-time.

3. Follow a Routine

This one is super important since consistency and repetition are necessary to get stronger. Most research on the impacts of resistance training follows participants for at least four weeks, and there’s a reason: It takes time to build strength. The good news is that beginners should see strength improvements pretty quickly, since untrained individuals tend to see the fastest and most dramatic gains, according to the ACSM.

Your current resistance training level (novice, intermediate, advanced) will dictate how often you should train and how to split it up. The ACSM recommends novices train the whole body two to three days per week, intermediate exercisers continue this frequency or try a workout split three to four days per week (where you break up training by muscle group), and that advanced lifters train four to six days per week. 

Clark agrees. For intermediate-to-advanced lifters, once your muscles, connective tissues, and nervous system are primed and have reached a “saturation point” from doing basic compound exercises (meaning, they’re no longer being challenged), “a solid four days per week routine should provide the proper stimulus and recovery necessary to facilitate gains in strength and power,” he says.  

And unless you’re training to be a strength athlete or for a super-specific goal, it doesn’t have to be anything fancy. “Sometimes we get overwhelmed with overcomplicating our workouts (and our lives!),” Katie says. “If you're looking to increase your strength, stay structured and simple. Commit to a program that details progressive overload or gradually increasing the demand on your targeted muscle to gain muscular strength, power, and size.” For example, beginner exercisers who want to build a strength base and lift slightly heavier dumbbells could find those gains with a six-week program such as Beginner Strength. Intermediate exercisers could benefit from Ben’s 4-Week The Stronger You program. And advanced athletes could try Adrian’s Advanced 5-Day Split. Strength training programs for all levels are available on the Peloton App and on Peloton’s Strength+ App. 

If you’d like to focus on lifting heavier with one exercise—such as squats, for example—it could be as simple as doing them twice a week with the intent to progress. “Each week, aim to increase your weight selection and see how strong you can get in a six-week timespan,” Katie says.

4. Push Your Limits with Progressive Overload

As Katie mentioned, your training program should gradually increase the demand placed on your muscles. This principle is called progressive overload; it’s the process of continually challenging your neuromuscular system with incremental increases in time, weight, or intensity, and it’s critical to seeing results from resistance training over time.

With strength training, one of the most straightforward ways to use progressive overload is to gradually increase the amount of weight you lift. How do you know when you’re ready to bump it up? 

A handy rule of thumb is the “two for two” rule, as recommended by the ACSM and the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM). The rule suggests that you're ready to progress if you can perform two extra reps (with perfect form) of a given exercise during two consecutive training sessions. At that point, you should increase the weight between two to 10 percent on your next go—or the smallest increase possible with the weights you have on hand. (For instance, if you’re comfortably chest pressing 30lbs and ready to progress, you’d ideally increase your load by no more than 3lbs; however, most dumbbell sets in gyms aren’t available in such small increments.) 

How many reps should you do in the first place? The ACSM recommends that beginner to intermediate lifters do 8–12 repetitions using moderate weights, and that intermediate to advanced lifters employ a range, from 1–12 repetitions, eventually working towards doing just one to six reps with heavy loads.

If you’re a beginner or casual lifter working in those higher rep ranges, you can also go more based on feel. “If you’re hitting 12-15 reps with ease then it's a good sign that you are ready to challenge yourself with a heavier weight,” Katie says. “The last few reps in your set should be a struggle that you are proud to overcome.”

5. Factor In Recovery

It doesn’t matter how hard you work in the gym; if you don’t support your strength gains with proper nutrition and recovery, you’re likely not going to see the same results. 

“Give your muscles some time to recover properly and make sure you’re also fueling properly,” Katie says. “When you’re lifting heavier, your muscle fibers are breaking down, thus need the time and fuel to fully recover.” That includes eating plenty of protein to optimize muscle protein synthesis, the process of building new muscle tissue.

Training too much without proper recovery could result in chronic fatigue, a decrease in performance, and eventually injury, according to the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA). “Don't underestimate a rest day and a good night's sleep. I like to take the approach of—the harder my workout is, the deeper my recovery should be,” Katie adds.

In addition to taking rest days as needed within your program, it could also make sense to take a deload week every once in a while, where you scale back or pause your training for a week to give your body a chance to rest more thoroughly.

6. Add Variety

This is Clark’s number one tip for continuing to see progress and avoiding plateaus: variety. (And for what it’s worth, that’s true no matter which type of workout you’re doing.)

“My coaches and I had over 400 variations for the bench press alone, but we typically employed about 30, all of which focused on strengthening relatively weak areas. When you fix the weak area, you get stronger,” he says. “Most people hit a plateau because they’re failing to give the nervous system a reason to adapt. They’ve reached the point of saturation. The answer isn’t usually to do more; the answer is to do something different.” 

Continuing to increase the amount of strength work you’re doing can increase your risk of overtraining, ACSM confirms. Instead, as Clark says, it’s more effective to systematically vary your training volume and intensity over time so you continue to see gains. You can do so by changing the exercises you’re doing, the equipment you’re using (i.e., a barbell vs. a kettlebell), your grip, the joint angle (ex, the incline chest press), or by manipulating the number of sets or reps, how much you’re lifting, how much you’re resting, or the speed of the move itself. Yeah, there’s a lot to play with—and research suggests there’s a sweet spot between not enough variation and too much, though the line isn’t exactly clear.

Clark recommends adding some sort of variation every one or two weeks to keep things fresh, while NASM recommends making more extensive changes to your training every four to six weeks.

Takeaway

Lifting heavier weights can be simple, or quite complex, especially if you fall under the umbrella of more advanced training. No matter what, though, the key principles remain the same: focus on proper form first, stay consistent, and continue challenging yourself at a reasonable level. 

If you feel aimless in your strength journey, commit to a program (such as one of Peloton's Strength Programs). “Tracking your workouts and staying on a routine can help give you targets to strive toward—and we all feel a little more confident and proud when we are able to hit those!” Katie says.

If things are moving more slowly than you’d like, remember that you are getting stronger, even if the difference in weight lifted feels minimal, Clark says.