Ok, I am no where near maintenance, but I've been lifting weights for about 3 months and I've steadily increased them as they get easier. I was wondering once I get to a point where I am happy with my muscle/body, will I still need to increase my weights if they get too easy? Or will lifting that certain amount allow me to maintain what I've built? Sorry if this is a dumb question and thanks in advance for any replies.
There are numerous factors that allow you to increase the weight you lift.
One, of course, is muscle size.
Another is that the nervous system gets more efficient at recruiting muscle fibers that were previously dormant.
Another is a decrease in nervous inhibition. That is nervous system allows you to lift more and more as it "learns" what you are capable of doing so safely. For instance, we've all heard stories about incredible feats of strength accomplished in emergencies as when a mother lifts up the back of a car to free her trapped child. This is the strength that your muscles are capable. However, the force from these incredible feats of strength often results in muscle and connective tissue damage. Like muscle spindles that help keep you from overstretching, the golgi tendon organ sends feedback to the central nervous system to limit the amount of force that you will generate in order to protect from muscle and connective tissue damage. Again, like the muscle spindles which with flexibility training allow you a greater and greater range of motion over time, with training, you will be less inhibited in the amount of weight you can safely lift.
Finally, as you gain experience and learn what you are capable of, you will gain confidence, which allows you to lift higher. I know I have personally been stuck on a weight for a few sessions and didn't think I could progress higher, then I miscounted the weights. Perhaps threw on an extra 5 or 10lb plate or grabbed the 30lb dumbells instead of the 25lb without realizing and ended up hitting all my reps. The limiting factor here was not muscular in nature at all. It was a mental block. I didn't think I could lift the higher weight, but when I thought I was lifting the lighter weight, I found that it was a pure cofidence level.
This is all a long winded way of saying that when you reach your goal muscle, the rest of the factors will continue to allow you to lift more weight. Increases in these factors will cause weights you are using at that time to become too easy. If you don't increase weight to account for these increases, you will be placing less and less stress on your muscle over time. As the stress on the muscle is decreased over time, the muscle will atrophy accordingly.
Unless it is unsafe to do so, continue to increase the weight. Also, outside of initial gains, it is extremely difficult to gain muscle without a caloric surplus, so if you are eating at a maintenance level, you will likely to continue to get stronger, but you won't get significantly bulkier.
I usually agree 100% with depalma, but after lifting progressively heavier for the last 7-8 years and being OLD, I'm changing my mind on the "lift as heavy as you can" approach. Yes, it is hard to build muscle, but not impossible with the right training program and eating program and schedule. I've been eating at maintenance level or a caloric deficit for most of the last 6 years. For the last 3 years, my scale weight has stayed about the same and my body fat has dropped. My muscle mass has increased slowly and become more defined. I honestly do NOT want more muscle anywhere except my calves, and that just isn't happening. My muscles are capable of lifting heavier than my joints( particularly shoulders and elbows) can support. So I've actually lowered that max amount of weight that I will used for some exercises and increased the difficulty level by adding balance features, compound or bilateral exercises instead of a simple motion, strange body positions so that I'm relying on ab strength as well as whatever the primary muscle group is. And although it is psychologically killing me, I'm increasing reps to the 12-15 range and never lifting at a weight where I'll fail at less than 10.
But...it took me 7 years of heavy lifting to get to this point naturally. A longwinded way to say that yes- you can eventually get to the point where you just want to lift to maintain and you don't necessarily want to go heavier forever. You need to keep challenging your body, but that doesn't always necessitate heavier weight.
We may not be in total agreement, but I'm not sure we totally disagree here.
For instance, I advocated increasing weights when they became too easy. I did not advocate continuing with a lift as heavy as you can approach. I guess I wasn't clear there.
Also, I said "Unless it is unsafe to do so, continue to increase the weight." You mentioned "My muscles are capable of lifting heavier than my joints( particularly shoulders and elbows) can support." So, I think we actually agree here, in that in your case, it would be unsafe to continue to increase weight.
But you, of course, are 100% correct that there are several other ways to adhere to challenge the muscle rather than just increasing the weight. Since the original poster mentioned increasing weights as her current method, I looked at it a bit narrowly.
This is why you are the professional and I'm just an enthusiast
Question about Maintaining
I'm nowhere close to where I want to be, but I can see the day in the future when I am. What happens then???
