GordyR said:
Hmmm while I agree that form is ultra important, I wouldn't go so far as to say weight has little bearing on muscular hypertrophy.
Absoloutly, that wasn't what I was saying but I understand my wording was poor. I wasn't going into extremes.
If you can bench press 300lb's with poor form then chances are you are far bigger than somone who can only bench press 150lb's with perfect form.
But of course it doesn't always work this way. What I was implying above doesn't have this massive range of difference between the weight i.e 150lbs. If you can bench press 300lbs with poor form then you are not properly training your chest. Poor form on bench to push more than you can properly will involve many other muscles, your lats will spread and help push the lift, your shoulders will come into play heavily etc.
Let's take it to a less extreme and more reasonable level. You bench press 300lbs with bad form for one month. Your mate who is exactly the same strength as you bench presses 250lbs for one month with perfect form, pressing with the chest and squeezing the rep out hard. Your mate will end up with a more full chest.
Muscular hypertrophy is simply the body adapting to stress. The more weight you are able to lift, the larger you become. Of course, form is of upmost importance as the stimuli of each specific exercise needs to be effective, but it is progressive resistance which stimulates muscle growth.
'The more weight you lift, the larger you become' is a massively generalised statement. It's just not that simple.
It seems to me as you're implying size = strength, when of course it doesn't. I've seen 160lb chaps deadlift ridiculous amounts, and 300lb guys deadlift pathetic amounts.
You cannot live on the edge of your max. and just hope that you may grow. Less weight and more focus, squeeze, and concetration and you will get a lot further than believeing you can get results because you can lift more than Joe bloggs next to you, but badly.
Eventually you will start to get bigger yes, but bodybuilding is not about the weight you lift, it's about the % of your maximum you lift and how you lift it.
Benching 100lb's with perfect form week after week will get you absolutely nowhere. You have to force your body to react to the stress.
Again, massively generalised. If you can bench 100lbs with good form, working the chest perfectly, and then you jump to 130lbs and you struggle but stick at it with bad form because you believe you're going to get a lot bigger than the guy who's working his chest perfectly, then you're going to be in for a shock when it comes down to it at the end of the day.
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