Step Four: Lift Something Light Until It Becomes Heavy.
It may be too easy if you go to the gym and lift a 5lb weight ten times. If you lift that same weight 1000 times, that weight becomes extremely heavy. This process will get you to your fitness goal fast, removing the headache of designing complicated routines.
Lifting light weights often helps you develop muscle memory, allowing you to move up in weight quickly without a high risk of injury. For example, if you are doing a chest press and set your starting weight at 30lbs, then lift that 30lbs 100 times, increasing the weight you lift from 30lbs one week to 35lbs next week without risking injury will be effortless.
You can double your weight lifted by only increasing the weight by 5 lbs a week over six weeks. It can sometimes get boring, but it will be worth it if you focus on your goal. One hundred repetitions of any exercise make you very familiar with that exercise. If you increase that number from 100 to 1000 reps, you become a master of that exercise. Imagine working out is the same as a basketball player shooting a jump shot.
For the basketball player to improve the percentage of shots he can make in a game, he must shoot ten times more in practice to increase his muscle memory and skill at shooting a basketball.
For this basketball player to develop his shooting muscles, he must shoot the ball until his arms become so tired that the ball feels like he’s shooting a concrete block. Once the player reaches this level and can still make shots, this player will become a master shooter.
The mastery number of 1000 reps came from one of my favorite quotes by Bruce Lee, who said, " I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."
It's not about the number of things you try out that make you strong, but the few things you do all the time.
Pick up a copy of the full book "Faster Stronger Wiser: Challenge Yourself"