Episode 52: 5 Signs Ego-Lifting is Killing Your Gains
When it comes to making progress in the gym, lifting heavier weights is often seen as the gold standard. But what if your obsession with stacking plates is actually holding you back? Enter ego lifting—a common but destructive habit that can stall progress, increase injury risk, and keep you from reaching your true potential. In this post, we’ll break down what ego lifting is, how to recognize it, where it stems from, and how to break free from it.
What is Ego Lifting?
Ego lifting refers to lifting weights that are too heavy for you to maintain proper form, often to impress others or boost your self-esteem.
Instead of focusing on controlled, effective reps, ego lifters prioritize moving as much weight as possible—often at the cost of proper technique.
👉 This can lead to poor muscle activation, stalled progress, and an increased risk of injury.
Common examples of ego lifting include:
Performing half-rep squats with excessive weight.
Bouncing the bar off your chest in the bench press.
Using momentum to swing dumbbells instead of controlling them.
Deadlifting with a rounded back to move more weight.
Signs You May Be Ego Lifting
Not sure if you’re guilty of ego lifting? Here are some common signs:
You avoid warm-ups or mobility work. If you think warming up with lighter weights is a waste of time, you might be prioritizing numbers over performance.
You judge your progress solely by the weight on the bar. Strength is about more than just lifting heavier—it’s also about control, endurance, and muscle engagement.
You experience frequent injuries or stalled progress. If you’re constantly battling aches and pains or your numbers aren’t improving, ego lifting could be the culprit.
Your form breaks down at heavy weights. If you’re sacrificing technique just to complete a rep, you’re not lifting effectively.
You get defensive when someone corrects your form. If you bristle at constructive criticism, you might be lifting for validation rather than progress.
Where Does Ego Lifting Come From?
Understanding why we fall into the trap of ego lifting is key to overcoming it. Here are some common sources:
Gym Culture & Social Media Pressure – Watching others lift heavy can make you feel like you need to match them, even if your form suffers.
Misconceptions About Strength Training – Some believe that lifting heavy at all costs is the only way to get stronger, ignoring the importance of proper progression, technique, and time under tension.
Insecurity & Validation Seeking – Many lifters use heavy weights as a way to prove their strength, sometimes at the expense of actual progress.
How to Break Out of the Ego Lifting Mindset
If you recognize that ego lifting is holding you back, here’s how to shift your mindset and start making real progress:
Redefine Success – Instead of focusing on weight alone, measure progress in terms of endurance, stability, and overall strength development.
Prioritize Form Over Weight – A controlled, full-range rep with lighter weight is far more effective than a sloppy, heavy rep.
Use Progressive Overload Properly – Strength gains come from gradual increases, not jumping to the heaviest weight possible.
Film Your Lifts – Reviewing your technique can help you stay accountable and make adjustments where needed.
Surround Yourself with the Right Mindset – Train with people who value proper technique and longevity over lifting heavy for show.
Final Thoughts
Ego lifting is a trap that can derail your progress, increase injury risk, and keep you from reaching your full potential. By shifting your focus from lifting the heaviest weights to lifting with proper form and progression, you’ll build a stronger, healthier, and more resilient body. So next time you hit the gym, ask yourself: are you lifting to improve, or just to impress?
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Jayd (00:00):
Strength is more than just being able to lift heavier. It's just as much about having the control of your body and being able to control the weight while you're in motion. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years, and I also grew up in the fitness industry. So I created this podcast to share some of the tips and wisdom that I share with my personal training clients and followers. In today's episode, we're going to take a look at whether or not ego lifting may be killing your gains. Ego lifting refers to trying to lift heavier weight than what you can actually control with good technique, usually with the intention of trying to impress other people or to boost your own self-esteem. Instead of focusing on controlled, effective reps, ego lifters will often prioritize lifting as much weight as possible as quickly as possible, often at the cost of proper technique.
(01:08)
Now, lifting this weight can lead to poor muscle activation. You're not going to get the gains that you would get through actually practicing slow controlled effective reps, which means that you'll likely experience stalled progress and even increased risk of injury. So today we're going to take a look at how to figure out if you might be ego lifting, and I'm going to give you some tips on how to reframe your mindsets so that you can practice your lifts effectively and with control to be safer about it and to make more progress. But before we get into the episode, make sure to give this video like if you're watching this on YouTube, and make sure to subscribe to the channel so that you always get the latest episodes and videos that I drop. I post pretty frequently on my YouTube channel, different exercise tutorial videos, as well as discussion videos just like this.
(01:58)
So never miss a video by making sure that you are subscribed. If you're listening to this podcast, thank you so much. Make sure to follow the show so that you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. If you would like more information on me and the services that I offer, check out my website, Jaydigains.com. That's J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-N s.com. Right now, I am accepting new personal training clients and my body sculpt program, and you can also sign up for my membership right from my website where you can download workout plans, meal plans, and get training tips, nutrition tips, fat loss tips, and other recipes every single month. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(02:43)
Ego lifting is one of the most common problems that I see in personal training clients, especially when they come to me with previous experience of lifting. As a reminder, ego lifting is when you try to exercise with more weight than what you can effectively control or execute with good technique. Lifting this way is really not optimal. You only want to train with the amount of weight that you can properly control. Not only does it mean that you will likely sacrifice some gains and stall your progress. In the worst cases, it often leads to injury. Common examples of ego lifting include performing half rep squats with excessive weight. If you are squatting with an amount of weight that you can't execute a proper squat, getting your thighs to parallel. If your mobility allows, then you're using way too much weight. Another example of ego lifting might be bouncing the bar off of your chest while you're doing a chest press.
(03:40)
Rather than allowing your muscles to generate the force to push the weight back up. In bodybuilding exercises, you may be swinging the weights around using momentum to get them up rather than generating the force with your muscles and also deadlift with a rounded spine. Basically, if you cannot perform the exercise slow and controlled with good technique throughout the entire range of motion, you should not be lifting that weight. Now, ego lifting can sneak up on even the best of us, even the most experienced and advanced exercises. We'll get into a habit of ego lifting from time to time. It's a good idea if you can pinpoint this starting to seep in early on so that you can adjust your mindset before it ends up getting you hurt. Now, if you're not sure whether or not you might be ego lifting, here are a few signs that you can look out for.
(04:30)
One, you tend to avoid warmups and mobility work. You might feel like warming up with lighter weights is a waste of time. Doing mobility work is a waste of time, and you may be prioritizing numbers like the weight on the bar or the number of reps over how you perform those reps. You may also begin to judge your progress solely by the amount of weight that you put on the bar. Strength is more than just being able to lift heavier. It's just as much about having the control of your body and being able to control the weight while you're in motion. It's also about your range of motion. Being able to manage a certain amount of weight in a deeper squat, for instance, getting more muscle engagement. All of these are really important parts of your progression as an athlete, as a lifter, if you have been ego lifting for an extended period of time, you may notice that you're getting a lot of minor aches and pains or chronic injuries popping up.
(05:35)
This might be happening pretty frequently. While at the same time your lifts aren't actually improving. You're kind of stalling in your progress. So if you're getting a lot of aches and pains and you're not really actually progressing, this is a good sign that you may be ego lifting. You may also notice that your form begins to break down as you add more weight onto the bar. If this happens a lot in your training sessions that you're practicing with poor technique but heavier weights on the bar, that's a good sign that you're ego lifting. And finally, if you get defensive when someone corrects your form or if they tell you to slow down, this is a good sign that you are ego lifting and that you're prioritizing the amount of weight on the bar over how in control you are of that weight. This means that you are more concerned with the validation of how much weight you put on the bar versus prioritizing progress over time.
(06:33)
Like I said, ego lifting can seep into your mindset no matter who you are, whether you're a beginner, intermediate, or an advanced lifter. I find however, that ego lifting is more often a problem with people who participate in certain gym cultures where you go to a gym and you can just kind of tell that there's sort of this competitive atmosphere, and this isn't every gym, but there definitely are some gyms that have a culture of competition where people regularly are putting more weight on the bar than they probably should, where their form failure is breaking down. You want to surround yourself with gym buddies that prioritize progress in terms of improved technique and control mobility, as well as how much weight is actually on the bar. It can also come from social media pressure, which is another aspect of who are you spending your time with.
(07:28)
If you are consuming a lot of social media where people are moving really crazy weights, this can sometimes lead to you kind of comparing yourself where you are in your journey to them and make you feel like you should be doing that, where you begin to rush yourself to add more and more weight to catch up with them, when really you should be focusing on your own journey and progressing one step at a time from where you currently are. Now, ego lifting can also come from misconceptions about what strength training is. Many people believe that strength training is all about always adding on more and more and more weight to the bar, which makes sense given that many of the competitive weight training competitions are really focused on how much weight you put on the bar, but true strength progression is about growth in your ability to control your body, to be able to command your muscles, to generate maximal force in a way that is safe and keeps your body in alignment.
(08:31)
For me, it's more impressive to see someone perform a squat with really good technique, but less weight than someone who performs a soup or heavy squat with really crappy technique. Form really should be your focus, improving your form and your technique at every stage of your journey and being able to execute each exercise with good technique, no matter much weight you put on the bar. Ego lifting can also set in due to personal insecurities or maybe you're seeking validation from the outside. Many people come to strength training because they feel like it's a way that they can prove themselves to somebody else or to themselves, and when you're super concerned with that validation or boosting your self-esteem can often lead to putting more pressure on yourself to add more weight to the bar than what you actually should. Now I'll be honest, the worst ego lifters that I've had to work with as a personal trainer often come from two main places.
(09:35)
One of those places is high school weight rooms. Whether you took weight training classes in high school or if you lifted with your football team, high school weight training classes and weight training groups often have that culture of competition of continue to put more and more and more weight on the bar and they don't spend as much time on proper technique and executing the exercises properly with good form. Many of the ex high school weight room students that I train really struggle with performing the exercises slowly and with good technique, and when you force them to slow down, a lot of times their form breaks down. They might be really strong at one range of motion within the squat, but if you force them to pause at another point in the squat, they fall over because they haven't had the chance to develop the balance in the control through the entire range of motion because maybe their gym group or their coach prioritized moving the weight as fast and explosively as possible.
(10:37)
Oftentimes, these people experience chronic injuries, and it's not until they work with me and we kind of reframe how to do strength training and how to do workouts in the gym, and they learn how to perform with good technique and prioritize good technique that they begin to actually make really crazy gains, but it often does require bumping back the amount of weight that they put on the bar and slowing things down for a period of time so that they can learn how to actually execute with good technique. Once they master that technique though, oh my goodness, it's PR after pr. I know another place that I get a lot of ego lifters from is the Starting Strength Program. This is a program that's created by Mark rto. It's one of the most well-known beginners strength training programs. It focuses specifically on just barbell training and progressive overload.
(11:29)
Within this program, lifters are encouraged to add weight on the bar every week of the program. Every time you go to do the same exercise, you should be adding on more weight. Now, there's not a lot of focus on mobility work or other accessories. There's not much discussion on how to modify exercises for your body type because there are different recommendations for people who have longer femurs or differently sized limbs, et cetera. Another problem that I have with this program is that the people who go through it often rush through their reps and they really struggle to work on an accumulation phase or mobility work or balance work, which is a necessary foundation for actually being in control of big weight. And this program often sets people up with the expectation that every time they lift, they should be adding on more weight to the bar, which is very unrealistic and not necessary for making gains.
(12:29)
So when one of these students comes to work with me and I start to acclimate them to block periodization where we have accumulation phases, intensification phases, and peaking blocks, they really struggle to do the foundational work necessary to establish good technique because they just don't value it. They also have a really hard time doing cardio because cardiovascular training is not really a part of the Starting Strength program, and it is actually another really important piece of being overall athletic and improving your strength. A strong cardiovascular system is really important for delivering oxygen to your muscles and helping you in the recovery process. So often what happens with these clients is they really struggle to stay consistent with their program because it's just not as fun to train effectively as adding more weight onto the bar every single week. And sometimes you can just start to kind of get into an ego lifting mindset because you might be feeling insecure and you feel like you have to prove something.
(13:29)
It happens to everybody at some point in their fitness journey. So let's talk about how to break out of the ego lifting mindset. If you recognize that ego lifting may be holding you back, there are a couple of things that you can do to help change the trajectory of your workouts, and it's definitely worth doing this because this will allow you to actually make gains, make progress, and perform your workouts more safely to avoid injury. One is that you need to sit down and redefine what success means to you. Instead of focusing on weight alone, the amount of weight that you put on the bar define success and improvement by improvements in your endurance, improvements in your stability, your overall strength development, your mobility, how in control you are of that weight, how long you can hold different points of the movement. All of these are great indications of progress.
(14:30)
Number two is to prioritize form over weight. It's not just about how much weight you have on the bar, it's about how in control you are of that weight at all points of the exercise. A controlled full range rep with lighter weight is hella more impressive than a sloppy, fast heavy rep. You also need to establish an idea of what proper progression is. Strength gains come from gradual increases of the weight over time, and also strength improves as you also improve your balance, your overall coordination, your muscular endurance and work capacity. If you don't focus on improving these aspects of your muscular fitness, then you're not going to be able to improve your strength. Strength is built on top of the foundation of hypertrophy, muscular endurance, proper technique work, working with time under tension. If you're not putting in the effort to execute these exercises with proper technique, more time under tension and building muscle while also improving your mobility, then you are going to stall and probably get injured.
(15:43)
Once you get to that intermediate and advanced stage of being a lifter, just know that your progress is going to be a lot slower than what it was in the beginning. When you are a beginner and you have those newbie gains, you can more realistically expect to add more weight onto the bar on a week by week basis, but that's not realistic for an intermediate or advanced lifter. Progress is a lot slower at that point, and that's why we focus our training in different blocks that work on improving different aspects of your muscular fitness because that's what it really takes in order to move the needle on your strength. Another thing that can help you get out of the ego lifting mindset is to film your lifts. Review your technique every single time you lift regardless of the lift, regardless of the phase of your training, review your lifts, and if you're working with a coach, send your coach those videos so that they can give you form feedback and prioritize improving your form over time and make that your focus over how much weight is on the bar. And lastly, make sure that you're surrounding yourself with people who have the right mindset. If you are within a culture, whether it's online or in an actual gym, make sure that you are spending your time with people who prioritize control and good technique over just slapping more weight on the bar. So there you have it. These are the ways that you can identify whether ego lifting has seeped into your mindset, and these are some tips for helping you to break out of that mindset.
(17:23)
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. I hope that you found this discussion to be helpful. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. If you're watching this on YouTube, let me know in the comments what your experience has been with ego lifting. Is it something that you have recognized in yourself and what helped you to break out of that mindset? Or are you currently struggling with that mindset and what questions do you have about it? Leave those all in the comments below the video. Also, make sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel so that you always get the latest videos whenever they drop. If you're listening to this podcast, thank you so much. Make sure that you follow the show so you always get the latest episodes. If you would like more information on me and the services that I offer, head over to my website, Jaydigains.com. I am accepting clients right now for my bodys sculpt program, so you can find more information on that at my website. That's Jaydigains.com, J-A-Y-D-I-G-A-I-N s.com. Thank you again for watching or listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
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