Stability or lack thereof, in my opinion, is the most important variable
associated with lifting ‘heavy ass weights’ (as Ronnie Coleman would say). If
at any point stability is compromised when lifting a weight, regardless of the
exercise, performance will suffer.
What happens when there is a lack of stability is the nervous system will
struggle in an attempt to create stability, even though you only really care to
lift the weight. If the nervous system is ‘distracted’ with trying to fix the
stability issue, than you can bet that much of the energy that would have gone
into lifting the actual weight itself, is lost.
You see, the body’s primary concern is to remain safe, and it does so byattempting to create stability. It doesn’t care to lift heavy weights, as muchas we all wish it did. This is primarily why we can lift much more weight using
machines as opposed to free weights.