Originally posted by brucevangeorge
Use your instincts, they are never wrong.
This is absolutely the worst mindset you could have in the weight room (let alone life in general).
There is no "weight lifting instinct." The reason why workout programs vary so much is not because people are so drastically different -- they aren't. It's because there has been very little research in the field, and even some of the "experts" make simple mistakes all of the time that become widespread as common knowledge.
There are tried and true methods for gaining mass, and some work better than others. Some work better for some people than others -- but only to a limited extent. You should not go into the weight room without a plan and a system. You should start with something that you can depend on to work and then modify it to suit your individual needs, but the standard rules of about 8 reps and 2-3 sets per exercise should not be overlooked.
There is a science to weight lifting, just like other fields of physiology.
With deadlifts, I prefer not to use a belt because your lower back is a very important muscle that you have to depend on for other exercises, and if you just give it a little while it should catch up quickly and then you will feel your legs getting hit hard as well. The same thing goes for gloves. Gloves allow you to use a weaker grip, which will decrease the amount of development you get in your forearms as a side effect of exercises like deadlifts, and if you just give it a little time your grip will get strong enough to lift a good weight without gloves.
Warmup sets are very important with compound exercises because there are so many muscle groups that you hit and you don't want to schock them all into doing a workset all at once... you want to get blood circulating to them so they are ready to be strained. Also, you should rest for a bit longer on compound exercises like deadlifts because you will have done a lot of anaerobic work and you'll need some extra oxygen to get rid of the lactic acid.
