>10 deadlifts @ 100 pounds doesn't take NEARLY as much effort in any measure as 1 rep at 1000 pounds. What you said is so wrong it's laughable. It takes exactly the same energy, the effort is irrelevant, exertion and effort are two things that you're confusing in order to have any sort of valid argument. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The strain of doing 1 1,000 pound rep is probably greater on your body, the energy expended however is the same, as it takes the same amount of power to lift both masses. Then there's the time element, which you have ignored as part of the equation. >Energy used is not a linear function as force grows. energy used is the same, although I do agree that larger mass requires exponentially more force. So your math is off, if it takes 4x as much energy to lift a mass double the size, a 25 vs 100lbs mass requires 16x more energy. So we are both idiots and both wrong. >Another counterexample, setting your car to drive at just the lowest first gear possible over 100 miles doesn't take NEARLY as much gas as doing the exact same distance in the exact same car going any speed higher. Now you're entering MY world. The theoretical best fuel economy is achieved by the highest speed at the lowest rpm possible. However there are nearly infinite factors affecting this. Reducing the size of the input shaft relative to the output shaft creates torque multiplication at the expense of output shaft velocity, the inverse is also true. *using my retardation, I've concluded that it would take 100 deadlifts of 100 lbs over a certain time span to equal the effort in 1 rep at 1000 lbs over a certain time span. Use another example, pull ups. I can do 10 pull ups in a row, in about 30 seconds, but not 100 in 300 seconds(5 min).