Many fitness goals are achieved through the application of progressive overload. Exercising short of our current capabilities often results in maintenance (at best) or even regression over time.
Popular forms of progressive overload are often those associated with an increase of something, such as weight, reps, time, sets and frequency of training. This blog was written to offer my honest assessment of how effective I believe these methods to be, as well as delve into a few more avenues of progressive overload which seem to be far less utilised but just as, if not more effective.
Not all styles of training will be applicable to this blog, but most will, especially resistance based training with a view to improving your muscular strength and/or endurance, as well as increasing muscle mass.
Starting with a view to strength training; the amount of weight you can move or control for 1 repetition is the greatest indicator of overall strength. Therefore measuring the increase of weight/resistance as a form of progressive overload will always be an essential tool to increasing your absolute or relative strength.
Absolute strength represents the total amount of weight moved or controlled by an individual regardless of anything else, whereas relative strength takes into account how much the individual weighs.
Person A weighs 100kg and deadlifts 100kg
Person B weighs 80kg and deadlifts 90kg
Person A has greater absolute strength whereas person B has greater relative strength.
This is worth taking into account with strength training, as your lift may have increased by a certain amount, however if your bodyweight has also increased then you may in fact be weaker from a relative perspective, despite being stronger from an absolute perspective.
In order for an individual to properly gauge the progress of their muscular strength and/or endurance through resistance based training, the following forms of progressive overload can be utilised:
Increase resistance/weight.
Increase volume (reps, sets and/or time performed).
Decrease recovery between sets.
Decrease tempo of exercise.
The progressive overload tools you should focus on are those that will aid your goal rather than become a hinderance. This is where I tend to question how effective certain methods are, starting with an increase of training frequency.
An increase of frequency is simply training more often. For example, going from 2 to 3 workouts per week.
Some goals and styles of training are affected far more than others in this regard. Training at a low intensity for short periods will not require a long time to recover. Training at a high intensity or for long periods will require more recovery time.
Increasing exercise frequency will initially showcase substantial progress. However, there will come a point where you start to notice the intensity of your training drop as a result of fatigue if you're continuously increasing the frequency of your training (without the use of performance enhancing drugs to aid recovery).
When applying progressive overload during a workout, you're putting your body under a new stress that will require recovery, then overcompensation through sufficient nutrients in order to manage that stress again, and push further.
If your goal is to improve your muscular strength and/or endurance, or to increase muscle mass, then training the same area of the body before it has recovered from a previous workout will only prolong the recovery process and be of no benefit to your goal. For this reason, I always advise that people with the above goals look to achieve greater intensity from a single workout (by way of other forms of progressive overload) and allow for ample recovery time, before making the decision to increase their frequency of training past 3 days per week.
Just to clarify, I don't feel there's any issue with training every day, providing it's varied and isn't detrimental to your goals.
Person A cannot train on the weekend due to family commitments. They train with high intensity, applying progressive overload during most sessions, which usually takes them 48 hours to recover. Therefore in my opinion, 3 days of resistance training (Monday, Wednesday and Friday) would be ideal, potentially allowing for a different style of exercise on Tuesday and Thursday if they wish.
As previously mentioned, the greatest indicator of muscular strength is the amount of weight utilised for a single rep, whereas muscular endurance is based on how long or how many times you can perform the exercise. Therefore going from a maximum of performing 4 reps of an exercise at a certain weight to 5 reps shows a greater increase in strength than going from 20 to 25 reps, which represents a greater increase in muscular endurance.
Much like recording the total weight utilized for specific exercises, recording reps is also an essential tool to measure progress from a muscular strength and endurance perspective providing the amount of weight or number of reps doesn't take precedent over intensity and form.
5 controlled reps with full range of motion is far more beneficial than 10 rushed reps at half the range. Leave the ego outside and be honest with yourself - you'll progress much quicker.
Training with high intensity in controlled rep ranges below 10 should result in an increase of strength whilst upwards of 10 should see progress in muscular endurance. Neither focus is totally exclusive to an arbitrary number of reps hence me being vague when it comes to this subject.
Train hard with honest form, pushing your body a bit further than last time, and you'll improve.
With honesty and controlled training in mind, I'd advise someone looking to increase their muscular strength and/or endurance to favour a decrease in tempo in suitable exercises as an effective form of progressive overload to aid their goal. This forces to muscles to control the weight for a longer period of time, which can lead to both to extra repetitions (greater endurance), and an increase of weight (greater strength).
When monitoring the tempo of an exercise, we tend to focus on 3 essential contractions of a muscle - positive, negative and static (concentric, eccentric and isometric). Using the bicep curl as an example, the downward phase is the negative motion where your muscle lengthens, the upward phase is the positive where you muscle shortens, and the static phase is holding the weight still at the top - the muscle is contracted to hold still, not generate movement. If you performed a curl with a 3 second downward phase, 1 second upward phase and no time held at either end, you'd record your tempo as 3010 (always starting with the negative).
Contracting your muscles for longer periods will result in greater muscular strength, endurance and stabilization. This is also highlighted through isometric (still) exercises such as a plank, handstand or wall sit, where we often use time as a measure of progress. Holding these exercises for longer signifies improvement.
Similarly to recording reps, holding a contraction to control a subjectively large amount of weight for a short time would give us more of a indication of strength, whereas a subjectively lighter weight held for a longer period is more a show of endurance.
Another effective form of progressive overload that is often overlooked by gym goers is recording your recovery between sets, or exercises.
This has a varying level of importance based on your goals. If you're solely focused on strength training then I'd advise ample recovery time to ensure you're able to get maximum output from each set.
However if you're more focused on muscular endurance and high volume training, then recording rest periods and ensuring you're not exceeding that time can be incredibly beneficial, not only to your immediate goals, but also your cardiovascular fitness.
Recording your recovery time can also help avoid distractions, often involving looking at phones in between sets.
Speaking of sets, a form of progressive overload that could sometimes be questioned is adding multiple sets.
As part of a muscular strength or endurance programme, using more sets is a useful and more often than not, essential strategy to ensure the desired volume is achieved.
However, if your goal is increase muscle mass then your main focus should be achieving the greatest possible intensity from your first working set and hitting total muscular failure, or getting as close to it as possible.
What do we mean by 'working sets' and 'total muscular failure'?
I often advise clients to perform one or a couple of 'warm up sets', gradually building up to the top weight programmed. This prepares the muscles for what's to come, getting a feel for the movement and sending an increase of blood and oxygen to that area of the body. The main set(s) that follow are referred to as 'working sets'.
Unbeknown to most, total muscular failure is not when you're unable to perform the concentric (positive) phase of an exercise but when you're unable to perform the positive, negative and static phase. In order to reach this, you need to spend much longer on the negative phase during each rep, as well as totally exhaust this phase after you've already exhausted your positive strength.
Hitting total muscular failure is far safer and more effective with machines than most free weight exercises due to the fixed range in machines, hence why I often programme longer negative phases with machines than with free weight exercises for my clients.
So going back to why we wouldn't add a second set after hitting total muscular failure during our first set. The answer is simple; there's absolutely no point. You've done everything you possibly can to stimulate muscle growth through this range of motion so it's time to move on to the next exercise.
Results often come with training smarter, rather than training more, or for longer.
So to recap, we have covered the following;
Increase weight.
Increase volume (reps, sets, time).
Increase frequency.
Decrease tempo.
Decrease recovery.
Apply the methods that work for you and your goals with honesty and intensity, and enjoy the gains!!!
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