How To Get Stronger - Use The Power of Progressive Overload

HOW TO GET STRONGER

Written by Jonathan Fletcher

If you’re trying to get stronger you’ve come to the right place.

After reading this article you’ll understand what progressive overload with weight training is all about, the 2 main examples of it, and exactly how to use it for yourself.

Everything about progressive overload applies to both men and women who are looking to build muscle and get stronger, so keep reading.

But first, since you’re interested in getting stronger, you’re in luck. We wrote a FREE 5-Week Workout Program that gives you everything you need to get better-looking arms, abs, and glutes. Did I mention it’s free?

Do it on its own, or add it to your current cardio or group classes and enjoy the gains!

WHAT IS PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD?

Let’s start by talking about what progressive overload is by using an example.

Let's say you buy a calf. No, not the muscle on the back of your leg, a baby cow.

Your adorable calf was just born, so it only weighs 65lbs.

Day 1, you pick your new pet up off of the ground, hold her against your chest and walk across your front yard. Imagine what your neighbors must think!

65lbs isn't exactly light, but it wasn't too bad. You go about the rest of your day, and get a good night of sleep.

Day 2, you're a little sore, but you pick up your little buddy (Let’s call her Tina) and carry her across the yard again. You notice that it wasn't quite as hard today.

You keep this routine up every day for two weeks.

By day 14, Tina weighs 85 lbs since she's drinking milk like it's her job. But amazingly, she feels light in your arms.

How can it be that your 85lb baby cow is easier to pick up today than she was two weeks earlier at 65lbs?

Because you trained using progressive overload.

Every day you carried Tina, and then recovered by eating food and sleeping.

That process causes your body to make an adaptation so that you're a little stronger after you recover.

Every day, Tina got a little bit heavier, and your strength kept up because you were training it to do so!

If she stopped growing at 70lbs, your strength would have plateaued right there.

Here’s the lesson…The weight you lift and the amount of work you do must get more challenging over time.  Your “cow” has to get bigger in order for you to keep improving.

Let's translate this silly example over the gym setting and talk about how we can use training and progressive overload to look like we lift.

The great part about this is that it works whether you're a total beginner using 5lb pink dumbells, or you're an advanced lifter.

Beginners don't need their training to be as complex as intermediate and advanced trainees, but the principles remain the same.

In fact, beginners are lucky. As a newbie to weight lifting, they’re primed to make extremely rapid strength progress because of what’s called “newbie gains”.

Make sure you capitalize on this once in a lifetime opportunity by reading our article on the subject below.

HOW TO USE PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD TO GET STRONGER

Let's learn exactly how to use progressive overload.

Our preference for most clients is to program their heavy, compound strength exercises like the squat, deadlift, and bench press in sets of 5-8 reps. Let me explain why.

You need to be lifting heavy (relative to our strength). More specifically, most of your strength progress will be made when working with weights that are about 80% or more of the amount you could lift for 1 rep. We call this your 1-rep max.  Don't get too hung up on what your 1 rep max is for now. 

Since you’re working with weights that are pretty challenging, you reduce the risk for injury by keeping sets in the range of 5-8 reps. Also, maybe you've noticed that doing super high-rep squats or other movements with any amount of weight can make you incredibly sore.

Soreness isn't a sign that you had a great workout, and getting super sore can actually keep you from training effectively which is a real progress-blocker.

Using progressive overload can look many different ways, but here are the two most common ways that we use it with our clients to ensure they're getting stronger.

HOW TO USE LINEAR PROGRESSION TO MAKE STRENGTH PROGRESS

Linear progression is the simplest form of progressive overload, and it's a great way for beginners to make rapid progress.

Here's a simple example of what linear progression would look like on your bench press:

Week 1: 3 sets of 5 reps at 165lbs

Assuming you were able to do all 5 reps each set, we would increase the load (weight) for your next bench press workout, and keep the reps the same.

Week 2: 3 sets of 5 reps at 170lbs

Doing your bench presses each week is like picking up your pet cow (remember Tina?) each day. You eat, sleep, and come back stronger for your next workout. The stress of the workout, and the recovery causes your body to get stronger.

If you were to plot your strength improvement during linear progression on a graph, it would look like... wait for it.... A LINE!  AKA - "Linear Progression”!

As I said, this is a tremendous way to build strength quickly.  I took my squat strength from 250lbs to 370lbs in 3 months using this method, and we've helped many people make similar gains in a similar amount of time.

HOW TO USE DOUBLE PROGRESSION TO GET STRONGER

The other most common way to use progressive overload in your training is called double progression.

Unlike linear progression, we don't simply keep the reps the same each workout and add weight if we were successful.

With double progression, we manipulate both the number of reps, and the amount we're lifting from workout to workout.

We start with a rep-range in mind that we want to work within.  Let's stick with 5-8 reps since we used it earlier.

Using double progression, we would do our 3 sets of 5-8 reps at the weight we chose, and then record how many reps we got. More later on how hard you should be pushing yourself on each set.

Once we are able to do all of our sets at the top number of our rep range, we add weight to that exercise the next time we do it.

In real life, you might get 8 reps on your first set, 7 reps on your second, and 6 on your last set.

Next week maybe you'll get 8,8,7, and 8,8,8 the following week. Then you're ready to add weight next time, and your reps will probably dip back down closer to 6 reps per set.

Since you've got two variables to work with, you can make progress for a really long time using double progression without getting more complicated.

Before we wrap up, we need to talk about something important.

HOW HARD SHOULD YOU BE WORKING WHEN LIFTING WEIGHTS?

One of the problems with group classes, and not having a coach, is that you don't really know how hard you should be pushing yourself.

Should you be maxing out? Should you do a whole bunch of reps until you feel the burn? Should you go to failure?

We had these same questions for many years, and we wasted a lot of time doing it wrong.

Now we work with a lot of people with all different levels of experience, and the most common thing we find in people who feel like they're working hard but not making progress is that they aren't pushing themselves hard enough. 

Even if they're lifting weights, they're stuck because they're not bringing enough intensity to the table.

Effort matters. And the reason why it does is backed by science. Research shows us that muscle growth and strength gains happen best when working with intensity.

In weight lifting, we use a subjective scale of effort to rank how hard an effort was. We call it the RPE scale. It stands for "Rating of Perceived Exertion".

The scale goes from 0-10. An RPE 10 is an all-out effort. Your eyeballs were popping out, your face was red, and there was no way you could have done another rep.

As you work backward down the scale toward zero, you rank how many reps you could have done but didn't.

In other words, if you rank a set as an RPE 8, you probably could have done 2 more reps if you had to.

As I said, this ranking is subjective, and that's one of the benefits to having an experienced coach watch your sets. Wink wink.

So what RPE should you be working at most of the time? It depends on several factors like your experience, age, the load you’re lifting, and the exercise you’re doing. But if you're trying to balance making progress and avoiding injury, you need to be living in the RPE 7-8 range most of the time.

Around here, we call a set at about RPE 8 a "hard set", and we use the terms interchangeably.

I mentioned that we find that a lot of people are trying to make progress, but aren't... The reason is that they don't realize that everything they're doing is closer to an RPE 4 or 5 than an RPE 8.

This one change alone, combined with the right program, and consistency can have you making more progress in a few months than you have in years.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out HERE.

And don’t forget…

If you’re already doing group classes but aren’t seeing the gains you expected, download our free 5-Week Strength and Muscle Building Program. You’ll start getting the results you deserve.