How to "Progressive Overload"
In order to continue getting
stronger, more muscular, or attain any sort of fitness adaptation, you are going to need to progress your programme over time. This is often referred to as the principle of progressive overload. Without applying greater training stress, your body has no reason to build larger muscles, make new mitochondria etc.. Therefore, you need to progress your programme over time.
This is where the science becomes very much an art, as there are many ways to progress a programme, and none that we can say for sure is superior to all others. Over time, different methods may trump others, but we will be looking after the “macro” progressions, by progressing the programme throughout the year, while you look after the “micro” progressions, by adjusting the variables to be discussed on a day-to-day / week-to-week basis.
Here are 6 ways that you can progress your program:
1. Load - Increase the weight that you are using, while aiming to stay within the relative intensity parameters. Where relative intensity is increasing on a given week, then this should generally
come with a small increase in load.
2. Reps - Where an increase in load seems like too much, you can add a repetition or two, even just on one or two of your sets. If you can do this while staying within the relative intensity parameters (more or less) across all sets, you are moving in the right direction.
3. Sets - Adjusting volume/sets is a potent way of increasing training stress, but it is something you should only do gradually over time, as opposed to increasing by multiple sets per week. If you find 10 sets for quads just is not at all challenging and is leading to no progress, then bumping it up a bit over time may be a good idea.
4. Effort - Relative intensity will be increasing from week to week in your programme, especially on the heavier, compound exercises. However, there is also another nuance to this, as your effort could increase through increased psychological preparedness, for example, which may involve increased “effort”, while still having some
reps in the tank. This is especially true for beginners, who are generally unsure of what they are capable of.
5. Tempo/Technique - If you feel you have been a little looser than you would like with your technique, using muscles that are not necessarily the intended muscles, then slowing down the tempo a little and tightening
up your technique could be an effective way to progress the stimulus applied to the target muscle(s).
6. Density - This simply refers to the same total sets, reps and load being condensed into a shorter time period. So, if the rest period was 120-180 seconds, and you rested for 180 seconds last week, then you could aim to
reduce that this week. However, I generally don’t recommend this, unless someone is stuck for time. In general, longer rest periods are superior (within reason), so I would rather see someone try to add more load/reps with the same rest period, if not a longer one if possible, than to shorten it.
Whether it’s load on the bar, the number of reps with that load, the
number of sets that you do, the duration of your cardio sessions or whatever, you need to increase the total amount of training stress you impose on your body over time. The whole point of training in the first place is to adapt to a given stimulus. By definition of you adapting to that stimulus, it is no longer a sufficient stressor to force further adaptation and hence, if you want further adaptations, that stressor needs to be increased. In very general terms, that is why we need to have ways
to progress training. If you do the same workout over and over again, with no progression of any training parameters, your hypertrophy, strength and cardiorespiratory outcomes will be lacklustre.
