"Should I add weight to the bar each week?"

People generally look no further than this technique when they think about progressing their training. And for good reason, it’s a pretty basic attribute of most programmes, especially for beginner-intermediate lifters who can progress load on the bar relatively regularly. We see this with a lot of our clients who have been training for < 2 years; you can generally run linear progression type programmes relatively easily, where they will add a small amount of weight to most of their exercises each week, even without there being much of a change in how challenging it feels to them.

There is a lot that goes into determining whether or not you will be able to add weight to the bar/machine each week, including absolute strength (if you lift 300kg, then a 2.5kg increase is a much smaller relative increase than it is for someone lifting 40kg), level of training (to use the same example, on the other hand, the person lifting 40kg may be new to trainee and hence can progress faster, so 2.5kg to them could be easily achievable, even if it’s a higher relative increase vs the highly trained 300kg lifter), the type of exercise (sorry, you are NOT going to increase your dumbbell lateral raise on a weekly basis), how accustomed you are to the exercise (you should expect more regular increases in load if you are learning a movement for the first time or re-learning it) and other lifestyle variables (are you eating to support your training, are you sleeping well etc.). 

Another thing to note with load increases is that the act of adding more load to the bar is generally a right to be earned – it means that you have adapted to the previous stressor you applied. It’s often thought of as the opposite way around, as if the addition of the load is the necessary driver, whereas it is actually an outcome, resulting from adaptations to the stress you applied with the last load you used. Had you not previously adapted to the other load, you wouldn’t be lifting the load that you currently are. The increase in load is merely one means of you stepping up to another level of total training stress, so don’t get too lost in the external thing that is the load on the bar. So, it's sort of a chicken AND egg situation.

Essentially, the message here is that while it is a good idea for most people to look to increase load on the bar, you should look beyond just thinking of it on a weekly basis. For beginner lifters, this may be appropriate, especially on compound exercises where more absolute load is generally lifted. For advanced lifters, you may need to think of it on a longer term basis.

For example, you could work within a rep range and only increase load when you get to the top of the rep range at a given relative intensity target (e.g. 2 reps in reserve).

Likewise, you could look to only increase load on the bar when the load you are lifting falls under a certain relative intensity target.

You could hold load constant for a certain period, while increasing the total number of sets, only to increase the load in the training phase that follows while repeating that cycle.

You have lots of options, but once you know that you don’t NEED to increase load on the bar on a weekly basis to progress, then you should feel more comfortable at the end of this article to use other methods and even combine multiple methods. 

Note: Micro-progression is a nice tool to use, especially if you work with beginners, particularly females (for upper body exercises at least). Micro-plates allow you to add load in increments less than the standard 1.25 or 2.5kg plates your gym may offer, which can be a nice boost for the trainee who is rarely ready for a load increase of that proportion.

Kind Regards,

Gary & Paddy

Triage Method