What is Progressive Overload?

When we start in the gym, it is very easy to measure progress. Besides the EXTREME muscle soreness that we feel from introducing our body to a new stimulus, on a week to week basis as a beginner in the gym it is pretty easy to add more weight to the machine or exercise that you are doing. There isn't a more objective measure out there. Add 5lbs to the squat bar, I am 5lbs stronger this week than I was last week! This is fantastic. It is a huge step to commit to a strength program, and so the initial confidence boost you get from being able to add more weight each week is just the reward you need to tell you that your efforts aren't in vain. This is progressive overload in its most basic form! Gaining strength and building muscle is an adaptive process in our bodies. We need to introduce a difficult stimulus, adapt to that stimulus, then introduce a more difficult stimulus to continue to adapt. Unfortunately as you leave the comfortable world of beginner gains, you reach a point in your strength development where you can no longer just "add 5lbs" to the bar. Does this mean you have reached the end of your growth? Have you capped out your potential? Will you never be able to achieve the strength goals that you are striving for? No. When basic progressive overload tactics are no longer yielding any benefits its time to get creative!

Let's discuss my three favorite more advanced forms of progressive overload so that you can continue on the path to your goal of looking like The Hulk.

1. Rep Speed/Control:

We have all seen overactive egos at work. You know the guy-walks up to the dumbbell rack with all the confidence in the world and grabs 50lb dumbbells only to wildly swing them in front of himself in a movement only slightly resembling a bicep curl. This person is exhibiting little to no rep control. Each time he attempts a rep something wildly erratic takes place and everyone in close proximity gets scared he may lose control. Sometimes in our training we will lose some technical proficiency. You are not a well oiled machine moving with German engineered precision. It is ok to have some "out of control" reps as long as you are keeping track of them. As you get stronger with a given exercise not only are you able to increase your weight, your control over that weight in a given range of motion increases. Lets take the dumbbell bench press for example. Week 1 you enter the gym and perform 10 reps of the exercise with 60lbs, but the last three reps were incredibly sloppy. There was no control in the negative portion of the lift (the lowering phase), you had to put your whole body in to getting the weight off of your chest. You did the required reps, but they weren't pretty. Now next week you come back in to the gym for the same exercises and instead of letting your ego take over, you perform the same number of reps with 60lb and only the last rep of the set was a little shaky! This is progress, and this is progressive overload. By trying to keep a consistent rep speed and a certain level of control, you were able to more accurately access whether or not you have made progress on the given exercise.

2. Lower your rest times:

If you have ever seen a powerlifter train, you may be convinced that they live in the gym. I know some powerlifters whose sessions can drag on for 4 hours or more! This is because the big three lifts (the squat, the bench, and the deadlift) traditionally require long rest periods (if there is any truth to that, it requires another blog post). Chances are you aren't training for 4 hours everyday, but you may be training for longer than you have to. My second favorite form of progressive overload is decreasing your rest time. If you can do 3 sets of 12 reps with 30lbs on a given exercise, with one minute and thirty seconds of rest in between, maybe instead of increasing the weight to 35lbs because that weight becomes too difficult, decrease your rest times. At the end of the day progressive overload is just a fancy way to say: "make the exercise harder" and I think doing three sets of any exercise with 20 seconds of rest is pretty damn hard. This decrease in rest period cannot come at the expense of our first point or you are going to be wasting your time. Strive for the same level of execution across all of your sets and you will have an objective measure of growth as each set gets easier week after week!

3. Increase your range of motion:

Range of motion is a touchy subject in the fitness world so I will just speak from my own personal experience: The times where I have experienced the most progress in the gym have come when I have made an effort to train through FULL ranges of motion. When we are talking about manipulating range of motion as a tool for progressive overload, the most benefit comes from finding ways to increase that range of motion somehow. Traditionally this would present itself very simply. In the squat for example, you would simply need to get deeper into the squat position with the same weight that you normally use. While I think this method can be very effective on a case by case basis, I find increased ranges of motion in non-traditional ways to be more universally effective. I am talking about adding partial reps to your exercises. Let us again return to the bicep curl. If you bend your elbow in a manner that fights against a form of resistance from a position at the side of your body to a position just under your chin, you have performed 1 rep of a bicep curl. Now let's increase the range of motion by adding another 1/2 rep to the equation. Before you bring the weight all the way back down to your side, stop halfway down and bring the weight back up. Now you have performed 1 1/2 reps of a bicep curl and effectively made the exercise more difficult! This method is not for every exercise every time, but for those exercises that you have hit a brick wall and can't add more weight no matter how hard you try, this can be an excellent progressive overload tool.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. These are just my favorite was to make my exercises more difficult when adding weight is no longer an option. You can do these or not, but if you want to continue to experience growth in your strength training career, I suggest you find some ways to continue to make your exercises harder!