Progressive Overload - Everything you need to know
Whats Below ⬇️
The Basics of Progressive overload.
How it works with Stimulus and Fatigue in the body.
The Main ways to progressively overload your training and how to implement them.
How to progressively overload smaller muscle groups and movements.
Where the Idea was born!! 🧐
The theory of progressive overload can be dated back to a man called Milo of Croton, an Ancient Greek athlete who competed in the ancient greek Olmpiads and Pythian games.
As the Legend goes, Milo’s neighbour had a calf and every day Milo would pick up the calf and carry it. As Milo grew as did the calf, day by day they both grew until it is said Milo was able to lift a fully grown Bull. Other sources state that when he would begin training for the next olympics he would begin to carry a calf and by the time the next olympics would arrive he’d be carrying a four year old cow! Regardless, these historical tales (maybe embellished facts) embody and created the idea of progressive overload, progressively getting stronger and fitter over a period of time.
The Basics ✍️
Progressive overload can be applied to any kind of training, strength, speed, power, endurance to name a few.
For Example if someone starts with being able to squat with a 20kg bar for 5, now they can squat 30kg for 5 repetitions they have measurably gotten stronger. Now there is a nuance with that example in that they may have just learned to squat correctly and use their muscles more efficiently. Let’s look at another example, a runner can run a 8 minute mile, now they can run a 7 minute mile. Thats progressive overload, always aiming to improve.
In practice in the gym, each session you should be aiming to add weight week to week or how many repetitions you can do week to week. In essence to make each session week to week harder in order to drive a stimulus response for our bodies to get bigger, if focusing on hypertrophy or stronger if strength is your goal. The same applies to power, speed and endurance.
The most popular forms of progressive overload are to add weight, reps or sets each session, but we will discuss various ways to progressively overload below!
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
It's not linear:
Now progressive overload is not linear, you cannot just keep piling weight on the bar every time you train, or else everyone in the world would be able to bench an imperial tonne.
Although it would be nice to think we could all just continually improve week to week with our goals, be it strength or size or whatever, we can’t. We must push and recover.
Illustrated by the graph shown, the peaks in the graph show the recovery from training and where you are now at. The downward trend shows fatigue and the damage caused from training which we must recover from in order to keep trying to push the ceiling higher.
The Four Main ways to progressively overload in training 🤓
Intensity:Intensity implies weight lifted. The Weight on the Bar, there is no need to complicate this with 73.2% of your 3 Rep max sort of stuff.
For example if your programme states to do 3 sets of 8 repetitions on the bench press, pick a weight you could do 8 for with a couple reps in the tank (Often referred to as Reps In Reserve i.e - 2RIR). The Following week add 5lbs to the bar, and repeat until your no longer able to do so. Deload for a week (reduce fatigue by doing half volume / weight) allow your body to recover, and repeat again. This time start your progression cycle heavier than you did on your first week, maybe with the weight you used in week 2/3 or 4 and progress from there.
Research has shown that 30% and below of your 1 rep max is not a sufficient enough weight create a stimulus in the body to promote any strength or hypertrophy results. So ensure you intensity levels are high enough to cause an effect but not so high that you have no where to progress to and just burn out.
Volume:Volume can be thought of in two ways. Total Volume in any given set or total volume within each session.
Overloading a set may mean you go from 8 reps to 10 reps then the following week 11 reps. This may also not be linear, you may have 3 sets to do and it may look like 10,9,8 reps. This is fine, next week, 11,10,9. Perfect, you have overloaded each set. Studies have shown that hypertrophy can occur in the 5-30 rep range. Optimal rep ranges per muscle and movement differ (Subject for another article) But briefly, no one cares what you can curl for 5 reps, your parents might say they are proud of you, but they are not. You're not impressing anyone, all you are doing in that rep range for biceps is increasing that chance of injury.
Overloading the training sessions volume can be done by adding a set, so week 1 - 3x5 / week 2 - 4x5 / week 3 - 5x5. This will increase the tonnage over the session implied on the muscles and therefore increasing the volume stimulus. What to watch here though is that you don’t just rest longer between sets in order to achieve more sets, this metric then skews your overload progress and is just adding fatigue where it may not be neccessary.
Range of Motion:Range of motion is another avenue to increase. For hypertrophy take the seated and lying hamstring curl for example, the seated hamstring curl which is a Hip Flexed variation compared to the Lying Hamstring Curl which is a Hip Extended variation. The hip flexed variation puts the hamstrings at more of a stretch and a study done by (Maeo et al., 2020) [1] concluded that hamstring hypertrophy was increased more when trained at longer muscle lengths.
Range of motion with regards to strength specific training can be an effective way to add stimulus without extra weight and variation to your main lifts, take the deadlift for example. Now try standing on a 2-3” plate or platform to create a deficit, and pull from there. This increases the length of the pull, creating a greater stressor during the lift, increasing time under tension and just making it harder without adding weight. PS. DO NOT stand on a freaking Bosu ball, don’t be a cabbage.
Speed / TempoFor strength, the speed and which you lift the bar, the tempo you use on the eccentric portion of the lift and even the pause at the bottom of your squat, bench or somewhere on a deadlift can all be forms of progressive overload. Adding a greater pause at the bottom of the bench for example can create greater time under tension, remove the stretch reflex and eliminate people bouncing the bar of the chest. This also creates the added benefit of standardising the range of motion on the bench, where every rep looks the same, instead of just stopping higher and higher as you pile weight on the bar and scream “LIGHTWEIGHT BABY”.
The concentric phase for strength seems to be better suited to faster speeds, driving better neural adaptations for strength gains as found in this study by (Wilk et al., 2021) [2].
For Hypertrophy having a slow and controlled eccentric (controlling the weight when lowering for 1-3s) can add a better stimulus for hypertrophy.
The Study by (Wilk et al., 2021) [2] came to the conclusion that a combined approach could be the best to drive better results. A mixture of faster concentric speeds with slower eccentrics could just be the sweet spot for most training goals.
In Practice this could be lowering the bench to the chest with a 2-3s Eccentric and pressing the bar as fast as possible off the chest or squatting with a 2-3s eccentric and standing the weight back up as quick as possible.
How to Progressively Overload smaller Muscle groups / Movements 💡
Enter the double progression method.
The Double progression method is brilliant for smaller muscle groups and movements, something you’d ideally use smaller weight increases for however some gyms, crossfit boxes and your garage if you train at home don’t have this advantage, you may have 7.5 kg / 10 kg and 12.5 kg. Take the dumbbell lateral raise for example, increasing by 2.5 kg can be a big jump week to week so the double progression method is perfect.
Its simple to implement - Example: Dumbbell Lateral Raise - Repetition Range Goal - 12-15
Week 1 - 10kg - 3 sets - 15,13,12
Week 2 - 10kg - 3 sets - 15,15,13
Week 3 - 10kg - 3 sets - 15,15,15
Week 4 - 12.5kg - 3 sets - 13,12,11
Week 5 - 12.5kg - 3 sets - 14,13,12
Effectively, Aim to get to the top limit of your rep goal when you reach it or close, try progressing to the next weight available at your disposal then work towards all sets reaching top end of of your rep range again and repeat.
This will eventually stall, and you have a decision to make:
Increase your rep range goal and hit higher volume sets
Increase how many sets in your workout
Continue to increase weight and lower repetition range
Select a different variation - work double progression method on that for 8-12 weeks then revisit original exercise and try and progress again. (Like stated above progression is not linear)
