12/02/2021
Progressive Overload is an important principle in strength training. Without progressive overload you won’t build strength and you won’t gain muscle. However, too much overload can lead to under-recovery and injury. The challenge therefore lies in getting the balance right, so that you keep improving without exceeding the body’s capability to recover.
4 ways to progressively overload
In order to continuously adapt and improve, we have implemented the system of progressive overload. Progressive overload says that we have to continuously stress the muscles in a way that creates homeostatic disruption and this create adaptations in terms of strength and muscle gain.
Progressive overload can happen in 4 ways:
Increasing Intensity: Lifting more weight in your next training session.
Increasing Volume: Doing more reps, sets or exercises for a certain muscle group in your next training.
Increasing Frequency: Doing more training sessions than the week before.
Increasing Tension: Increasing the duration of each repetition within an exercise. A common technique in bodybuilding is to prolong the time under tension (TUT) of a muscle by focusing on a 4-second descent (eccentric) when you do a bicep curl for example.
The golden rules of Progressive Overload
I use the principle of progressive overload by carefully increasing the training stimulus without exceeding your bodies capability to recover. That’s why it’s so important you give honest feedback, after your training session.
Two rules are crucial in order for progressive overload to be as optimal as possible:
We only increase one thing at a time: I won’t up the intensity, increase the volume and ask you to perform super slow repetitions all at once. Rather, I change one training variable at a time and progress slowly, but steady without overstressing the system.
I will increase volume before intensity: Volume is the amount of reps and sets you perform. Intensity is the resistance, either your bodyweight or the actual weight on the barbell. In order to manage fatigue and decrease the risk of under-recovery, I will overload on volume first, before we increase the intensity.
Putting science into practice
The good thing is: You won’t have to worry about all this. That’s what Coaches automatically does in the background. You don’t have to figure all the scientific details of the SRA curve (article on this later) out in order to grow muscle and increase strength. However, it is good to understand how the Coach works in order to keep you progressing from week by week.
