Progressive overload training principle: Why it's so important for results!
The principle of progressive overload is probably familiar to you, but just not by that name. If you hang about the gym long enough, you will undoubtedly come across this term. And, If you are serious about building muscle and strength, this bodybuilding term and training concept is one that you must become friends with.
Progressive Overload
Progressive overload is when you gradually add heavier weights, increase your training frequency, and/or increase the number of repetitions in your strength training routine. This promotes muscle growth and strengthens your musculoskeletal system in general. It is almost exclusively a weightlifting concept. However, cardiovascular fitness buffs, especially those training for high-intensity sports like football and tennis, understand the overload principle for increasing their muscular endurance.
By changing up your workouts and adding additional tension to your muscles, you can avoid plateauing. A plateau is when you get stuck in a rut, so to speak. When the compound exercises you're using to build a major muscle group stop yielding gains at a certain weight for a certain number of reps for three or four weeks, you've plateaued. This means that your body has adapted to the type of exercises you’re doing. With progressive overload, you can break through, or even prevent, plateauing while increasing muscle mass and reaching your fitness goals.
Related: 5 Training Methods to help you break through a weight training plateau
Beginners often reach a plateau after months of increasing muscle size. But if you follow the exact same workout routine, with the same amount of weight, number of sets, number of reps, and number of training sessions per week, of course, your body will adapt and stop building muscle. You'll still be fitter than the average person, but that's not what weight training is all about, is it? If your primary objective is to build muscle, the goal of your training program should be hypertrophy. Muscle hypertrophy is more than just muscle growth. It means that your muscles are continuously increasing in size.
Progressive Overload In Action
Increase the Resistance
Probably the most obvious way to increase the training stimulus you place on your muscles is to increase the amount of weight. If 50 pounds is too easy when doing bicep curls, try adding 5 pounds on each side of the bar. Remember, there's a reverse relationship between heavier weights and reps. When you increase the amount of weight, your reps are going to decrease to some degree. That's OK because soon enough, you'll get stronger with that resistance and be able to gradually increase your repetitions again.
Increase the Reps
Another way of increasing the overload is to simply do more repetitions. As your body becomes accustomed to a particular amount of weight, simply increase the number of repetitions. Don't stop an exercise when you reach the top of your targeted rep range. Keep going until you can't complete any more while still maintaining good form.
You don't want to keep adding repetitions forever, of course! To maximize your efforts towards building muscle, each of your sets should be in the moderate rep range of 8 to 12. If you continue beyond this, at some point, you'll plateau, improving muscular endurance rather than muscle size. When 12 reps become manageable, increase the amount of weight so that 8 reps is a challenge again. This will keep you in the ideal rep range for hypertrophy.
Increase Training Frequency
Another good reason to consult with your gym’s personal trainers is to determine the best number of days per week to do weight training. Depending on your work schedule, family needs, and lifestyle, I recommend weightlifting three or four times a week. However, increasing the training frequency with which you work a particular muscle group can increase the overload. This works very well when targeting a muscle group that has plateaued, especially when used as a short-term strategy.
Increase Volume
Another way to implement progressive overload is by increasing the volume of your resistance training regimen. Volume takes into account the number sets, the number of repetitions, training frequency, and the amount of weight. By adding another set, you're making increasingly greater demands on your muscle tissue. If you're not quite ready to increase the amount of weight, want to stay in the 8 - 12 rep range, and aren't ready/able to increase your training frequency, increasing your total number of sets is the best way for increasing volume.
So instead of two sets of 12 reps, do three sets of 8 or 9 reps. Doing more sets also gives you the option of changing up the movement slightly to emphasize a different area of a muscle group.
Decrease Rest Time Between Sets
Reducing your rest time between sets requires your body's metabolism to become more efficient with regard to aerobic exercise like weightlifting. However, care must be taken not to push it so much that proper form is neglected and an injury occurs.
Overdoing The Overload Principle
A personal trainer can help prevent you from getting stuck and feeling discouraged. After some time, your relative progress is going to slow down. In other words, when you first started out, your muscles' increasing size was very noticeable. But after any extended spell of training, that increased volume and size starts to slow down and any changes aren’t as dramatic. It's easy to want to push yourself too hard and risk injury. The gym staff or your personal trainer will help remind you that small, incremental gains should be your goal.
If you use the overload principle incorrectly, by increasing intensity too quickly, for example, you can risk overreaching or overtraining. Overreaching is a short-term problem, a decrease in physical performance that takes days to overcome.
Overtraining is a more sustained period of excessive training stress. It can take weeks to months to recover from this state of decreased performance. Some signs of overtraining you should watch out for include:
Increased resting heart rate
Increased blood pressure
Loss of appetite and weight loss
Difficulty sleeping
Emotional changes or mood swings
Fatigue
Chronic muscle soreness
Extended recovery times
Use the principle of progressive overload carefully by increasing your training stimulus without exceeding your body's ability to recover.
If you’re unsure about how to use the progressive overload principle effectively, you may want to consider employing the help of a qualified personal trainer. They can help you implement a well-structured plan whilst guiding you in using the proper form for each type of lift; advise you on what rep range you should be in; and not let you skip out on the basics like proper warmup, rest time, proper nutrition, and hydration. You may not want to warm- up, take a hydration/electrolyte break, or practice good from, but try to remember the most important fitness goal: NOT getting injured.
Related: Do you need a rest day or are you just being Lazy? Signs and symptoms of overtraining
Hypertrophy's Good Friends
While you progressively overload your muscles, there are a few things to not forget. Neglecting these areas will work against you and are definitely not part of the overload principle.
Follow the Program
Having and sticking to a training program is essential. Bouncing around and constantly changing your workout routine will derail your progress. Bodybuilding is a long-range activity and progressively building your muscle mass is an incremental process.
Proper Nutrition
Eating enough calories and protein is crucial to building muscle. The human body’s ability to build muscle depends on getting plenty of energy and protein. Many people eschew carbohydrates because "carbs are bad!" However, low-carb diets increase cortisol and reduce testosterone levels which slows down muscle growth. Getting enough carbs is essential for building muscle because they increase muscle glycogen levels which enhance performance during strenuous exercise like weightlifting.
Your protein intake should be about one gram of protein per pound of body weight. So a 150-pound person would need 150 grams of protein per day. Since protein has about 4 calories per gram, this person would need about 600 of their daily calorie intake to be from protein. Healthy protein is found in lean meat; poultry; fish; legumes like beans, lentils, chickpeas, and peanuts; tofu and other soy products; eggs; nuts; seeds; milk and other dairy products like whey, yogurt, kefir, and cheese.
You should aim to have a diet that is roughly one-third of each of the macros. That is one-third protein, one-third carbs, and one-third healthy fats. An article from Healthline.com, How many calories do you burn from daily activities? can help you determine what your daily calorie intake should be. Then, knowing how many of those calories should be from protein, you can split the difference between carbs and healthy fats.
Recovery Time
Remember, you don’t gain muscle during your workouts. That happens afterward, when your body repairs the damage and prepares itself for the next round of training. Earlier I said one way to increase progressive overload was to increase your training frequency. But this must be balanced against getting enough rest and relaxation. I recommend at least one full recovery day per week.
Sleeping Enough
The folks at Sleep.org say that sleep ensures muscle growth, recovery, and injury prevention. Their article, How Sleep Adds Muscle, lists many reasons and tips for getting proper sleep. Some of them are:
Sleep boosts muscle mass because growth hormones are released during periods of deep sleep.
The hunger regulating hormones leptin and ghrelin are thrown off by poor sleep, increasing hunger and food intake. While this may not be so horrible when you're building muscle, the timing of your food intake may be thrown off.
Sleep Improves muscle coordination. Studies show that proper sleep leads to increased accuracy, faster reaction times, improved overall performance, and reduced risk of injury.
Practice good sleep hygiene: Make sure your room is dark, cool, and free of noise.
Make sure you’ve got the right mattress and pillow.
If possible, limit media and digital devices in bed. This conditions your brain to turn off when you go to bed.
Take 3-5 g of each of arginine and lysine prior to bedtime to boost Human Growth Hormone (HGH) levels. See: The 5 Best all-natural supplements to boost testosterone in men 2022
Take 2-10 g of glutamine before bed to improve muscle recovery and elevates HGH.
See: Pre-sleep nutrition: Boost muscle recovery before bed
Take Aways
Overloading should always be progressive and gradual. Increasing intensity, reps, frequency, and other elements of training too quickly is dangerous. It can cause injuries, lead to muscle soreness, and cause overtraining. For progressive overload to be successful, bear these things in mind:
Expect gradual progress.
Use proper form.
Don't push your overload too fast.
Plan for recovery days.
Don't get discouraged if you reach a plateau.
Consult a personal trainer to craft a proper training program tailored to you.
Follow that training program to avoid injury, burnout, or overtraining.
Get proper sleep and nutrition.
