Progressive overload is a vital strength training principle involving gradually increasing muscle demand to stimulate growth and improve strength. By constantly challenging your body to adapt, you can make lasting gains in muscle size, strength, and overall fitness.
Why is progressive overload necessary for muscle growth?
Our bodies are incredibly adaptive. When it comes to strength training, muscles adapt to the increasing demands we place on them, getting bigger and stronger. Without progressive overload, your body has no reason to adjust, causing muscle growth and strength gains to stagnate.
To continuously improve, we must intentionally increase the intensity, weight, or other factors in our training. Progressive overload ensures that your body is always pushed beyond its previous limits, stimulating growth and improved performance.
If you don’t implement progressive overload into your training, such as lifting the same weight each week, you won’t see progress:
No progressive overload = no adaptation = no change
How to Use Progressive Overload Effectively
The most well-known way to use progressive overload is to increase the weight used for the exercise. However, other methods are equally important, especially if you are a beginner. Before adding weight, focus on:
Improving technology
Increased range of motion
Let’s break it down.
Increase range of motion
Before you add weights to an exercise, you must ensure you achieve a full range of motion. This may mean squatting deeper or reaching harder on the press to ensure your muscles are working at the full strength of the movement.
Why is range of motion significant?
A full range of motion has several benefits:
Optimize Muscle Recruitment and Activation: You ensure greater overall activation by allowing your muscles to work to their full capacity.
Improves Flexibility and Joint Health: A full range of motion maintains better flexibility and improves joint health.
Enhances Muscle Hypertrophy: Fully stretching and contracting muscles increases muscle growth.
Increases time under tension: Longer muscle engagement improves hypertrophy and strength.
For example, if you only half squat, your quads, glutes, and hamstrings are minimally engaged. Squatting parallel or lower fully activates these muscles, resulting in better muscle growth and increased strength.
Technology improvements
Another important aspect of progressive overload is improving technique. Good technique ensures that exercises can be performed safely and effectively, maximizing muscle activation and minimizing the risk of injury.
Why is technique critical to progressive overload?
Proper technique helps you effectively target the right muscles and allows you to add more weight over time as your stability and control improve. This means you can lift more and progress faster.
Taking the deadlift as an example, if you don’t first learn to engage your latissimus dorsi, maintain a neutral spine, and ensure the correct muscles are recruited, your ability to add more weight will be limited in the long run.
Ready to take your workout to the next level?
Implementing progressive overload is essential to achieving your physical health goals. Start mastering these techniques today, and you’ll be on your way to building a more substantial, more resilient body! Need more help? Our experienced trainers will provide personalized guidance to ensure you use the correct techniques, progress safely, and maximize each workout. Our Impact Coaching program is open and accepting applications, and you can apply here now.