If you ever look into muscle and strength
building strategies or programs, you’ll pretty much universally see one thing repeatedly
mentioned being of utmost importance. So in this video, we’re going to cover just
that, and explain what is exactly is progressive overload. A quick google search will give you a definition
along the lines of: “a method of strength training that advocates
for the gradual increase of the stress placed upon the musculoskeletal and nervous system.” This is technically true .
Progressive overload does mean making your exercises gradually more difficult or strenuous
over a long period of time, which provides a stimulus for your muscles, which then creates
an environment for adaptation. Adaptation means improvements in your ability
to actually contract and recruit your muscle fibers, as well as of course increasing your
muscle gains. If you instead just do the same workout every
single time without any progressive overload, your body eventually stops progressing since
you’ve adapted to the given stimulus. That’s why it’s important to keep increasing
the stress to always provide your body with a novel stimulus. However, where people get lost is knowing
what types of stress are involved in progressive overload. I’m going to break it down to two parts. First explaining some basic, fundamental aspects
of progressive overload and then talk about a few extra things that are still critical
as well. Let’s get started. For basics, by far the most common method
of increasing stress for progressive overload is by increasing the resistance or weight
used in any given exercise. By continuously lifting heavier and heavier
weights, you “gradually” increase the stress on the trained muscle. Very straightforward and very important way
to progressive overload, especially for beginners. After that, another factor is the amount of
reps you do, which is especially important when you start having trouble with increasing
weight. Reps, short for repetitions, are the number
of times you do an exercise in one go. So, for something like the barbell squat,
for 5 reps, you do 5 squats before putting the bar back down. More reps means more stress. Pretty straightforward like weights. However, based on how many reps you do, you
can actually shift your adaptation focus. Fewer reps but with heavier weights progresses
strength more, and more reps but lighter weights progresses endurance. Moderate reps, which is around 6 to 12 reps,
is often considered the sweet spot. And the third fundamental piece of progressive
overload is the amount of sets you do. Sets are simply the amount of times you do
the chosen amount of reps. If you see something like 3 sets of 5 in your
program, it means you will perform 5 reps for an exercise and do that3 times, or 3 sets,
with some rest time in between each set. Might sound like a broken record by now, but
again, the more and more sets you do for a given exercise, the more stress you place,
and the more you adapt. Research suggest the sweet spot is around
12 to 20 sets per muscle group per week. These three, reps, sets, and weight lifted,
are the fundamental pieces to progressive overload. And, when factored together, you get the quintessential
progressive overload formula known as training volume. Reason being is that volume, in the fitness
literature, has the most consistent positive relationship between muscle gains. Strength gains, though, leans a bit more towards
simply lifting heavier weights, but since volume leads to muscle growth, having more
muscle can help with moving more weights as well. Volume, very important to keep that in mind. And, now let’s look at a few things beyond
just the fundamentals that are also critical pieces to good progressive overload. The first is frequency. Frequency is the amount of times you train
a muscle in a given week. Knowing about volume, it’s no secret why
frequency is important. The more times you train, the more sets and
reps you can do, the more volume, the more overload. Of course you are limited to the amount of
days you actually have in a week, but research does suggest that 2 times per week per muscle
group is often good enough for most. Next is training to failure. Training to failure is performing reps on
an exercise to the point that you can no longer do more reps without serious degradation of
your technique and form. This is usually a more intuitive approach
to progressive overload since you’re pushing your muscles to complete fatigue regardless
of trying to reach a specific rep count. However, the downfall of failure training
is that it is very hard to do, especially if you’re new, and more importantly, it
will require more recovery. And recovery is the third and final extra
tip of progressive overload. Although itself is not exactly causing gradual
increases in stress, you do need time off from training to properly adapt and reduce
fatigue. Not doing so can cause long-term fatigue,
which will stall your progression since you cannot perform at your highest level. So very big piece, recovery, very very important. And that’s it for this video on explaining
progressive overload. I hoped you guys found it useful! As far as HOW and the BEST ways to progressive
overload, I’ll make sure to cover that in a future video, so stay tuned. However, if you need something now, then I
highly suggest you check out the video collaboration that I did, my very first collab ever, with
the awesome Jeff Nippard over at Jeff’s channel. In that video, we cover how to make gains
at every training level, which no doubt includes progressive overload. I’ll have a link to that video in the description. Other than that, if you enjoyed this video
please give it a progressive thumbs up and share it with your overload loving friends. Subscribe for more! As always, thank you for watching and GET
YOUR PROTEIN!
