Written by: Paola - The Vegan Booty
Progressive overload is one of the most important laws in training to increase muscle mass and strength. It refers to the ability to increase the intensity of the training over time and thus achieve continuous progress. This is important since we know that the body adapts to muscle stimuli and that is why increasing the intensity progressively is important to continue seeing results.
There are several ways to perform progressive overload and it's not necessarily just by increasing the load or weight that we use. You can also look for the overload by increasing the range of motion, repetitions, sets, decreasing rest times, etc.
The first and most important thing to start applying the progressive overload in your training is to master the exercise technique and perform them effectively, even with low weight or without weight if you are a beginner, since we can progress from there and work with the other variables. Later I would recommend expanding the range of motion, for example doing a deeper squat, going lower in a lunge, etc. And once these two variables are mastered, advance according to what is most convenient for each muscle group by increasing reps, series, applying advanced techniques, etc. as we mentioned previously.
It is important to mention that this process is not linear, and that you will not always be able to make progress in the training sessions, and there will even be times that you might stay training with the same variables for months for various factors, since the body also needs an adaptation phase every time we modify our routine to be able to progress and see changes, but take into account that while you stick to training the progress the changes will be seen, patience.
Beginners usually make progress in progressive overload very quickly at first due to neurological adaptations, however as we progress and become more experienced in training, progress becomes slower and it is necessary to perform a more specialized training to reach new levels of strength.
Lastly, I know that to carry big weights can be very important for some, but as I already mentioned, we should never sacrifice the form in order to carry more weight, since in the end if your form is bad you will not be doing the exercise in a standard way (always the same technique and ROM in each training session) and therefore there will be no progress whatsoever, however it does increase the risk of injury, which can also decrease your progress over time.
Many thanks to Paola (The Vegan Booty) for the article! You can find links to her social media below and benefit from discount code to buy Falcon Protein 😉⤵
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