Progressive overload is the foundational basis of strength training. It means that you need to gradually increase the intensity of your training over time. Essentially, make sure that you’re doing more now than you did in the past.
The most common strategy to achieve progressive overload is to increase the weight that you are lifting by a few pounds. The problem is that most advice ends there. If it was that simple, the world will be filled with 1000 pound squatters and 500 pound bench pressers.
Simply adding weight to the bar is a finite strategy. Since we tend to grow muscle and increase strength at a relatively slow rate, just adding weight to the bar will cause us to progress too quickly and hit a plateau.
We must expand our strategies to achieve progressive overload. Here are 3 ways to progressively overload your training that does not involve adding weight.
1. Increase training volume
Training volume is essentially the total amount of work you are doing. While there are multiple ways to determine training volume, it is often calculated by looking at the total number of sets and reps you are performing.
For example, if you are doing 5 sets of 5 reps of a particular exercise (5×5), your total volume will be 25 reps.
If you wanted to calculate the total work of a particular exercise, you will determine how many times you are lifting a particular weight. This is often unnecessary but provides insight about the intensities that are being achieved with certain exercises.
For example, if you lift 200 pounds on the squat for 5×5, you will calculate 5x5x200. This is 5000 pounds of total work.
Increasing your total training volume or work performed is one of the best ways to achieve progressive overload. Simply adding a rep to each set will drastically increase training volume.
In our first example, if you did one extra rep per set, your training volume will be 5×6=30 total reps.
In the second example, your total work will be 200x5x6=6000 pounds of total work.
To implement this strategy, aim to increase your reps per set by one rep for a few weeks. Depending on the set/rep scheme, you may need to climb up to 8 or 10 reps per set. Once you can do the prescribed number of reps for all sets, then you will add some weight to the bar and begin the progression all over again.
Remember that adding weight isn’t the only way to become stronger. Doing more total work is more important. The added benefit is this will force you to slow down your progress to prevent hitting plateaus.
2. Increase training density
Training density is how much time it takes to perform a certain amount of work.
Imagine your typical leg workout session. How long does it take to perform? 45 minutes? 60 minutes? Now imagine if you deliberately took 3 hours to perform the same exact workout. No extra sets or exercises. How easy would that be? This is very LOW training density. Same workout, just performed over a very long period of time.
Now take the same exact workout and imagine trying to do it 10 minutes faster than before. You will be hustling and probably straining hard to get through all of the work. This is an example of HIGH training density.
If you are able to perform the same amount of work in less time, something about your fitness has to have improved.
Of course, this is another finite strategy to implement before it becomes impractical and possibly dangerous, but the point is to perform your training at a challenging pace.
3. Increase tension and improve technique
One of the critical principles of strength training is something called time under tension. It is essentially the total amount of time that a muscle is activated and creating tension. Muscle growth and strength is a direct consequence of time under tension. In general, longer bouts of time under tension tend to yield greater gains in muscle and strength (although this is a great generalization).
One overlooked part of time under tension is the amount of tension being produced. Lifting a heavier weight will naturally cause a muscle to create more tension. However, we can deliberately create more tension during an exercise by consciously tightening the working and stabilizing muscles.
Imagine performing a biceps curl with 20 pound dumbbells. Imagine casually curling them up and trying to expend as little energy on the movement as possible.
Now imagine curling the same 20 pound dumbbell but now brace your abs, squeeze your glutes, and stand tall. Pull your shoulders back. Grip the weights as hard as you can. Slow down the movement and try and actively flex the muscles harder as you lift the weights. In essence, try and make 20 pounds feel as difficult as possible.
This is a technique often employed by bodybuilders to maximize the amount of tension they are creating during any given exercise. Usually when we do this, we need to use impeccable technique to properly control the weights.
When we are intensionally increasing the amount of tension and improving technique, we naturally work harder during the exercise. This is another variation of progressive overload.
Expanding your toolkit
Never rely on just a single parameter to force progressive overload. The three strategies discussed here are simple to implement during every workout.
The pursuit of strength is a long journey. Slow but consistent progress is always favorable to rapid and unsustainable progress. Just focus on doing a little more each time you go into the gym.
