Progressive overload is a general fitness principle for all types of exercises. It refers to the process of gradually increasing endurance against the stress put on muscles during exercises. With it, you challenge your body to handle more stress for muscle growth and better fitness.
You go through progressive overload during long-term exercising without even knowing what you are doing. The moment you realize that your current resistance level is not being challenged with your reps’ number, you increase the number. They will get accustomed to the current limit without progressively challenging your muscles. It will hinder your goal to reach your best self.
What are Progressing Overload and Their Types?
Progressive overload is a principle regarding strength training. It involves a gradual increment of your workout intensity so that you can grow stronger. Apart from that, progressive overload ensures a couple more benefits like enhancing the muscle size and keeping a balanced fitness.
Progressive overload is basically about adding weights or increasing the number of repetitions in your exercises. The prime goal is to exert a bit more stress on the muscles to break their current resistance and set a higher one.
If you practice progressing overload regularly in your workout sessions, you will surely see some of its impact on your muscles, stamina, and fitness. You will feel
Growth in Muscle Mass: Muscle soreness is a positive sign when you are trying to improve. Progressive overload can demand some credits as it often ends up sore your muscles. However, the soreness is temporary. When you lift heavier weights, microtears in the muscle fibers are created. Your body needs to repair the tears, and it uses amino acids for that purpose. Therefore, you get bigger and stronger muscles.
Better Resistance: Regardless of the process you follow for challenging your muscles, be it adding more reps or lifting heavier weights, you are pushing your resistance level. When you do it for a few days, you will get stronger muscles and better stamina.
Key Strategies for Implementing Progressive Overload
Increasing Weights
When exercising with weights, like dumbbells or different types of bars, you have to increase the weights to implement progressive overload. Adding more will force the muscles to grow stronger once your muscles get accustomed to the current weight.
Once you feel comfortable with a certain weight, increase it only by 5-10%. For example, when lifting 100 pounds becomes too easy for you, make it 105 – 110 pounds. Regular and balanced increase in weight will ensure balanced muscle growth.
Increasing Repetitions
Increasing the number of repetitions in every set will also ensure growth. By increasing the reps, you will experience better muscular endurance and growth.
You need to keep track of your stress level. If you think you can complete all sets of an exercise with ease, consider adding 1 or 2 more reps. Like, if you can do 3 sets of 10 reps of an exercise comfortably, you should start 3 sets of 12 reps.
Increasing Sets
You can also add more sets to your workout session. It will increase your total volume of exercise. You will need to spend a little more time and do a couple more sets until you feel enough stress on your muscles.
To start, you can add just one set and keep track of your progress. For example, if your current session comprises 3 sets of squats, add a fourth set. Your muscles will deal with more workload and gradually grow stronger to adjust to it.
Varying Exercises
Another great strategy for overcoming plateaus is adding variations to your exercises. This will help you target different muscle groups with more control. You can choose a muscle group that needs improvement and add an exercise targeting it. It will promote a balanced improvement.
You should rotate among exercises every 4 to 6 weeks. If you are currently using bench presses for your chest, you can switch to adjustable dumbbells or push-ups. It will make your workout session more interesting and challenge all your muscles in new ways.
Reducing Intervals
Now if you care about your cardiovascular fitness, you should shorten the rest period between sets. For instance, if you usually stop for 60 seconds between your sets, you should reduce it by 10 or 15 seconds. It will make your heart beat at a higher rate. When you switch to the new set, your heart will beat faster. The process will improve your overall level of cardio endurance.
Slowing It Down
Now, let’s talk about a misconception people hold about progressive overload. They believe that the process of overloading requires faster and heavier exercises only. But the actual fact is quite different. You don’t need to add reps or increase weights. You can practice overloading your muscles simply by trying it slowly.
- You can slow down your movement. It will add more time under extra stress. Going slow, especially when you are at the lowering phase will add more challenge to the exercise.
- You can focus on practicing your moves and getting a good grip on them. Spending time on your fitness and form will improve your performance in any movement.
Overloading vs. Overtraining
As you already know, overloading is about placing your body under extra stress. You already know all the strategies to put overload on your muscles. But do you know about overtraining? Overtraining, on the other hand, happens when you push yourself too hard. Overtraining involves spending more time lifting weights without giving your body a chance to recover. It can lead you to dangerous consequences like
- Unbearable soreness in your muscles at the time of training and even afterward
- Decline in performance
- All-day fatigue and exhaustion
- Sleeping issues
- Higher blood pressure and heart rate
- Irregularity in periods
How Not to Engage in Overtraining?
Overtraining can do serious harm to even serious exercise enthusiasts. Overloading is different. It involves slow progress and gives enough window for breathing. If you want to add progressing overloading strategies to your training, you can do so. You can even add all five strategies at once. However, you should go slow while doing it. It is called progression pacing.
You have to gradually increase the volume of your training and the intensity of your regular workout. The idea is not new and definitely not groundbreaking. However, it is an effective strategy to challenge the body to improve without going beyond your capacity to recover.
One key strategy to avoid overtraining is to pace your training by practicing only a single type of overloading. You can try it at your next training session. Just add a single progressive overload strategy and maintain it for a week at least.
For example, you can slow down your movements for each exercise. It will maintain the projected tension for a much longer time. To prevent yourself from overtraining, you must ensure that your muscles are getting enough time to recover. Allow them a minimum of 48 hours of break before focusing on the same muscle group. Therefore, they will get the needed time to improve and grow.
Improvement Beyond the Plateaus
You can’t deny the efficacy and beauty of progressive overload training. Regardless of your age and level of fitness, you can add to your daily training routine. The strategies are highly adaptable and don’t take much time to reflect the positive impact on your muscles and body.
As we all know, every gymnast is a progress on work. He is practicing his regular training while finding opportunities for betterment. He is looking for ways to grow his muscles and improve his overall stamina. In that journey, he has no other option but to challenge his resistance level. Progressive overload presents the strategies that he needs to reach his goals.
To get the most out of your training sessions and practice progressive overload, you should log them. This will allow you to look into your training history and analyze all the small changes you have made up to this point. Ultimately you will find the best opportunity to incorporate overloads into your workout.
How to Avoid Plateaus by Changing Your Workout Plan?
It often happens that people are falling in love with their workout routines. It makes them practice the same exercises month after month. They feel comfortable as the necessity of daily calorie burn is met, and they do not need to incorporate any change. But things can be different if they think a little deep.
If you are one such practitioner, think differently. Imagine how versatile it would be if you experimented with different sets of exercises and gradually increased your adaptability to the stress they put on your body. How completely enriched your muscles of the entire body would be.
You should add new exercises to your routine every week. You can research and study at Ativafit Academy and learn about different types of exercises. Surely, you will fall in love with some of them. Pick one or two exercises on a weekly basis and combine them with your current ones. It will add the required versatility and growth to your overall training sessions. You can also follow a few mindset training blogs. Thus, you will know how to think and feel while progressing toward betterment.
Signs of Effective Overload
When you do it right, progressive overload will positively impact your muscles. You will experience better cardio endurance. Your ability to lift heavier weights will increase. Weights that you never thought of lifting only a few months ago will feel lighter.
Progressive overload will also directly impact your everyday life. You will feel energetic, and connecting with people will seem happier. Your confidence will reflect in your work and attitude. You will catch fewer diseases and experience clear thinking ability when in critical situations. Because you have already learned how to grow by tacking extra stress. Your entire life will change for betterment and you will draw to your ultimate success.
Progressing overload is simply a term to define improvement in exercising or training. It is about preventing plateaus and ensuring continuous progress. Whenever your muscles build comfort, you put extra stress upon them.
We have learned several strategies, such as increasing weight, reps, and sets and switching between different exercises. All of them will help you break your resistance and have stronger muscles. Ativafit has experts who research and experiment with various strategies for building strength and setting new resistance. You can visit Ativa Academi to learn more.
