The Most Important Rule for Building Muscle

WorkoutsMindset
Written By Guest User
dumbbell bench press

Working out feels very rewarding when you are a beginner lifter. You go to the gym one day, and the next you find yourself lifting twice as much weight for the same exact exercise you were struggling to perform the previous week. But deep down, under the layer of excitement for seeing progress in your aesthetic (or strength) journey, you know that this is likely not going to last forever. The mindless jumps in weight; the easy Personal Records set every week; the motivation that results from all this.

It's not going to last for long. When we first begin to train, we can make progress very easily, which is due to rapid adaptations taking place in our central nervous system, which at first does not know how to perform a certain exercise (say, the squat) and it feels very awkward when we perform it, but then adapts over time (fairly rapidly) through repetition; a process that takes place very quickly and lasts for some time when we are at the beginning of our training journey.

Well, that's the quintessential form of progressive overload: increasing weight over time performing the same amount of repetitions and sets, using the same execution and rest times. But progressive overload is much more than that. And it gets much more complicated to achieve as we advance in the 'athlete-level' hierarchy.

So, with this post we are going to dive deep into everything concerning progressive overload as it pertains to muscle hypertrophy or strength gains.

What is Progressive Overload?

Making progress is a fundamental law of resistance training, regardless of whether your goal is to build muscle mass or gain strength. Our bodies adapt to external stimuli fairly quickly (although this depends on the experience level), and in order to fight entropy, we need to provide our neuromuscular system with harder stimuli, so to create a new adaptation cycle and keep running this vicious cycle.

Progressive Overload means becoming more efficient at doing an exercise over time, hence doing more.

However, it is not that simple. Progressive overload does not just mean increasing weight over time. That is just one of the numerous ways this key principle can take place. And in this article we're going to see all the manners I can think of in which progressive overload can be implemented in our training sessions. But first, let's talk about the rules of the resistance training game.

Master the Basics. Then Progress.

The most important first step as far as resistance training is concerned has to do with becoming good at performing exercises and mastering your bodyweight.

These are the 2 fundamental rules of the game when we first start to workout. We first need to build a solid foundation (i.e. performing movements with great form and using the right muscles), and only afterwards can we focus on building up strength and increasing the weights lifted; which, however, sort of comes as a natural consequence when you work on improving the execution. That's because as we keep practicing a certain movement pattern and do it mindfully, our neuromuscular system gets used to it over time and becomes more efficient at doing it. This muscular adaptation is in itself a form of progressive overload.

So, we need to kick things off with learning to move and control our body through space properly before jumping into increasing the weight. In practice, this implies using bodyweight movements first (especially if you do not have any athletic foundation that may work in your favour). And only once we have understood the mechanics of the exercises can we progress to adding external resistance.

This rule (learn to move your body through space first), if you think about it, is a natural "reason-from-first-principle" implication, as resistance training is basically moving our body through space in a controlled manner and using the right muscles under some type of external load. What's more, by figuring out how to perform exercises from the very beginning, chances are we'll be less likely to develop injuries down the road.

Types of Progressive Overload

As hinted before in the article, progressive overload does not just happen through increasing the weight lifted in a given exercise over time, although this is the most intuitive and common way of applying it. Here's a list of all the possible ways progressive overload can be implemented to an exercise (that I can think of):

  • lifting more load using the same execution tempo* and range of motion

  • lifting the same load for more repetitions (using same range of motion and form)

  • lifting the same load for more sets (using same range of motion and form)

  • lifting the same load but increased range of motion

  • lifting the same load but increasing the time under tension (i.e. performing the movement more slowly than last time / using intensity techniques such as rest pause, hence making it last longer)

  • lifting the same load but decreasing rest time in between sets (with same range of motion and form)

  • improving the execution of the exercise (i.e. neuromuscular adaptation & more mind-muscle connection*)

  • lifting the same load with improved speed and power

  • lifting the same load more often in a week (increased frequency)

So, as you can see from the list above, believing that progressive overload can only be achieved through increasing weight over time is an absolute myth. We can improve our performance in many ways (9 i can think of), but tracking our progress requires an objective tracking system in place.

Practical Implications

The most useful takeaway from all of this is about keeping track of our training sessions. It does not really matter, especially at the beginning, what medium you use to write down key metrics of your workouts. It may be a paper journal, an app, Notion, Excel, Google Sheets, or whatever.

Anyways, I would argue that keeping track of at least the weight we lift for compound exercises such as squats, deadlifts, bench press, pull ups is very valuable. The reason for which we should track our sessions has to do with the objective nature of progressive overload: it can only happen if we use the same form, same range of motion, same tempo when doing an exercise. So, tracking our workouts gives us a framework of reference showing us where we are, and what we can do to progress over time, without cheating and fooling ourselves.

What's more, it may be a source of inspiration, as it allows us to see how we progress over time, an always rewarding feeling, especially when we've been training for a while and feel stuck.

Short Summary

Progressive Overload means becoming better at doing an exercise. It doesn't just take place when we increase weight over time. In fact, believing that is very limiting, and the post lists 9 more ways progressive overload may be implemented. We should all start training by mastering moving our body through space, especially via bodyweight movements at the beginning. Keeping an objective track of our workout sessions is the ultimate way we can assess how we're applying progressive overload in our own workouts and have a solid framework of reference.

FOOTNOTES

  • Tempo: time of execution of an exercise. For instance, the tempo of a barbell curl can be a 2121 (2'' eccentric - 1'' pause at the bottom - 2'' concentric - 1'' pause at the top)

  • Mind-muscle connection: conscious and deliberate muscle contraction while executing a movement

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