You may have heard that you should progressively increase your training, and this vital information is out in the fitness space. But, it has also led many people to feel they aren’t progressing because they cannot add and progress ever exercise.

What should you be looking to progress?

Load (weight) & Volume (reps or potentially a set) – this is the most obvious thing.

Tempo (speed) & Connection – slowing down isn’t going to increase the stimulus necessarily, but it’s an intelligent way to ensure you have mastered your current load selection and rep target. I’ve also put “connection” here because it’s very easy to cheat, use momentum, or lock out a joint, and the muscle loses the “connection” to the load. So ensuring you stay connected to the weight is also a smart idea. Again, it won’t increase the stimulus but ensures it remains on the muscle and does not go into the joint (which is very important).

Range of motion – In some exercises, you can focus on depth, like push up’s on yoga locks or an elevated block for RDLs or reverse lunges. This can increase the amount of motion required at the joint. If you can take a target muscle into longer muscle lengths, you can increase the stretch tension, which increases mechanical tension (a primary mechanism for hypertrophy).

Hitting PBs is NOT necessarily progressive overload. Let’s say you were doing bench press last year, but you picked up a shoulder niggle, so you backed off the lift for 6-12 months. When you get back into training, your strength is 25% reduced. You don’t have to get back to your absolute maxes to be overloading. If you can add a bit of weight to the bar each week, that’s progressive overload. You only need to think about trying to do something that improves on last week. Respect that your form needs to be correct, so don’t jump through the weights. Take it slow. Each slight increase is enough new stimulus to get the benefits from your training. 

Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram, where I share exercise techniques and show you how to maximise your training. I hope you enjoyed this blog post, if you have any questions, I host a weekly  Q&A session on my Instagram channel. Otherwise, please feel free to email me at andy@andyvincentpt.com. 

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