Progressive Overload – The most important muscle building principle

Experiencing information overload is the least one can say when cruising the internet or any other source of information regarding improving your physique both aesthetics and performance wise. You may come across hundreds of different techniques, promoted by hundreds of different fitness gurus claiming that their practice works best. Drop sets, rest pause, pyramid training, … you’ve read it all. Regardless of which fitness influencer you follow or whatever fancy training strategy you apply to your own training, if you don’t focus on this one extremely crucial but often times missing concept, nothing is ever going to change the way you look or the way you perform.

The concept I’m referring to is called progressive overload. Progressive overload simply means being able to handle heavier loads and to perform heavier work, and more work over time. It doesn’t matter if you have the perfect training program created by Zeus himself or follow the latest hyped up workout strategies. If you don’t make any progress regarding adding weight to the bar or performing more repetitions with the same weight, you’re not going to see any significant changes in the mirror. The reason your muscles have their current size is because they don’t receive any signals to become bigger. You can bust your ass in the gym 6 days per week, you can perform extremely high volume workouts with a combination of every training technique known to man till this day, but if you aren’t able to increase the load on the bar and replicate your workouts with heavier weights over time, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

This is especially true when it comes to the big compound movements that will stimulate a lot of muscle mass in your body when being performed properly. Compound exercises such as the bench press, chin up and squats are multi joint movements that require a lot of your body’s musculature to work together in order to perform the movement. Focusing your workouts around these movements will give you the most bang for your buck and will stimulate as much muscle mass as possible, demanding the least amount of time. Therefore it’s of extreme importance to apply progressive overload on your main, compound lifts if you want to maximize your potential and get as much out of your workouts as possible. That is something that a lot of guru’s forget to mention when promoting the newest, fanciest fitness template. As a result, their clients stay the same year after year, wasting their time and ending where they initially started.

If you now think to yourself: “So this guy is saying that when it comes to the gym and building a bigger, better physique, progression on my (especially compound) lifts is key?”, then you’re on the right track.

How to make progress easy and effective

Ok, so you now understand that progress is key. So the next logical step is to ask ourselves: “What should we do to achieve progress? How can we find a way to improve our strength on the main lifts in a practical and efficient way?”. Progress is made by following an effective progression models. There are many progression models that work extremely well. However, I like to keep my training simple and effective. You don’t need an extremely complicated workout routine with insanely confusing training templates that even astrophysics can’t figure out. You don’t need an extremely complicated progression model that will make you hate your training. You need something that is easy to understand, easy to execute, and that works. If you follow this kind of progression model, you’re in for a treat to make long term gains in both strength and muscle size.  To give you a couple of examples for each stage in your training career I will share with you below a couple of my favorite progression models. They are based around the KISS principle, which means: “Keep it simple, stupid!”

Level 1: The beginner stage – Linear progression model

When you’re new to the gym and don’t have any experience or you’ve been lifting for a while but have wasted your time not knowing what to do, and want to get serious about transforming your physique and becoming a better looking, stronger athlete, the linear progression model is for you. I do want to mention that before you start adding weight to the bar, I strongly advise you to practice the big lifts a couple of times with an empty bar or light dumbbells to make sure your technique is on point so you don’t injure yourself.

This beginners linear progression model requires you to complete a certain number of work sets within a certain rep range. Once you hit the top of the rep range for all sets with that certain weight, you increase the load on the bar and repeat the process.

Here’s a practical example of the linear progression model:

You’re in the beginning stage of your lifting career and can handle 110lb on the bar for 3 sets of 5 reps. The rep range you’ve chosen to progress in is the 5 to 8 rep range and you’ll only increase the weight on the bar if you can perform all 3 sets for 8 reps with 110lb. Let’s put this into a better visual:

As you can see, the lifter in our example was able to complete all three sets with 8 reps with 110lb after a couple of workouts. From that moment, he puts more weight on the bar and will repeat the process until again, he can complete all three sets with 8 repetitions. When you hit the top of the rep range for all three sets again with this higher amount of weight, you repeat the process again by adding weight to the bar etc.

For the beginning lifter this is an extremely simple, yet effective progression scheme that doesn’t require any overthinking and will definitely satisfy your training needs for the first 6 to 12 months in the gym. When you apply this strategy on your foundational compound exercises such as the squat, bench press, chin up and overhead press, you will see your strength skyrocket and your physique will transform into a bigger, better version of yourself.

Level 2: The beginner – Intermediate level – Individual set linear progression model

Once the numbers of your lifts go up significantly by applying the linear progression model, there will come a moment in time where you won’t see any significant improvements due to a strength plateau. During this time is might be interesting to make an adjustment to your progression model and move on to the individual set linear progression model. This means that instead of upping the weight on the bar when all sets have been completed, you will focus on each individual set to reach the top of the rep range and to increase the weight for each independent of each other.

By focusing on each individual set you may break through a plateau more easily and start making progress again because you’re not holding back to make sure you get the top of the rep range for all sets. I’ve had numerous experiences with clients busting through plateaus using this strategy. It’s a staple in my own routine as well. Simply and effective. 

Level 3: Intermediate stage – Descending pyramid model

With this progression method we will work the other way around as we’ve been doing in the previous progression model. Instead of trying to up the reps with a given weight in a certain rep range, we will choose a weight that we can handle for the top of the rep range and keep increasing the weight until we reach the low end of the rep range. Once we are able to do that, we restart the process at the top of the given rep range, but with a heavier weight on the bar.

For example let’s say we will work with the 5 to 8 rep range and start with 200lb, which we can handle for 8 good reps. We will keep increasing the load on the bar with the smallest available plates in the gym until we end up using a weight we can perform 5 good reps with. Once we achieve this goal, we will restart the process of performing our set for 8 reps, but with a heavier weight than the previous cycle.

Let’s illustrate this with a visual example:

 It might sound strange at first to go at it from light to heavy, but it definitely works. By starting lighter and working our way down to a heavier weight for lower reps, we train our nervous system to handle heavier weights. When the nervous system is well adapted to heavy loads, you’ll be able to recruit more muscle fibers and therefore handle heavier weights more efficiently.

Level 4: Advanced lifter’s progression secret – Micro loading

Micro loading is a progression strategy that not a lot of people practice because of the unavailability in public gyms of the small, fractional plates required to use this strategy. As the name implies, with micro loading we are using very small increments in weight to bring up our lifts. The purpose of this strategy is not necessarily to go up in the number of reps you do with a given weight, but to stay within a certain rep range, let’s say 4-6 and keep upping the weights in very small dosages.

Let’s say you can bench press 265 for 5 reps and you seem to get stuck. Micro loading allows you to up the weight with fractional plates as light as 0.6 – 1.1lb. I’ve actually pushed through several plateaus on several lifts by using micro loading as an effective tool for progression. I can guarantee you that by making small increments in weight, you can add an extra 10-20 pounds to your lifts over time. You’ll be amazed by the results.

The reason micro loading is so damn effective at advanced stages in your lifting career is because when you’ve already milked out a lot of gains during your first years of training, the jumps in weight, even with the smallest plates available in the gym, will be too big of a jump for your body to adapt to the new stimulus. By using fractional plates, you allow your body to make tiny jumps at an already advanced level which it is able to handle and easily adapt to. When you do this long enough, you’ll be surprised by how effective it is at producing new gains in both strength and muscle mass.

Here’s a visual example of a lifter using the micro loading progression strategy:

You might think that this column is optimistic, but that’s actually what happened to my bench press using micro loading with fractional plates. My lifts went up in a straight line again after being stuck for a long time. Micro plates aren’t hard to find these day when you look for them online. When you’ve been lifting for a long time and you’ve hit a plateau that you can’t seem to break, I highly suggest that you try this simple, extremely effective training technique. You’ll have to bring your own fractional plates to the gym though, but hey, the results are worth it.

Conclusion

Without progressions in strength, by either lifting more weight or increasing the number of reps with the same weight, nothing is going to happen. The concept of progressive overload is the number one principle that should be taken into account when starting any training program. No matter which techniques you use, no matter whose program you’re copying, no matter how much volume you perform or how many times you go to the gym each week… if you don’t see your numbers going up you won’t make any changes physique wise. This is especially true for the natural lifter, which is my target audience.

I’ve shared with you 4 examples of effective progressions models for any stage in a lifter’s journey. Obviously, you can still use the first and second progression model even in your advanced stages. It’s fun to mix things up from time to time to keep it your workouts exciting. The most important thing is that you use something that works and that you can stick to for the long haul.

Kevin Mahjoubi