Common Fitness Mistake #5: No Progression

As a trainer, a big mistake I see is client’s doing what appears to be a well thought out training program on the outside. The exercise selection is balanced and it addresses any issues they may have. But they are forgetting to make PROGRESS? When they started the program, maybe they had a trainer and they were pushed to increase the weight a tad or to decrease rest periods. But once they finished with a trainer, they simply maintained the status quo.

Let me be the first to say that simply getting in the gym and moving is a great for your health and you are doing better than most people. However, if you are making the mistake of not striving for progress, you are missing out on large part of training!

The human body loves to adapt to the stresses you subject it to. It wants to reach homeostasis, it does not desire to add more muscle or lose more fat. To do this you need to subject your body to Progressive Overload. You need to get outside your comfort zone. Deep down you knew this, you knew that to make improves to your body it would take work and feel hard. It will downright uncomfortable at times, your lungs will be on fire, your muscles will burn, and you will feel like you cannot do any more. Are you willing to do that? If so, read on for a few ways to incorporate Progressive Overload.

Performance (Efficiency)

The basic unit of your entire training program is the repetition. It makes sense that you should strive to become better and better at performing each rep. If you performed 3 sets of 10 reps of bench press last week with 95 pounds and did the same weight and sets this week but with better more technically sound reps, then you did in fact improve. The better the quality of each rep, the more you stimulate the muscle and the more metabolically demanding the workout will be.

Increased Weight (Intensity)

The most common way people think to make progress is to add weight to their exercises. It is fantastic if you are able to increase the weight on a certain exercise, but please do not sacrifice form for increased weight. If adding 10 pounds on the barbell means that you give yourself a hernia and the weight moves at 1 inch per second while you flail about with zero semblance of perfect form, then please do not add weight. If adding weight to your squat means your range of motion goes from your butt nearly hitting the floor to your butt barely moving down at all, then strip off the weight and go back to squatting correctly.

Increasing weight on an exercise is often called an increase in intensity. Intensity is measured relative to the most you can perform for a particular exercise. Do not mistake that for the subjective term of intensity referring to the hard to quantify description of how hard you are working.

Volume

Volume refers to the cumulative pounds you moved in a workout. If last week you did 3 sets of 10 reps of bench press with 95 pounds, you moved 2850 pounds of volume. If this week you did 3 sets of 10 with 100 pounds, you moved 3000 pounds of volume, an increase of 150 pounds of work.

You may notice in the above example, the tactic of increasing weight was used. However, you could also increase volume by adding another set. 4 sets of 10 with 95 pounds would yield 3800 pounds of volume, a substantial increase! You could have even finished with a 4 set of 3 to 5 reps to get some extra volume without surpassing the previous week my such a large amount

More work in a Given Time Period (Density)

You can increase the amount of work you do in a given time by carefully monitoring your rest periods. If you performed the bench press listed about with 90 second rest periods last week, then this week you could try the same workout with 75 second rest periods, shaving 30 to 45 seconds off of that exercise. Over the course of several exercises you could shave off several minutes.

Increased Weekly Density (Frequency)

If you take lest days during the week, you have increase the density of your training week, or the frequency of your workouts. For example, let’s say previously you were doing push, pull and leg workouts during the course of one week. If you switched to every other day workouts, you would accomplish the same amount of training every 6 days as opposed to 7 days.

Losing fat and keeping intensity same (Greater Relative Intensity)

If you are in the middle of an intense training and diet regime and losing body fat, your goal should simply be to maintain strength. That is not to say you cannot make absolute strength gains during a fat loss phase. However, if you simple maintain strength while losing fat, you are in fact getting stronger relative to your bodyweight. Let’s say we have a 200 pound individual who can bench press 150 pounds for 5 reps. He can lift 75 percent of his bodyweight. If he loses 50 pounds, he will now weighs 150 pounds. If he keeps his bench press the same, he can now life 100 percent of his bodyweight. He has increased his relative strength while maintaining his absolute strength.

That wraps up this blog. I hope you found it helpful!

Remember, your body wants to remain as it is, in its comfort zone. You have to get at least a little uncomfortable to make progress. I promise you, it is worth it!