You won’t know anyone who can lift 140 kilos on a press bench and have wires by arms and a flat chest, and success leaves clues, and if you want to gain muscle mass, and progress in the gym, it is essential that you apply the concept of progressive overload.
What is progressive overload?
Progressive overload is a “cool” way of saying that over time you increase the weight you use for the same range of repetitions in a given exercise, or increase the number of repetitions you do with the same weight in that exercise.
And besides: if you want to maximize muscle gain it helps a lot to do this in varied repetition ranges.
Now you’ll be thinking yes, that’s okay, that this is very obvious, and I’m not discovering America. And you’re right, this should be very obvious, but unfortunately, not everyone knows how to put the theory into practice as soon as the first few months pass, when they stop being beginners and progress stops coming alone.
Don’t you believe me? Think about how many people you know who have been training in the gym for years and yet, year after year, they look the same physically and have the same level of strength. I’m a lot of it.
Practical example
Then I’m going to give you a practical example of the concept of progressive overload so it’s easier for you to understand how to put it into practice.
Imagine you want to gain muscle mass in your pectorals, and your election exercise is the plane press with dumbbells, a valid long-term progression could be:
Week 1: 4 series of 8 repetitions with dumbbells of 20 kg.
Week 2: 4 series of 10,9,8,8 repetitions with 20 kg dumbbells.
Week 3: 4 series of 10 repetitions with dumbbells of 20 kg.
Week 4: 2 series of 8 repetitions with dumbbells of 22 kg we decrease the volume but increase the weight.
Week 5: 4 series of 8 repetitions with dumbbells of 22 kg.
Week 6: 4 series of 9 repetitions with dumbbells of 22 kg.
Week 7: 4 series of 10,10,9,9 with dumbbells of 22 kg.
Week 8: 2 series of 6 repetitions with dumbbells of 24 kg we decreased the volume but increased the weight.
Week 9: 4 series of 6 repetitions with dumbbells of 24 kg.
Week 10: 4 series of 8,8,7,6 repetitions with dumbbells of 24 kg.
Week 11: 4 series of 8 repetitions with dumbbells of 24 kg.
Week 12: This week you try to do 4 series of more than 8 repetitions with 24kg dumbbells, but you’re not capable, these things happen. Have you gotten stuck in this rep’s rank? Okay, no problem, we changed the range of repetitions the following week to keep progressing.
Week 13 : 3 series of 5 repetitions with dumbbells of 26 kg. We decreased the volume but increased the weight.
Week 14: 4 series of 5.5.5.4 repetitions with dumbbells of 26 kg.
Week 15: 5 series of 5 repetitions with dumbbells of 26 kg this time we have increased the number of series.
Week 16: 5 series of 6,6,6,5,5 repetitions with dumbbells of 26 kg.
Week 17: 5 series of 7,7,6,6,5 repetitions with dumbbells of 26 kg.
Week 18: 2 series of 5 repetitions with dumbbells of 28 kg we decreased the volume but increased the weight.
Week 19: 4 series of 5,5,4,4 repetitions with dumbbells of 28 kg.
Week 20: 4 series of 5 repetitions with dumbbells of 28 kg.
Week 21: 4 series of 5 repetitions with dumbbells of 28 kg. Again you’ve stalled in this range of repetitions, but it’s okay, we’re going to make a change to a higher range of repetitions to see how it is.
Week 22: 3 series of 14,13,12 repetitions with 20 kg dumbbells
Week 23: 3 series of 15,15,13 repetitions with 20 kg dumbbells
Week 24: 3 series of 15 repetitions with dumbbells of 20 kg. Wait a second. This is the weight with which in week 1 you were doing 4 series of 8 repetitions, you are now doing 3 series of 15 repetitions.