Trining Progress

Most of us have all heard about progressive overload but we know realistically as much as we might plan to up weight or reps every week that simply isn’t very realistic, but there are other measures of progress we can also use to track if we are progressing in a movement or not.

So the way I measure progressive overload is in 5 areas which I will cover today, weight, reps, tempo, form and feeling. The first 2 you have probably heard of the others maybe not so much so lets talk about it…

Weight - Pretty simply adding more weight onto the bar session to session this could be a small 1.25kg increment or a larger 10kg increment depending on what weights you have available and the body part you are training.

Reps - taking the same weight you used last session but hitting one or 2 more reps e.g a 200kg legs press last week for 6 reps you might hit 8 reps the following week.

Tempo - The speed in that you are doing the movement and the control you have over that weight you are lifting are you letting gravity and momentum control the lift or are you controlling it? slowing down to a set tempo in each movement will help give another constant to training and be another variable when considering if you are actually getting stronger or just bouncing more weight off the stack.

Form - similarly to tempo if your form isn’t right are you lifting the weight or are you just moving it? we want to make sure we are lifting with intent and at lest risk of injury, this also goes a little into the next point which is feeling but to lift the weight correctly means we will be lifting it with the intended body part through a full range of active motion and therefore ill more effectively grow the intended muscle.

Feeling- This for me is one of the most overlooked aspects of training, if you are doing lat pulldowns and feeling it in your upper back and biceps your not hitting your lats, if your doing hip thrusts and feeling it in your quads your not hitting your glutes, etc where you are feeling the muscle work is where it is going to be working not every exercise will feel the same for each individual so sometimes you need to strip it back and concentrate on feeling the exercise in the intended muscle and when you can this is a massive marker of progress.

So when you go to the gym think progress but understand that, that progress can and should come in many different forms, don’t just get hung up on numbers get obsessed with moving correctly.

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