Every change or shock in the environment is perceived as stress and the body tries to adapt to it. If the stress is too small, it won’t cause a disturbance and no adaptation will occur. If the stress is too big, you simply die.

[BAM! You're dead.]

Small Increments Work Best

Weight training can induce this stress and so can other sports. The body reacts to this by restructuring in order to be better suited the next time the stress occurs. It is best however to allow ourselves to adapt easier by increasing the difficulty just a little bit at a time. So make sure to not be greedy and lift just a little bit more next time.

The smaller the working weight on an exercise, the smaller the progressive overload jump. This is kind of obvious but here goes. If you lift with the whole body – such as in deadlifts, you can get away with bigger increases in poundage. If you are training your biceps with barbell curls, you should use smaller increments because they constitute a bigger percentage of the total weight.

The Longer You’ve Been Training, the Harder It Gets

You have to understand that the longer your training experience, the harder and slower you will progress. This is because the initial adaptation to the stress of an exercise program is a result of a drastic change. From no training to some training. No such change can ever happen again.

From untrained to trained is the biggest jump you can make. Sure you can train like there is no tomorrow in order to induce a bigger stress, but you will fail, because the body has limited capacity for adaptation.

Just Keep At It

Nothing will give bigger rewards than persistence and consistency. Just being there every week will make you more successful than any fancy technique or program. All programs work if you keep hammering. Don’t miss workouts. It goes without saying – if you miss scheduled training, you are sabotaging your progress.

Alternate Between Strength and Size

For best results, alternate between training for size and training for strength. The body is like an engine – when training for strength, you tweak and tune it to run faster. When training for size – you just build yourself a bigger engine that you can later tweak and tune again to run even faster. Here are two workouts that do a good job alternating strength and size:

• Adonis Effect. This workout alternates heavy, moderate and light weights for constant progress. The aim is to build up the upper body to achieve an athletic v-shape taper.
• Visual ImpactThis workout also rotates between size and strnegth, but features a bonus phase designed to visually enhance the appearence of the mucsles by “shrink wrapping” the skin around them super tight.

When Training for Strength with Heavy Weights, It Is Easier to Progress on Sets

When training heavy, each new repetition is difficult. It is easier however to add another set. Like so:

Workout 1 – 3 sets of 3
Workout 2 – 4 sets of 3

When Training for Size, It Is Easier to Progress with Repetitions

Training for size is done with a moderate weight, so you can fatigue the muscle by focusing specifically on it. The sets are longer and it is easier just to add reps. Just like that:

Workout 1 – 10 reps, 8 reps, 8 reps
Workout 2 – 11 reps, 9 reps, 8 reps

Muscles Adapt Fast. Connective Tissues Adapt Slow

People who gain muscle mass fast with steroids sometimes end up injuring themselves. Their muscles are stronger, but the ligaments, joints and bones have to catch up first. When you have build some new size, you have to gradually allow your body to the new strength of the muscles

Measure Your Progress Objectively

Either execute the movements with perfect form or choose ones that you can’t cheat on – dead lifts, pullups, etc. There is of course place for some creative cheating. Just don’t fool yourself that you are progressing when in fact you are adjusting the exercise to make it easier.

Image: RossinaBossioB

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1. Bench Press More – Give Me 12 Days And I Will Make You Stronger
2. Ja Rule’s Workout – How You Can Build a Body You Can Be Proud Of
3. Beginner Strength Training – Build Bigger Muscles Fast With The Strength And Size Full Body Workout

What is Progressive Overload?

In order to get stronger, the body has to experience conditions that are increasingly more difficult. If month after month you just go for the pump with your 3 sets of 12 at 200 pounds, guess what will happen? Your body will not change. The simplest way would be to just add more weight to the bar on your bench presses. However there are other ways to make the training conditions harder.

Ways to Progress

The simplest way to progress is to do for example 3 to 5 reps or 8 to 12 and aim at hitting one more repetition the next time you are in the gym. For instance, 200 pound for 3 reps, next workout 200 pound for 4 reps, etc. Or if you go for the hypertrophy inducing rep range – 10 reps at 200 lbs, next workout 11 reps, you get my point. Add reps.

Another way is to try to add weight to the bar or machine. Yet another way is to try to do more total reps (which means sets X reps)with the same weight. You can also try to finish the same workout in less time. These are all ways to make the conditions harder on your body.

How Often Can You Progress?

This depends mainly on how close you are to reaching your genetic potential. Beginners can and should strive to progress with each session, sometimes even daily. Intermediate trainers usually can increase the resistance once every 5 to 7 days. Advanced athletes are happy to improve once every 4-6 weeks.

Olympic/Pro level trainees strive for annual progress or even plan their ascent in 4 year cycles for the Olympic games. You should strive to progress as often as possible for your condition. Trust meyou will save months and years of frustration in the gym if you focus on progress.

Weight Loss Progress

If your main goal in fitness is to lose weight, the only way to achieve it is to have a caloric deficit. You need to expend more energy than you take in with the food. Unfortunately, with exercise alone it is very difficult to achieve this deficit. A hard workout may burn 300-500 calories, which is the size of a regular meal. It is so easy to over eat and ruin your efforts in the gym.

The simplest diet plan I’ve found is to just skip 2 of your three daily meals 1 or 2 days per week. In this way the weekly calories are reduced by 15-20 percent and you achieve caloric deficit and thus lose weight.

Continuous Muscle Gains

Another problem people face is that while a workout might give results for a few months, soon enough the gains stop. At this point many of us simply quite working out. But there is a solution. One of the best approaches I’ve found is to actually alternate the type of workouts you do every few weeks. So every 3-4 weeks you’d change the type of workout you do.

Here is an example of a great workout that uses this approach. It’s a workout called Visual Impact. The cool thing about it is that it ensures continuous progress by alternating workout phases that focus on making the muscles harder with periods focused on making the muscles bigger. A whole training period is also dedicated to making the muscles ‘pop’ by making the skin wrapped super tight around them.

Related posts:

1. Fat Loss Mistakes – 7 Ways People Mess Things Up and How You Can Avoid Sabotaging Your Fat Loss Progress
2. Progressive Overload – How to Give Your Body an Extreme Makeover