Why you aren’t building muscle
Got your diet right?
Your macros all in check?
Your gym schedule is fully booked?
But still struggling to see results?
You may be missing one of the most important things and overlooked components of simple body building.
Progressive Overload!
Now if you follow my videos and my Fitness Facebook page, which is free of course you would already have some idea about what this is.
But for anyone who has yet to check it out, ill explain it now for you and give you some tips on how you can incorporate this into your workouts and see all kinds of muscle gains. All kinds (A Hodgetwin reference for anyone that got that). So lets break it down.
DEFINITION:
Progressive overload is a principle that requires you to continually increase the demands you place on your musculoskeletal system to increase the muscle size, your endurance and strength.
So in simple terms, it means you can get bigger stronger and endure more reps over time. It is important we recognise the importance of this, as failure to really move forward or stagnate can see muscle strength decrease.
Progressive overload can also be transferred across cardiovascular programs too to improve your aerobic capacity and cardiorespiratory system.
So one of the easiest examples I tend to use is the bench press. If you are able to bench 100kg (a nice easy round number to use) for 8 reps you will notice that each time you do this it should become more comfortable. (Taking into consideration, rest, fatigue, hydration etc).
Your body will have adapted and got used to the load and lifting it 8 times.
But what happens then? If you continue to stick to 8 reps and no longer tweak it or aim for progressive overload how can your strength or pectorial muscles grow?
This is where you need to incorporate some of the following overload techniques:
1. Increase the REPS
Simply put, if you cant increase the weights to 105kg for example, try and do 9 reps (using the example above). Then try 10, then 11, then 12.
Now 12 is usually my stopping point because if you can hit 12 + reps you are likely to hit the muscular endurance rep ranges and the chances are 105kg should now be a breeze, or at least a few reps of it will be.
You want to try and maintain your reps within the 8–12 range — Hypertrophy range.
Initially you may need to be spotted for some of these exercises and there is nothing wrong with that, providing the level of weight they support you with decreases over time.
2. Increase the RESISTANCE
Add more weight, aka resistance. This could be as miminal as a few extra kg or lbs. Anything more than the 100kg will require your muscles to adapt and over time become stronger and grow. I have gone up in weight myself to only lift a few reps by adding a few more smaller plates. But then using point 1 I have managed to max that out to a 12 rep range, before coming back to point 2 again.
Making some sense now? I hope so.
3. Increase your VOLUME
Now this again is overlooked. Volume is basically: number of reps x resistance x frequency.
If you start to add more sets into your workouts or another day of training for example the demands on your muscles will cause them to adapt with the extra load they are being forced to control. Initially however I would keep it simple and go from doing 3 sets on exercises you previously did 2 on, or 4 sets for those you previously did 3 on.
4. Increase your FREQUENCY
So, I touched on this in point 3. You could benefit from that extra day. Training muscle groups twice a week has shown significant growth in muscle gains for many studies. In fact 2 seems to be the sweet spot, so do not get over excited and think you need to bench press 7 days a week as there is a thing called ‘the law of diminishing returns’ which sets in after 2 days.
Trust the process, it can’t be sped up.
5. Lower your REST
This is an easy one, i use with all my clients. I reduce the amount of rest time they have between sets. This is especially useful if there is no way of potentially adding more weight or we are limited for time.
Rather than a 90 second rest between the top sets, ill try a 70 second rest, then a 60 rest.
Once your body is able to cope with the load with less rest it will begin to have metabolic changes in its efficiency and allow you to increase the overload.
Now, me being me I utilise a lot more science in my approaches when I train any of my types of clients. But for an avid gym goer who likes to do things alone there is enough takeaways here to really get you going and seeing you make momumental strides.
If you found any of this useful, please do share it with somebody else and let me know your thoughts.
Have an awesome day!
#JustDeuIt #Fitness
