Progressing your workouts

[Pseudonym]

A couple of excellent posts about this inspired me to start this topic to discuss it further.

A while back I increased the volume in my workouts, and decreased the rest times. That got me out of a plateau and making progress again. Now that seems to have stalled.

Conventional wisdom says this is the time to go back to a strength phase. But my joints hate that.

So tell me more about the theory of progressive overload... What are the mechanisms triggered that stimulate the muscle adaptation, and what techniques do you use to achieve that?

[shane]

How about super setting chest/back type workouts , that may help with your progress again and limit the rest periods as well

[yeelang]

The essence of pushing weights is to increase our protein turn over rate optimally. If it was as simple as going into gym and lifting as much as possible to failure then a lot more guys would be jacked, however there seems to be diminishing returns to stimulating PTOR  vs increasing delay in recovery, which leads to a delay in another PTOR spike... obviously if the net increase over time is better than  acute intense workouts the former is the way to go. This is what leads to progressive overload, finding mechanical loads that increase overtime without hindering recovery. Obviously it is virtually impossible to assess growth factors at a cellular level in our body while training so we look at the output and quantify workouts to provide a clearer picture of where we should be training to best map PTOR. 

Quantifying workouts also solves another key problem a lot of lifters have which is lifting based on environmental factors not on true potential. Your body doesn't really want to grow, it likes to stay where it is, both in weight, composition and strength. So of course there are times where we have to push mental barriers to reach new levels. By quantifying your workouts you provide a logical hypothesis of potential to help mitigate mental barriers your body puts up in response to added stimulus. If you're feeling like shit in gym but you know you have recovered and eaten optimally and your target load is within your reach than it's time to grind it out and look for gains on the other side. A lot of people in this situation see this as the time to deload because that's what your body wants to do. This becomes more and more polarized as you get more advanced.

If you are training at an intermediate level or above you really need to be quantifying your workouts. Even if it's just tracking reps and sets and total volume to be able to provide a rational for your chosen rep ranges for your next workout. This is just as true for enhanced lifters as natural because gains vs optimal gains and you avoid the "I stopped gaining 10lbs a week on my bench so I need more gear" debauchery. 

 

not sure if this helps just a brain dump before bed.

[Cameron_R]

The essence of pushing weights is to increase our protein turn over rate optimally. If it was as simple as going into gym and lifting as much as possible to failure then a lot more guys would be jacked, however there seems to be diminishing returns to stimulating PTOR  vs increasing delay in recovery, which leads to a delay in another PTOR spike... obviously if the net increase over time is better than  acute intense workouts the former is the way to go. This is what leads to progressive overload, finding mechanical loads that increase overtime without hindering recovery. Obviously it is virtually impossible to assess growth factors at a cellular level in our body while training so we look at the output and quantify workouts to provide a clearer picture of where we should be training to best map PTOR. 

Quantifying workouts also solves another key problem a lot of lifters have which is lifting based on environmental factors not on true potential. Your body doesn't really want to grow, it likes to stay where it is, both in weight, composition and strength. So of course there are times where we have to push mental barriers to reach new levels. By quantifying your workouts you provide a logical hypothesis of potential to help mitigate mental barriers your body puts up in response to added stimulus. If you're feeling like shit in gym but you know you have recovered and eaten optimally and your target load is within your reach than it's time to grind it out and look for gains on the other side. A lot of people in this situation see this as the time to deload because that's what your body wants to do. This becomes more and more polarized as you get more advanced.

If you are training at an intermediate level or above you really need to be quantifying your workouts. Even if it's just tracking reps and sets and total volume to be able to provide a rational for your chosen rep ranges for your next workout. This is just as true for enhanced lifters as natural because gains vs optimal gains and you avoid the "I stopped gaining 10lbs a week on my bench so I need more gear" debauchery. 

 

not sure if this helps just a brain dump before bed.

is my translation on point?

1) write down your work outs.

2) suck it up you sissy and go hard

?

[Pseudonym]

Good post, Yeelang. And your points (as kindly translated by Cameron) are probably quite applicable in my case...

obviously if the net increase over time is better than  acute intense workouts the former is the way to go. This is what leads to progressive overload, finding mechanical loads that increase overtime without hindering recovery.

Can you expand on this? Obviously increasing the reps is the logical answer, but what happens in the higher (15+) rep ranges - does the same argument hold? If you're already doing 12-15 reps, is the next step more sets? Then what after that?

How about super setting chest/back type workouts , that may help with your progress again and limit the rest periods as well

Not a bad thought. I haven't ever done much supersetting of chest and back. Could be interesting.

[HumanPerformance]

How many months have been training without a break?

[fng]

if your doing 15 plus reps,  put your weight up ......

[yeelang]

Good post, Yeelang. And your points (as kindly translated by Cameron) are probably quite applicable in my case...

obviously if the net increase over time is better than  acute intense workouts the former is the way to go. This is what leads to progressive overload, finding mechanical loads that increase overtime without hindering recovery.

Can you expand on this? Obviously increasing the reps is the logical answer, but what happens in the higher (15 rep ranges - does the same argument hold? If you're already doing 12-15 reps, is the next step more sets? Then what after that?

 

How about super setting chest/back type workouts , that may help with your progress again and limit the rest periods as well

Not a bad thought. I haven't ever done much supersetting of chest and back. Could be interesting.

 

so your body has a functional response to adapt depending on the stimulus it's given, generally speaking above 60-70% (60-70% I'd class as explosive) with intensity the main adaptions are to build type2 muscle fibres and increase strength (the lower the rep range the more strength, less hypertrophy and vise versa) This is essentially what we want with bodybuilding. Anything higher than give or take 15-20 reps is taking the functional adaptation away from strength and type2 size (unless you are an absolute begineer)

In your situation you haven't really provided enough information on how you are platueing or what trainign you are doing, what your goals are etc etc but essentially with progressive overload you setup a training block in which you are looking to overload during the duration of the cycle. How that block will look like depends on a myraid of factors from goals, expereince, frequency of gym etc etc.. you will essentially start at a place of comfortable volume and look to overload/overreach before starting a new phase, this could be 4-6 weeks or it could be a macro block for say a powerlifting meet half a year away. 

 

 

 

[shane]

Change to supersets low or high reps you will find it quite taxing but some good gains

[Pseudonym]

Cheers guys. You've made me realise that actually I don't know what I'm doing - my mind is on a hundred other things right now, so tracking where I'm at is the last thing I'm worried about. As a result, I'm going into the gym, selecting a weight that's heavy(ish), pushing out 10-15 reps for a few sets until I'm tired or run out of time... Sometimes I'll superset, sometimes I won't... it's all very imprecise, and therefore probably too easy to pussy out and not get that progressive overload happening.
 

with progressive overload you setup a training block in which you are looking to overload during the duration of the cycle.

Without knowing it was called "progressive overload", I did a routine some years ago that was exactly this. It was designed to build up lagging shoulders, and it worked really well.

Would you typically focus on overloading only one muscle group at a time (as this routine did), or is it okay to overload everything?

Or better still, could you stagger it - ie, peak one muscle group one week, and another group the next, and so on...? That way total overall volume for each week remains more stable, you're not killing yourself one week, then have nothing the next.

 

So the solution here I think is for me to follow a preset programme, or start writing shit down!

[FellowshipOfTheRon]

carry a little notebook and write it all down - then write it up on gymnation workout forums i used to use an app but found the phone can just be too distracting / fiddly to deal with (or atleast thats been my experience).

 

you want to make sure you are progressing on some level.. if you just keep going in doing your own instinctive thing there's a good chance you can keep making gains for a while but eventually you'll end up reaching a sort of equillibrium where you think you're pushing yourself but really you're just taking it easy because no real goal.

 

what kind of overloading routine did you use in the past for bringing up shoulders?

[Pseudonym]

carry a little notebook and write it all down

I used to do this religiously. I'd spend my night shifts building beautiful workout templates in Excel. The actual programmes themselves were probably pretty shit, but they sure looked good!

 

what kind of overloading routine did you use in the past for bringing up shoulders?

I thought maybe I still had it bookmarked, but I can't find it now. From memory it was 2x 6-week phases, hypertrophy followed by strength. In the first phase you ramped up from doing ~3 sets of each exercise to ~6 sets by week 5. I think the volume dropped down a notch for the final hypertrophy week, then you focused on strength for a bit instead.