Progressive overload is an important strength training principle that’s known for boosting a workout enthusiast’s fitness plan!
Everyone has unique reasons for exercising and working out, and adding progressive overload into your fitness plan will ultimately go a very long way toward helping your reach your exercise goals.
At Rising Legends, we’re firm believers in the overall effectiveness of progressive overload as a strength training principle that helps keep people on the right track toward sustainable development—and away from troubling issues like overtraining and injuries.
Below we’re providing our comprehensive overview about progressive overload, including what it is, why it’s important, and how to implement it at the gym!
What Exactly is Progressive Overload?
Progressive overload refers to a strength training technique in which you’ll slowly increase the reps, resistance and overall intensity of your workouts in order to challenge your muscles.
This is by far one of the most important principles of strength training, and it’s unfortunately something that a lot of people forget about when they go to the gym. It’s important to remember that strength training is very beneficial for both your muscle and bone health, which subsequently helps with weight loss and all sorts of other health benefits.
The good news is that our personal trainers are experts when it comes to progressive overload, so you can rest assured that we’ll always keep your results on a steady, positive trajectory!
Why Progressive Overload Is Important For Your Fitness Training
If you want to continuously increase your strength and keep yourself on the right track toward sustainable fitness training results, progressive overload is very important.
Progressive overload is actually 100% necessary when it comes to creating strength adaptations, because neglecting this strategy will inevitably lead to plateaus in your results—no matter what your current fitness level is.
Progressive overload helps people conquer plateaus in a variety of different ways, and fitness enthusiasts need to keep the following tips in mind to move beyond potential plateaus:
- Mixing routines up: Varying your workout routine is a crucial part of progressive overload strategies, and it creates the type of muscle confusion that’s necessary for avoiding plateaus.
- Don’t forget about your rest: It’s also important for fitness enthusiasts to give their bodies enough time to recover and rest in between workout days. Neglecting rest is a common mistake, and it often leads to troubling issues like overtraining and injuries.
- Ask pros for help: Partnering up with a certified personal trainer or fitness specialist can give you the resources and knowledge that you’ll need to properly maintain your progressive overload regimen.
How To Implement Progressive Overload Into Your Fitness Plan
It’s important for fitness coaches like us to convert workout principles like progressive overload into practice for our clients, and there are a variety of ways that you can do this during your workout sessions.
Some of the ways that you can implement overload into your fitness plan include:
Increasing Load
This is a pretty straightforward overload principle, and it essentially involves increasing the amount of weight that you lift. However, it’s important to remember that you’re not supposed to turn to ego lifting, which involves lifting more weight than you actually should.
This can lead to injuries and other unnecessary setbacks, so it’s important to be smart when you’re increasing weight amounts while strength training.
Increasing Volume
It’s also important to know that you can implement progressive overload in many ways that don’t involve increasing weights, because you can also increase your training volume in a variety of unique ways. Some volume overload techniques include increasing:
- Number of reps per set
- Number of sets per workout
- Number of workouts per week
Just be sure that you’re avoiding overtraining when you increase your workout volume!
Increasing Workout Difficulty
Another way to implement progressive overload into your fitness plan is to increase the overall difficulty of your workout sessions. This can sometimes be easier said than done, so keep the following tips in mind:
- Increasing the range of motion of your workouts
- Combining resistance bands into your strength training
- Reducing momentum and slowing down your movements
Customize Your Progressive Overload Fitness Plan At Rising Legends!
Are you interested in adding progressive overload strategies into your workouts?
Our team of fitness pros and certified personal trainers can fully customize a fitness plan that’s tailored to your unique needs, and we’ll be there for you through every step of the process as we help you avoid unwanted plateaus and maintain progress toward your desired results.
The Rising Legends Academy of Fitness is a renowned workout facility based in Nyack NY, and our training services and resources will undoubtedly go a long way as you begin your progressive overload routine.
We look forward to seeing you at the gym!