How to Use 'Progressive Overload' to Get Stronger

As you get stronger, you become able to lift heavier and heavier weights. That's the idea at the heart of an often-misunderstood fitness concept: progressive overload. Unfortuantely, there are a lot of myths and misunderstandings about this principle, so here's how to use it to plan your own workouts or judge whether a program you're following will keep you on track. What is progressive overload? Progressive overload is the increase, over time, in the amount of work or stress you ask your body to handle. The term is used two different ways: as a principle of how the human body works, and as a description of how a workout program changes over time. If you want to know how to "do progressive overload," you're thinking of the second one-how to design a workout program. The simplest way to implement this is to just do a little more each time you're in the gym. More weight, or more reps, or making the workout harder in some other way. You can still take some easier "deload" workouts (or weeks) from time to time, but over the long term you want to see a trend of the workouts getting harder. They won't necessarily feel harder, because you'll be getting stronger. It's more like the workouts are keeping up with you . In other words, progressive overload is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. As you get stronger, your workouts need to get harder to keep up. But in a sense you are also becoming stronger because you're challenging yourself with harder workouts. What does progressive overload look like in real life? If you’re bummed out by the idea of working harder and harder forever, don’t panic. You’ll work harder in absolute terms-by lifting heavier weights, let’s say-but the challenge stays about the same in relative terms. Your workouts will fall into an effort level you might call “hard, but doable,” and you’ll notice progress because your numbers are going up. (A similar approach applies to endurance sports. As cyclist Greg Lemond reportedly said: “It never gets any easier, you just go faster.”) When I started lifting weights many years ago, 65 pounds was a decently challenging bench press for me. I remember being proud of myself for being able to squeeze out a rep or two at 85 pounds. Now, if I’m going to do a bench workout, I don’t even bother loading those amounts onto the bar. My warmup sets start at 95 pounds, and a heavy single might be around 135. That 135 feels just as hard as 85 used to, but it’s undeniably more weight. How did I make that progress? Well, I kept lifting the weights that felt heavy for me. Over time, the same weights that used to be challenging started to feel easy, and I needed to add more and more weight to the bar to get something that actually felt heavy. ( I have a guide here to figuring out whether you’re lifting “heavy.”) Most of...

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