In the first article, Break Your Fitness Plateau, I went over how important assessing your progress, keeping a food log and working out longer is for you to see results. In this article, Break Your Fitness Plateau: Part Two, I will go over “progressive overload”. This is another technique used to prevent you from hitting a plateau.
Progressive Overload
The body adapts very quickly to the stress levels from a strength training program. If you can do a bench press with 50 pounds, your body has adapted to the weight you are lifting. If you continue to use the same weight and the same amount of reps, you will not see any progress. You need to challenge your muscles. As your body adapts to the new stress loads you will see results in strength, fat loss and toned muscles.
Progressive Overload is a simple concept. When you can do an exercise with a certain weight for the amount of sets and reps prescribed, it is time to increase the weight. You will not hit the prescribed reps with the new weight. Your goal will be to reach the prescribed reps with the heavier weight. It will be time to increase the weight after you reached the prescribed reps.
Safety
Serious injury could occur if you are not performing an exercise correctly and or using too much weight. Always start off a new exercise with no weights to practice the movement. Once you feel comfortable with the movement you can start adding weight.
A guideline to use when adding weight. If you can do an exercise for the prescribed weight for two or three consecutive workouts with proper form, increase the weight on the next workout by 2-5%. This is progressive overload. As you increase the weight your muscles will adapt to the new stress created by increasing the weight. You will see results.
Example of an exercise using progressive overload:
Bench Press
Goal: 3 sets x 15 reps
Workout One:
Set one 100 lbs 15 reps
Set two 100 lbs 15 reps
Set three 100 lbs 14 reps
Workout two:
Set one 100 lbs 15 reps
Set two 100 lbs 15 reps
Set three 100 lbs 15 reps
Workout three:
Set one 100 lbs 15 reps
Set two 100 lbs 15 reps
Set three 100 lbs 15 reps
Workout four:
