Progressive overload in practice
Everyone knows you're supposed to progress. Fewer know what to add when the weight won't go up, and that's where most people get stuck.
Five things you can increase
Overload means the work gets bigger over time. Weight is only one way to do that.
- Weight. Same sets and reps, heavier bar.
- Reps. Same weight, more reps.
- Sets. More sets on the same exercise, up to what you can recover from.
- Quality. Full range of motion, controlled eccentric, no bouncing. A better set at the same weight is more work.
- Shorter rest. Same work in less time. Use sparingly — rests that are too short cut the reps you can hit.
The first two are enough for most people for years.
Double progression
The simplest rule that actually works. Pick a rep range, say eight to twelve.
- Hold the weight until you hit the top number in every set.
- Then add the smallest increment available.
- Reps fall back toward the bottom number. Start again.
| Week | Weight | Sets | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 60 kg | 9, 8, 8 | Hold |
| 2 | 60 kg | 11, 10, 9 | Hold |
| 3 | 60 kg | 12, 12, 11 | Hold |
| 4 | 60 kg | 12, 12, 12 | Add |
| 5 | 62.5 kg | 9, 8, 8 | Hold |
Four weeks for two and a half kilos looks slow. It's thirty kilos a year on one exercise. That isn't slow.
Take the smallest step available
The most common reason progress stalls is jumps that are too big. If you can add one and a quarter kilos instead of five, do. If the gym has no smaller plates, reps are your lever instead.
Overload is not the same as fatigue
A session that felt brutal isn't automatically a good session. You can make any session harder by resting too little, sleeping too little or training too close to failure. None of that makes you stronger by itself.
The measure is the numbers across weeks, not how you felt afterwards.
When it stalls
Three to four weeks with no movement on an exercise, with sleep and food in order, is a real stall. Try this order:
- Back off and build up. Drop ten percent and work back. You usually pass the old level.
- Change the rep range. If you've run eight to twelve, run five to eight for six weeks.
- Change the variation. Incline bench instead of flat, barbell row instead of pulldown.
- Cut volume for a week. Half the sets, same weight. Stalls caused by accumulated fatigue often clear there.
Never change two things at once. If you do, you won't know which one helped.
Measure on the right time scale
Individual sessions swing with sleep, food, stress and time of day. Comparing today against last session tells you almost nothing.
Look at four weeks at a time. If the curve trends up it's working, however much single sessions jump around.
GetMyCoach shows last session's numbers next to the field while you type, flags records the moment you beat them, and charts the trend per exercise over time.
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