Progressive Overload – Tricking Your Body to Gain Strength!

The definition of strength as I have defined in the past is the body’s ability to produce muscular tension when a force is applied to it. This act of a force can come in many forms of resistance. This is why strength training can be such a creative personal venture.

First of all, there are many ways to tension the body. You can use anything from sandbags all the way to a full Olympic weight set. Pick your poison, because lifting all these forms of weighted resistance are highly effective if the plan you follow is well structured and progressive. In other words, you need to make sure that you design your program to practice moving more weighted resistance often, and moving it many times each time you try to lift it. If I am talking about bench-pressing 200 lbs. for 3 sets of 5 reps, in order for me to get stronger I have to either lift the weight for more reps or add more weight to do it for more sets!

No matter what lift you are trying to execute you have to always try to progressively add either overall volume of sets or repetitions to gain the strength you desire. If you are targeting muscular endurance you concentrate on a high volume of reps. You can also gain strength and endurance by doing a high number of sets with a heavy weight being able to execute lifting that heavy load many SETS over and over. Another method is to perform a pyramid format where you increase the load for every set for the desired maximum amount of weight. This principle of progressive overload will work with every lift or exercise that you perform.

Practice to get stronger. You have to practice lifting a heavier weight in order to get better at lifting it. This is the key to gaining optimal strength.