Progressive overload without a spreadsheet
Do a bit more than last time, most of the time. Here's how to do that with a notebook and two rules.
Progressive overload is the whole trick. Muscles adapt to what you ask of them, then stop adapting once the ask stops changing. So you keep asking for a little more. That's it. Everything else in programming is detail about how much more, how often, and what to do when it stops working.
You don't need a periodised spreadsheet with conditional formatting to do this. You need a record of what you did last time and a rule for what to do next time.
What counts as "more"
Adding weight is the obvious one, but it isn't the only lever. Any of these count:
- More weight for the same reps.
- More reps with the same weight.
- More sets of the same work.
- Better reps: deeper, slower on the way down, less bounce, less body English.
- Less rest between sets for the same work, within reason.
Early on, weight and reps do nearly all of it. The others matter more once those two get hard to move.
Rule one: write it down
The single biggest upgrade most people can make is knowing what they did last week. Not roughly. Exactly. Weight, sets and reps for each exercise. A notebook works. Your phone's notes app works. An app that does it for you works best, because it can also tell you what to try next, but the principle doesn't care.
Without a record you either repeat the same weights for months because they feel familiar, or you guess high, miss, and decide you've plateaued.
Rule two: double progression
This is the method that works for almost everyone, for years, without any maths.
- Pick a rep range for the exercise, like 8 to 12.
- Pick a weight you can lift for the bottom of the range on every set, with good form.
- Each session, try to add a rep or two somewhere.
- When you hit the top of the range on every set, add the smallest weight jump available next session. Your reps will drop back toward the bottom of the range.
- Repeat.
A worked example on the dumbbell bench press, 3 sets of 8 to 12:
- Week 1: 22.5 kg for 9, 8, 8.
- Week 2: 22.5 kg for 10, 9, 9.
- Week 3: 22.5 kg for 12, 11, 10.
- Week 4: 22.5 kg for 12, 12, 12. Done. Move up.
- Week 5: 25 kg for 9, 8, 8. Start again.
No percentages, no one-rep max testing, and it adjusts itself to good days and bad days.
How hard should sets be?
Hard, but not ugly. The useful idea here is reps in reserve: how many more clean reps you could have done when you stopped. Most of your working sets should end with about one to three reps left in the tank. You get nearly all the growth of going to failure with much less fatigue, and much less risk of grinding a squat out with your lower back.
People new to lifting are famously bad at judging this, and usually stop too early. If you think you have two left, you probably have four. Every few weeks, on a safe exercise (a machine, a dumbbell curl, not a heavy barbell squat without safeties), take a set to the point where the next rep would fail. It recalibrates your sense of "hard".
How big should the jumps be?
Smaller than your ego wants.
- Lower body barbell lifts like the squat or deadlift: 2.5 to 5 kg at a time.
- Upper body barbell lifts like the bench or overhead press: 1 to 2.5 kg. Fractional plates are cheap and worth it.
- Dumbbells: the next pair up, which is often a 10% jump. That's why double progression suits them so well: you build reps until the jump is manageable.
- Machines and cables: one pin. If the stack jumps are big, use more reps before moving up.
How many sets?
For muscle growth, more weekly sets per muscle tends to give more growth, up to a point. About 10 or more hard sets per muscle group per week, split over two or more sessions, is a good target once you're past the first couple of months. Beginners grow on less. Start with what you can recover from and add sets slowly, not all at once.
When it stalls
Every lifter stalls. Here's the order to check things in, because the boring causes are the common ones:
- Sleep and food. Short on either, and progress stops first. Especially protein, and especially when you're in a calorie deficit. Losing fat and setting rep records at the same time gets harder the leaner you get.
- Are you actually progressing anywhere? If reps are still creeping up on most lifts, one stuck exercise isn't a plateau. Give it a couple of weeks.
- Change the rep range. Stuck at 5s? Spend a month at 8 to 10. Stuck at 12s? Try 6 to 8 with a bit more weight.
- Take a lighter week. Every 6 to 10 weeks, or when everything feels heavy, cut your sets roughly in half and your weights by about 10% for a week. Then come back. It often unlocks the next run.
- Swap the variation. A stuck back squat may move as a front squat or a goblet squat for a block. Same movement, new problem for the body to solve.
What it shouldn't look like
Progress isn't linear and it isn't every session forever. Beginners can add weight almost every workout for a few months. After that it's weekly, then monthly, then a good year looks like a few kilos on the big lifts. That's normal. It isn't failure, it's arithmetic.
What you shouldn't do is add weight at the expense of the movement. If a heavier set means half the range of motion, it's not more work. It's less work with more noise.
The point
Write it down. Beat last time by a rep or a little weight. Stop a couple of reps short of failure most of the time. Back off when everything stalls at once. You can run on those four sentences for years.
Sources
- American College of Sports Medicine. Progression models in resistance training for healthy adults. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2009.
- Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass. Journal of Sports Sciences, 2017.
- Zourdos MC, et al. Novel resistance training-specific rating of perceived exertion scale measuring repetitions in reserve. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2016.
- Schoenfeld BJ, et al. Strength and hypertrophy adaptations between low- vs. high-load resistance training. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2017.
General information, not medical advice. If you have a medical condition, are pregnant, or take medication that affects appetite or blood sugar, check with your doctor before changing how you eat or train.