The Secret to Getting BIG

Progressive Overload is the Master Principle of Muscle Growth

Scientifically speaking, PO is the gradual increase of stress for the purpose of increasing your body’s capacity to handle that stress.

Applied to strength training, progressive overload is the gradual increase of effort or intensity through the performance of more reps, or lifting heavier weights (They are NOT mutually exclusive).

Progressive Overload is easy understood in theory, but rarely done correctly in practice.

Back in the 1940s, there was pioneering work done in strength training by Dr. Thomas Delorme. He worked with WWII veterans in physical rehab. You know his work today because he pioneered the “sets of 10” and 3x10 training.

But what has been lost is that Dr. Delorme didnt have his men do easy sets. He used strength training, and would have them do progressively harder sets of 10 reps until their muscles could handle no more.

While progressive overload is an eternal concept, his research formed the foundation of the Principle as we know it today.

If you want to grow muscle and get stronger, you MUST use progressively greater resistance

AKA, lift heavier weights, and do more reps.

These are not mutually exclusive strategies, they are two sides of the same coin. If you want to get stronger, you increase the numbers of reps you can do with a challenging weight. When you can perform a certain threshold of reps, only THEN do you increase the weight, enough to lower your rep performance to a necessary minimum.

This is sometimes called Double Progression. Reps go up, weights go up. Repeat

Once a rehab patient could do a set of 10 with a weight, Delorme added MORE weight and pushed them again.

Understanding the Reps and Weight Relationship.

The question of “how many reps” has been asked about for a long time. But it is not a mysterious question.

-The lighter the weights, the more reps you can
-The heavier the weights, the less reps you can do

To do a “set” at all (a sequence of multiple reps) requires that we perform at least 3 reps. And as everyone knows who lift weights, doing super heavy sets under 5 reps is not sustainable and requires immense neurological output, and is potentially dangerous.

Thus, sets of 5+ reps are done for strength and muscle gain.

And decades of research have shown that ALL rep ranges produce muscle growth.

Whether your rep range is 5-8, 5-10, 6-9, 6-12, 5-12, 8-12, 10-15

THEY ALL CAN WORK.

The most popular strategy over the decades has often by a 6-10 or 8-12 rep strategy

You do 8 reps with a weight, then 9, then 10, then 11, then 12. This is done week to week, or month to month.

Once you can do 12 reps → You increase weight, back down to getting 8 reps

You repeat the this process, over and over again, for the rest of your life

By training within the limits of your strength and increasing them, you extend your limitations over time

Increase your reps, and then weight, and then reps, and do this until it stops working (which will take years for most compound movements).

This Lesson is one that every generation must relearn

The current trend in fitness world is “optimal biomechanics” and goofy movements with cables. Or its selling ignorant normies “core training” or “functional training” or some other bullshit that you pay $150 a session for a high end gym to be entertained.

Its all nonsense.

Productive training gets you bigger/stronger. Or it does nothing at all and is a waste of your time.