When trying to progressively overload in the gym, a lot of times you may find yourself stuck on a weight that you just can’t seem to overcome and you think to yourself “why can’t I get past this weight? Will I be stuck on this platteau? Well, it might just be that your current workout program lacks the required amount of stimulus to further progress beyond your current state.
Increasing the weight is not the only solution to creating more stimulus and fatigue to the muscles you are working as there are many methods that can be easily implemented into your workout instead of just increasing the weight. For example, by simply adding training techniques to your workouts like controlling the eccentric & concentric, pauses, adding tempo, doing partial reps, going to failure, etc you can immensely increase the amount of workload forced onto your body. These training techniques will increase the effort and energy required to perform these techniques along with difficulty. Also, changing different variables within your program can also increase the workload put on your body; again without having to increase the weight. For example, Incorporating supersets, pyramid sets, circuits, dropsets, and taking shorter breaks can tremendously increase the amount of fatigue and stimulus on your body.
With that being said, there are multiple ways of creating progressions for yourself that will allow you to increase the amount of workload your body will be able to handle. Also, with regards to progression, I believe making progressive overload objective instead of subjective will exponentially increase your development in the gym. Using weight as a determining factor to whether you are advancing in the gym is so insignificant to how you feel you are progressing in the gym, because it is your body, you should be able to make the judgment as to whether or not you are progressing; and if you aren’t how you can change that by incorporating different methods of training and programing.
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The Markham Gym
166 Bullock Drive
Units 6 & 7
Markham, ON
L3P 1W2