Are You Doing Progressive Overload Wrong?

Everybody talks about it: “You need to use progressive overload in the gym, bro.” 

And everybody is right, bro. But there’s a catch—progressive overload isn’t a switch you flip. There is absolutely a wrong way to go about it. It’s a pitfall many gymgoers, whether they’re training for muscle, strength, endurance, or even just health, fall into. 

Here’s what you need to know about progressive overload training so you can go about it the right way and keep leveling up in the gym. 

What Is Progressive Overload?

You can think of progressive overload as the bedrock principle upon which all fitness programs are structured. Put simply, progressive overload training involves consistently increasing the difficulty of an exercise over time.

The goal: By serving your body increasingly harder challenges, you force your muscles and nervous system to adapt, repair, and grow bigger, stronger, or more efficient.

Progressive Overload Training

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) regards progressive overload as “necessary … to stimulate further adaptation toward specific training goals.” How to progressive overload is the essential part. 

Here are some parameters outlined by the ACSM—we’ll dive into specifics a bit later on. 

• In strength training, you should perform “bigger” exercises like squats, deadlifts, and bench press early in the workout when you’re fresh (followed by single joint exercises like tricep extensions or hamstring curls).
• Progressive overload can be applied across a variety of rep ranges, but emphasis should be on the 1-6 and 8-12 ranges for strength and hypertrophy, respectively. 
• To progressive overload for hypertrophy, it is recommended to work with higher volumes and multiple sets. For strength, go fewer and heavier.
• For endurance, loads should be light and rest times brief, focusing on limiting rest.
• For power training, loads should also be relatively light, with an emphasis on maximal force production.

What is the overload principle?: Your body adheres to what’s called the stress-recovery-adaptation (SRA) curve, the driving principle behind progressive overload. You must regularly increase the stress to give yourself something to adapt to.

Think of how you learned math in school. Multiplication and division come after addition and subtraction, because they’re more complex. The mental training you did carries forward to the harder challenge; you need to know how to add to multiply, and you need multiplication to work with fractions. 

That’s progressive overload. In the gym, progressive training looks like increasing the weight, reps, or sets you perform, reducing rep speed, or cutting down on rest times—anything that makes it harder will drive an adaptation. 

Benefits of Progressive Overload

Progressive overload is absolutely crucial if you want to make any kind of fitness-related progress—at least long-term. But the benefits go beyond the physiological, too.

Enables Consistent Progress

If you aren’t using progressive overload in some way, you’re probably spinning your wheels in the gym. Once your body has adapted to a certain challenge (say bench pressing 135 pounds for 10 reps), it’s built the muscle and strength required to perform that challenge comfortably.

As such, you provide your body with no good reason to grow and change. By implementing progressive overload (say by increasing the weight to 145 pounds), you “reactivate” the SRA curve, encouraging new adaptations—more muscle or strength, in this case. 

Gives Structure to Training

Progressive overload is also valuable because it provides structure to your workout routine. If you use it as your north star in the gym, you always have a general idea of the direction you should be going. 

This removes guesswork and discourages flippancy. If you’re trying to improve your RDL strength, for example, you already know you have to gradually increase the weight. Having small goals in mind each time you enter the gym helps keep you focused and motivated. 

Provides Positive Feedback

Starting a workout routine can feel intimating, especially if you’re a beginner. But here’s the kicker: Progressive overload works best for new gymgoers. This is due to your body being highly sensitive to the “demands” of training.

By committing to progressive overload, you rack up tons of small wins, fast. Seeing the weight on the bar go up, or the amount of reps you can do increase, creates a rewarding “loyalty loop” in your brain.

Builds More Muscle

Does progressive overload build muscle? Yes, and over a long enough stretch of time, it becomes required. Your muscles adapt to the challenges you present; if you don’t ratchet up your effort, you aren’t giving your body anything to adapt to.

Training to build muscle and not incorporating progressive overload is like walking on the treadmill. You’re technically in motion, but you’re not actually getting anywhere. 

How To Progressive Overload

At a glance, progressive overload sounds simple. Do more, and you’ll make gains. To a point, that’s true. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and knowing the right progression pathway for your specific goals is essential.

Add Weight

For strength training—that’s lifting weights for any purpose—it is essential to prioritize the weight you’re working with. In most situations, increasing the weight you’re using is the most direct path to building strength and muscle.

In practice, progressive overload by adding weight looks like:

• Week 1: 3 x 5 at 135 pounds

• Week 2: 3 x 5 at 140 pounds

• Week 3: 3 x 5 at 145 pounds

• Week 4: 3 x 5 at 150 pounds

Add Sets

If you can’t increase the weight on the bar, you should turn to the amount of work, or volume, you’re doing. Increasing volume provides a stimulus as well, but is not quite as applicable to maximal strength as adding weight.

Using progressive overload to increase volume might look like:

• Week 1: 2 sets of squats once a week

• Week 2: 3 sets of squats once a week

• Week 3: 4 sets of squats once a week

• Week 4: 3 sets of squats twice a week (6 sets total)

Increasing your frequency also counts as progressive overload. Performing the same movement or targeting the same muscle more than once per week has been shown to be superior for strength gains, while also allowing you more opportunities to refine your form. 

Add Reps

You can’t improve any given quality forever. If you can’t add weight or do more sets, you can also crank up the reps you’re doing over time.

Pushing rep count can look as simple as: 

• Week 1: 3 x 6 

• Week 2: 3 x 7 

• Week 3: 3 x 8 

• Week 4: 3 x 9

As with weight, there’s a ceiling to this strategy. You can’t pile on reps forever. As you move from a “hard set of six” to a “hard set of 12”, the weight you’re working with naturally becomes a lower percentage of your max. 

If you’re progressively overloading rep count, you’ll need to “reset” back to your original rep count after some time—but with a heavier weight. 

Tempo, Rest Times, & More

There are certain situations or exercises during which it’s impractical to progressively overload weight, sets, or reps. Think of things like isometric training, HIIT, or calisthenics. 

You can use progressive overload in these areas by

• Adjusting tempo, slowing down the lowering portion of a movement
• Reducing rest times, increasing the density of your training
• Adding pauses in the hardest parts of the exercise’s range of motion

These non-traditional avenues won’t increase maximal strength or muscle nearly as well as adding weight or reps. There’s a way forward for nearly every exercise you perform if you’re willing to be a bit creative. 

Periodization for Progressive Overload

Periodization refers to how you organize your workouts over time to focus on improving specific qualities. It’s a framework that systematizes progressive overload—planning to increase weight each week is a kind of periodization with the goal of increasing muscle or strength. 

• Linear periodization refers to increasing any quality (weight, sets, reps, etc.) at a consistent rate, like adding five pounds every week.

• Undulating periodization involves cycling back and forth between two styles of training; having a high-rep day and a low-rep day, to introduce variety. 

• Block periodization refers to applying progressive overload to one area only (like strength) for a number of weeks or months. 

Getting creative with periodization styles is generally required once you’ve accumulated a few years of training in the gym. If you could add five pounds to your squat each week indefinitely, everyone would be squatting over 1,000. 

Over time, the SRA curve lengthens, and your body gradually becomes resistant to stimuli. You have to work longer and harder to get the same returns—that’s where more involved periodization and personalized coaching come in. 

[Read More: How to Improve Your Big 3 Lifts]

Better Every Day

Progressive overload isn’t just a fad. It’s the mechanism by which we reach our goals. As with most things in the world of fitness, how you go about it makes the difference between acceptable and exceptional results. 

FAQs

What are some effective ways to implement progressive overload in my workout?

You can use progressive overload in many ways, including adding weight, sets, reps, reducing rest times, pausing at specific parts of the movement, and more. The best form of progressive overload is contextual to the exercise you’re performing and the goals you have. 

Is progressive overload required?

No, progressive overload is not required for exercise. If you’re exercising for health reasons, you don’t need to push yourself on a weekly basis (as long as you’re putting in a decent level of effort). But if your goals involve improving performance—building muscle included—in some way, you need to progressively overload to make long-term progress.

What are common mistakes to avoid when applying progressive overload?

Avoid trying to increase your weight too quickly. If you're set to increase the weight but unable to complete your reps with proper form, go back to your previous weight. You can still add extra reps, an extra set, or slow down your reps to reap the benefits of progressive overload.

How does progressive overload help with muscle growth?

Progressive overload allows your muscles to adapt to the growing intensity as you increase weight, set, or reps over time. This increased training stimulus forces muscles to adapt by becoming stronger. When paired with a hypertrophy rep range and sufficient volume, progressive overload leads to muscle hypertrophy and strength gains.

References

1. American College of Sports Medicine. American College of Sports Medicine position stand. Progression models in resistance training for healthy adults. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2009 Mar;41(3):687-708. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e3181915670. PMID: 19204579.

2. Chaves TS, Scarpelli MC, Bergamasco JGA, Silva DGD, Medalha Junior RA, Dias NF, Bittencourt D, Carello Filho PC, Angleri V, Nóbrega SR, Roberts MD, Ugrinowitsch C, Libardi CA. Effects of Resistance Training Overload Progression Protocols on Strength and Muscle Mass. Int J Sports Med. 2024 Jun;45(7):504-510. doi: 10.1055/a-2256-5857. Epub 2024 Jan 29. PMID: 38286426.

3. Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. Effects of Resistance Training Frequency on Measures of Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Med. 2016 Nov;46(11):1689-1697. doi: 10.1007/s40279-016-0543-8. PMID: 27102172.