The #1 thing you can do to get results in the gym

This is going to be a super tactical, hands-on post. I am going to be going over a principle that’s completely foundational to muscle gain and growing stronger in the gym.

This principal is a core principle of bodybuilding, and even though we aren’t bodybuilders, its totally necessary if you want to keep getting stronger and growing your muscles.

Today we are doing a deep dive into progressive overload!

But first…lets discuss WHY we want to grow stronger, the REASON we want to get results in the gym. Some of you are probably pretty new to fitness and strength training, so I think its worth spending a few minutes discussing why we want to increase our strength and muscle size.

 I’m going to go over this in detail in a later post, but really quickly here’s one big reason why you want to get stronger as a part of your fitness routine.

One of the main reasons we want to lift weights to increase our strength is FUNCTIONALITY. We as a society sit a LOT. There’s a lot of muscles we don’t really use that much because we sit at a desk all day, we drive around a lot (any other mom taxi drivers out there??), So we drive and sit a lot and those muscles over time get weak. It’s the basic rule of “use it or lose it”.

When we strength train, we start using those “forgotten” muscles again. Oh here’s a fun fact-one of the most underused muscles in your body are your GLUTES, which is why I’m a big advocate of training your glutes a ton.

And just as a little testimony about this, I haven’t had significant lower back pain since training my glutes regularly. You know, just the achy back feeling when you get out of bed or been on your feet all day or had to carry the toddler around? Yep, I don’t have that anymore.

Because the reason I had the back pain in the first place was weak glutes, now my glutes are strong therefore no back pain! How cool is that? That alone is a major reason to lift weights!

Ok, back to progressive overload.

Progressive overload is a foundational principle for anyone who wants to grow muscle strength and size. It’s essentially continuously adding stress to your muscles so the muscle fibers rip, then grow back stronger. If you aren’t challenging your muscles then they don’t need to grow.

Think of it like when your baby goes from a size 12 months to an 18 months in clothes and you need to get them new clothes. You don’t need the 18 month clothes until they were challenging the 12 month clothes …I hope that makes sense. That was probably a horrible example but I think you get the gist.

You MUST constantly be adding stress to your muscles if you want to grow more of them. It's that simple, which is why this is such a foundational principle.

So lets get to the tactical part: how to you actually DO that?

The first way is always going to be adding weight. Heavy tension on your muscles is a really effective method to tell your body: “I’m doing more so I need more muscles to accomplish it”.

This is why, while your muscles can get stronger and slightly bigger with bodyweight training, there really is a ceiling to how much you can get out of it.

If you weigh 150 lbs then the maximum tension on your muscles will be 150 lbs.

That may be fine for an upper body workout, but you are going to cap out pretty quickly for lower body exercises.  Once you get there, you aren’t able to add more tension to your muscles and you have to add additional external weight, which is why heavy weight lifting is what bodybuilders do to grow their muscles.

So to recap, the number one way to use progressive overload is to add weight.

Practically speaking, when you are a complete beginner, once you get your form down right you can add 5-10 lbs to your lower body lifts each week, to be honest.

The beginner stage is SO fun because you muscles are primed to grow like they never will be again. I think at one point I was able to add like 20 lbs to my hip thrust or squat in one week-that’s how receptive my body was.

For upper body lifts, like barbell rows or overhead press, more likely you can add 21/2 -5 lbs for a while since they are smaller muscles.

The second way you can use progressive overload is to add more reps. A rep is short for “repetition” which is just a single instance of doing the exercise. Squat down and up and that’s one rep.

This means that each week you add 1-2 more reps to your lift.

So lets say you are just starting out, and your first week working out you are doing a squat, and you can do 45 lbs for 5 reps with good form. You can’t do 6. So you do 45 lbs for that first week. The next week you try for 6-7 reps at 45 lbs. You don’t need to add more weight yet.

A third way to use progressive overload is to decrease the rest time between sets. This is a more advanced technique that you won’t need for a while, so briefly, that means that you produce more stress on your muscles by allowing them less time to recover between your sets.

As you can see there are PLENTY of ways to add stress or tension to your muscles to stimulate growth.

First is adding weight. Next is adding reps, and last is decreasing your rest time.

So what I want you to do this week, is when you go to the gym RECORD your weights so you know how much you are doing for each lift. I use the Strong app and put my workouts in there so I can keep track of the weights I’m using and how many reps and sets I did.

Did I define a set for you yet?

A set is a collection of reps. So if you squat 3 sets of 5 reps you are squatting 5 times in a row and resting, then squatting 5 more times, then rest, then squat 5 more times. That’s 3 sets of 5 reps.

Here’s the steps I want you to follow this week at the gym.

Step one: this week when you go to the gym, record what weight you are using for each of your lifts. I would suggest doing at least one of the “big lifts” at every workout (those are deadlifts, back squats, and hip thrusts). So set up your big lift with the weight as heavy as you can do for 6 reps. Then try to get 3 sets of that, you will probably have to rest 2-3 minutes between sets. Of course, watch your form. If you can’t do it then decrease the weight until you can do 3 sets of 6 reps.

Step 2 happens the next week. The next week you work out, add 5 lbs to each side of the bar, so 10 lbs total. Try it for the six reps, if it feels good then get your 3 sets in. Keep adding 5 lbs to each side until you can’t complete your 6 reps, then you move to step 3.

Step 3 happens when you can’t complete all 3 sets of 6 reps. When that happens, take the weight you used the previous week. Let’s say that was 60 lbs. Instead of doing 3 sets of 6 reps at 70 lbs like was your plan, you are going to do 3 sets of 7-8 reps at 60 lbs. You keep adding 1-2 reps each week until you get to 12 reps at 60 lbs.

The last step is to up the weight to 70 lbs and drop your reps down to 6 again. So 3 sets of 6 reps for 70 lbs, then you progress adding reps until you get to 12 reps again, then you up your weight again. And rinse and repeat!

Are you getting the progression here? This is progressive overload. We are progressively overloading our muscles in increments to gradually increase our strength. You will be surprised at how quickly this can work.

This is the exact method I’ve used to consistently increase my strength, and on the hip thrust using this method I’ve been able to go from 135 lbs to 325 lbs. So I know it works!

This was a LOT of information today! I encourage you to just get started on upping the weights every week with good form, then read this post again or listen to the podcast episode again to remind yourself of the other steps.

You got this, friend! Weightlifting is not for the faint of heart but if you make small improvements each week you are GOING to see results. Consistency is everything here, just keep it up!

Happy lifting!

-Rachel