5 progressive overload techniques to promote muscle growth 💪🏻

For muscle growth to occur, we need to continuously challenge our muscles with more than they are used to. That is the principle of progressive overload.

No matter how good of a pump we get or how much we sweat, if we are not incorporating progressive overloading in our trainings, then the muscles will have no reason to grow stronger and bigger.

It will simply maintain it’s current size or strength and in some cases, even start to become smaller and weaker. For consistent gains over time, our workouts need to be designed such that they literally force our muscles to grow every single session.

In other words, muscle growth requires progressive overloading.

Here are 5 progressive overload techniques we can use to promote muscle growth:

Technique 1: Increase weight lifted

Increasing the amount of weight lifted is the method most people rely on to progressive overload.  It is quite straightforward to apply it and if you are a beginner, this method will be the bread and butter to help you make gains quickly.

Technique 2: Increase reps lifted

When applied properly, adding more reps is another great progressive overloading technique to force our muscles to grow.

As long as you are continuing to push hard, you can keep the same weight and increase all the way up to 30 reps. You will still get the same growth compared to adding more weights.

This is only helpful if you have limited equipments or a nagging injury that you cannot increase the weights on your lift even if you want to.

However, for those who have access to more weights, a special progressive overload technique called double progression will work better for you.

It is a system that utilises both reps and weight to ensure you are forcing your muscles to grow on a weekly basis.

Technique 3: Increase number of sets performed

It is a simple way to add a massive amount of training volume to your training program

However, you need to use this method sparingly.

Based on literature, doing at least 10 sets per muscle group per week nearly double the amount of gains you will get from doing 5 sets per muscle group per week.

But there comes a point of diminishing returns when you get into the 20-30 set zone. A good rule of thumb is to increase volume no more than 10-20% per week.

Admittedly, this method have its benefits. But it can also be quite taxing on the body and can make your workout considerably longer.

Technique 4:  Tempo training

Tempo refers to how fast or slow you we lift weights.

If we slow down our reps, we can increase the amount of time under tension that is placed on the muscle to stimulate more growth.

However, you want to avoid going too slow up. Doing so can provide the opposite effect and start to hinder muscle growth rather than boost it.

Technique 5:  Work on your exercise technique

If you perform your exercise with better control, less momentum and more activation of your target muscles, then you will also achieve progressive overload successfully.

Better exercise technique involves relying more on target muscles which will result in growth even if all other variables remain the same.

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