If you’ve ever done personal training with SSP, you may have noticed how your programming alters or follows specific patterns week to week. You may have also heard us talk about something called progressive overload.
What is progressive overload? As fitness professionals, we love to geek out about things like this, but while it might sound very technical, at its core, progressive overload is simply the concept of gradually increasing the challenge on your body during exercise over time. By doing so, you force your body to adapt to new stimulus, and as a result, you get stronger or more physically capable in your activities.
The ”overload” can look different – sometimes it’s an increase in repetitions using the same weight. For example, instead of pressing a 30# dumbbell for 8 reps, you press it for 10. It can also look like a change in tempo, using isometrics, increasing weight for the same amount of reps, and increasing range of motion in an exercise.
You might think if you’re coming into the gym five days a week that you will naturally get stronger. Maybe you will, but it depends on the choices you are making while you’re in the gym. Are you picking up the same weights every time? Are you using too light of weight to drive adaptation? Are you using the full range of your available motion in an exercise or are you stopping short? All of these factors (and more) will play a role.
We see this often with those who only come to group class environments where you are responsible for picking up your own weights. If you haven’t strength trained or exercised for awhile, when you first begin, you will see an increase in strength and ability regardless of the factors I just mentioned. Most of this comes in the form of increased proprioception (body awareness and control) because your body adapts to being able to resistance train and gain greater control of its ability to move weight through space with better form and capability. However, as you move past this initial stage, gaining strength comes down to how you are progressively overloading your body and driving new adaptation over time.
Is this to say you should always be pushing yourself every time you come into the gym? Absolutely not. If your stress level is high elsewhere in life, that will limit your ability to push new heights in the gym. On those days, maybe movement is all you need. There is still a physiological and (likely) psychological benefit to moving every day that shouldn’t be ignored.
At SSP, we do progressive overload during personal training in a way that ensures we are safely moving our members through growth and plateaus. Our coaches track progress every workout, and those notes get passed onto our Program Design team who personalize each new program to the individual’s goals and abilities.
If you’re interested in incorporating more progressive overload into your training or giving our personal training a shot for the first time, fill out this form and we’ll give you some details on our trial membership!