11 Reasons Why Progressive Overload Is Important & How To Implement It

00:00Real quick, if you want to learn more about macronutrients and understand that methodology on how they can help you achieve your body composition goals of changing the way your body looks, I put together a free 15-minute training where I dive into macronutrients and how you can control your body for the rest of your life with them. That link is in the description below. Click on it after listening to the show today. You have to implement progressive overload in order to build muscle, limiting the cardio and putting more emphasis on progressive overload and stimulating the muscles, all of the muscles to your body.

00:33That is how you're going to build muscle. That is how you are going to get toned. What is going on, you guys? Welcome back to The WarriorBabe Show. Or if this is one of your first episodes, welcome to the show. I'm excited that you guys are here. On this podcast, we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident. I am your host, Nikki Stott, and welcome to episode number 97.

01:10We're getting so close to that 100 mark. But today, we are going to talk about progressive overload. I'm going to bring this back. I've talked about this, I think, like in early, early episodes, but I haven't touched back on it in a while. And I want to resurface it because it is a very important topic to understand when you are seeking the goal of building more muscle.

01:40Progressive overload is so important. And that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about 11 reasons why it's so important. And then I want to share a couple of reasons of how to implement it into your routine. So I'm going to break this down. What is progressive overload? Why is it important? How can you implement it into your routine for optimal results? Now, first and foremost, before I dive into this podcast, I'm getting a download to my mind to share with you right now. Listen up, you guys. If you are doing the same workout for four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, that is completely freaking normal.

02:17You are doing that every – you're doing like a shoulder workout, right, on like a Tuesday or a full body workout on like a Thursday. Or you're doing a full body workout and you're hitting different muscle groups each day. And you're doing that the same routine for four to six to eight weeks, that is completely normal, okay? Those of you guys that want to change it up every single day and you want to change it up every single week, look, listen to me loud and clear here right now. You have to do the boring work. You have to do the exercises repeatedly over and over for X amount of time.

02:50So – and that's where I'm going to dive in today. That is progressive overload. It's not that you're just going in and routinely doing the same things, while it may sound that way. You need to challenge yourself in every single one of those workouts, in every single one of those training sessions, in every single exercise that you are doing. It's not that just like for the four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, you're going in and you're just, you know, going through the motions and you're just there to show up and you're just there to get the workout done. While that may be a percentage of the time, majority of the time, you better be challenging yourselves to increase your weights, to increase that resistance, to add, you know, more reps and more sets if the program is designed that way, to decrease or increase rest times, to increase the speed of a movement to an exercise, right?

03:43Like these are parts of progressive overload. And when I get to how to implement it, those are the things that you can play around with your programming so that, you know, the exercises that you're doing every day are boring to you. But if you do these things, you are putting your body under the ability to build more muscle, okay? So when I say like literally, like majority of the reason why I don't share my workouts on Instagram is because I literally do the same thing for four weeks or six weeks or eight weeks, depending on the block that I'm in.

04:16And so you have to just get obsessed with doing the boring work. Same thing with nutrition. I eat the same thing almost every single day and it's boring AF, but it gets me results. So like, and it takes majority, big reason you guys, it takes a thought out of what am I going to go and do my workout today? What am I going to eat today? I do the same thing for upwards of six weeks on average. And then I eat the same thing every single day.

04:47Like a little side joke, because I'm really, you know, this is what podcast is all about. Sometimes I just go rant, but I was at the airport checking in, going through TSA. And like, I had to take off all my sweatshirts because I'm always bundled up because I'm always so cold. But I take off all my sweatshirts and the people working in the security were like, damn, how can I get a body like you? What do you eat? And I was like, I eat boring stuff. I eat the same thing. And I was joking. He was like, what did you eat for? He asked me, what did you eat for breakfast today?

05:18And I was like, dude, I've been eating the same breakfast for the last two and a half years. And he was like, what? I was like, yeah. I was like, I don't have to think about it, man. I just get up. I do my thing. I do my morning routine. I make my breakfast. It's the same thing. I don't have to worry about like, what am I going to eat for breakfast? You know, what do I have to get in here today? What do I have to make sure I get, you know, eat? Like, I know this is like a good protein, fat and carb combo for me. And I was like, it's egg whites, egg yolk, bagel and cream cheese.

05:49And that is what I have eaten for the last two and a half years of my life. And it was like, you know, whoa to this guy. Like, whoa. I was like, yeah, man, just do that. You know, start your day off with protein. That's the big thing right there. And I put it's like the boring, like it's boring, right? But like, you got to do the boring work to get the results that you want. And if you think about it, like I personally look at food as just fuel for my body. I don't really eat for pleasure or eat. I'm past that, right?

06:19Many of you guys do that at the beginning and you need to feel some kind of pleasure with your food. But trust me, you get kind of past a point where it's just like, okay, I'm just eating to optimally fuel my body as best as I possibly can for the performance, for energy, for thought, for clarity. And just taking the ease of not having to think about what I have to eat. And then for workouts, it's just like, I don't want to have to think about, you know, what workout am I going to do today? It's just more of, oh, this is my program and my plan. I have a scheduled hour workout for myself, 4% of my day to show up and get it done.

06:52And I just get it done. I do the boring work. But most importantly, I challenge myself with every single workout that I do. And that's what you guys have to do. Do the boring work, but go in and challenge yourselves with, I'm going to share how you can implement progressive overload towards the end of this podcast. But let's just, let's just get into it. Okay. So first and foremost, reminding you guys what progressive overload is. It is the gradual increase of stress placed on the muscles during physical exercise.

07:24And in order to continually challenge the body and to promote muscle growth and adaptation, you have to implement progressive overload in the forms of how I'm going to show you how to implement it. You can implement it in various different ways. You can literally do a week of doing this, a week of doing this, a week. And that's how you can make it fun for you, but you're still doing the same exercises. Okay. But that is what progressive overload. It's the gradual increase of stress placed on the muscle during physical exercise, because that is the most important way that you're, you are going to promote muscle growth and

08:00promote adaptation. Hey guys, love so much that you guys are listening to this podcast. If you ever want to have the video version of this, which usually has more effects and all that good stuff for those of you who are visual learners, check it out. YouTube channel warrior babe. If that's what you like either way, keep enjoying the show. You have to implement progressive overload in order to build muscles. So many of you guys say, I want to be toned, but you think that cardio, I'm going to actually feed into the thought. You think that cardio is the way to get you to do that.

08:30But cardio does not do what progressive overload does. It doesn't place stress on every single muscle of the body. Sure. It may plus, I'm thinking about running or I'm thinking about, you know, rowing and swimming and all of those things over time. You, you can do that, but you have to supplement with making sure that you're eating enough food, which a lot of people don't do. You can totally do cardio. You can totally do swimming. You can totally do rowing.

09:01You can totally do all of those things. However, that in that session, your body's requiring tons and tons of calories to do that because your heart rate is elevated. All of the things and not many people supplement with you would have like, if you're doing that consistently, you know, excessively in a week, you probably have to eat upwards of like 3000 calories and not, not everybody's going to do that. That's just like bald broadly speaking. But, you know, bringing it back, limiting the cardio and putting more emphasis on progressive

09:36overload and stimulating the muscles, all of the muscles to your body. That is how you're going to build muscle. That is how you are going to get toned. Toned is just showing more of the muscle mass you have built to your body. And you can get toned by doing more strength training and limiting the cardio exercise. Cardio will definitely help you get toned, but you have to put physical stress on your body. You have to put physical resistance on your body. And the way you can do that and only the way you can do that is through progressive overload

10:09and weight training. I think that's the best way that I've been able to explain it. So I really hope that hits home because I put a recent reel up on Instagram and maybe I didn't elaborate it as well as I'm elaborating it here. I am not cardio bashing. Cardio is so good for your health, for your heart. Your heart is a muscle. It needs the endurance to make it stronger. However, you don't need to do cardio majority of your time. You need to do this.

10:40Progressive overload, strength training, weight training, adding and increasing stress to the muscles in your physical exercise and your workouts because that is what's going to grow muscle. Okay, so why is it important and why do you need to do it? So if you have the goal of building strength, of building muscle and seeing your body composition change, that is why you need to do it. That is why it is important. And I think that is majority of the women that I speak to is that you want to build muscle.

11:12You want to feel sexy in your body. You want to look like an athletic person. You want to have that athletic figure. This is what is going to get you that. Okay, so let's dive in a little bit deeper. Why is it important? Well, for four reasons. It promotes muscle growth and adaptation. It increases your strength. It prevents and breaks through plateaus. And it supports overall physical fitness goals. Okay, so let's dive into each of those specifically.

11:44Number one, it promotes muscle growth and adaptation. When the muscles are subjected to you doing progressive overload, they undergo microscopic damage. So the damage that you do by working out, it stimulates the body to repair and strengthen muscle fibers, resulting in your muscle growth and the adaptation that is happening here. So as you continue to increase stress placed on the muscle, the body will continually adapt,

12:15resulting in this ongoing progressiveness of you gaining more strength and you gaining more muscle mass. So I always say this, that like when you're working out inside the gym, you are not building muscle. You are breaking it down. What happens in the next 24 to 48 hours after that workout session is where you actually build the muscle. But during the workout, your body, your muscle fibers are undergoing microscopic damage.

12:47And this damage, when you're in the repair process, the building process, strengthens those muscle fibers. And this overall results in you building more muscle mass. And then also, the more that you do this and the more that you continually increase the stress placed on these muscles over time, your body is adapting. So when you're doing one or two weeks of progressive overload, just in the sense of trying to increase more weight, you'll find that maybe by week three, that weight is now so easy.

13:20And this is a part of a progressive overload where you increase the reps or you increase the weight. I'm sorry. You increase the weight to that specific exercise because that weight that you were doing for the last two weeks no longer feels challenging. And so now here your body is adapting. And now here you're putting the body under stress to be able to gain more strength and build more muscle. Okay, so that is how it promotes muscle growth and how your body adapts with these stressors

13:51that are happening. Number two, what I just kind of said is how it increases strength. So you're gradually increasing the weight or resistance you use in any given exercise, as I just used in the example that I just spoke to. And what this is doing is it's challenging the muscle and forcing them to work harder. And so as the muscle adapts here, as the muscle increases stress here, they become stronger. Your muscle becomes stronger and it allows you to lift heavier weights and perform more challenging exercises.

14:22So therefore, like how I said that you're doing the boring work, well, you shouldn't just be going through the motions every single time that you're walking into the gym. You should be challenging your muscles by doing this, by increasing strength, by increasing weight. And this, just like I said, with promotes growth and adaptation, it makes it more possible for you to continue making progress even after months and years of training, right? So like you go in and do these exercises, but like two weeks in, a month in or two months in, that weight was no longer challenging.

14:53So you're increasing the weights and this gives you the ability to gain more strength. So one and two kind of go together as I just elaborated on. Number three is a big one for you guys. I'm sure you guys want to be able to do if you're ever experiencing some kind of plateau during your journey. Because a lot of people think that they're stuck in a plateau and they're doing everything right with their nutrition and think that they have to change their nutrition. But let me tell you that keep your nutrition the same way and just do a little bit more

15:29inside of your training sessions. Challenge yourself a little bit more. Maybe you're not challenging yourself enough or you're not implementing these things that can be implemented that will be able to spark you to break through a plateau. So if you, for example, if you continue to perform the same exercises with the same weight and resistance, your body will eventually become too comfortable with the routine and stop making progress. So with you implementing some type of progressive overload technique, this will ensure that your

16:03body is continually challenged and it will be forced to adapt. And this will prevent plateaus from happening and ensuring that you have progress that is consistently being, you know, consistently ongoing for yourself. And these are all things that I, very, very easy example of progressive overload for me to speak to is the increase in weight, right? So many of you guys kind of just for the four weeks go through using the same weight and not

16:34challenging yourself. And so therefore you could experience a plateau and think that you have to adjust your nutrition, right? And then this is me thinking that like majority of you guys have your nutrition down pat. If you don't have your nutrition down pat consistently, then like you need to put your focus there. And then the second thing is if you're consistent with your nutrition and you're stuck in a plateau, it's not that you need to change your nutrition. It's that you need to challenge yourself a little bit more because your body is adapted to things in

17:07your workouts. So this is really important for you guys to understand. And I hope, stay with me, I hope that you're, it's causing light bulbs to go off because it's not, you, so many of you guys, and I know this because I've coached thousands and thousands of women, you just need to challenge yourself a little bit more inside of your workout. If you are for four weeks, five weeks doing the same weight, your body will eventually become too comfortable.

17:38Weight meaning exercise and weight inside the gym. And that routine, doing that consistently over time, it's probably why it feels boring to you because you're not challenging yourself and you will stop making progress here. So I challenge you to lift heavier weights. Okay. And then the last one, super simple, super easy to understand. It supports overall physical fitness goals. So whether your goal is to build muscle, you know, even those of you guys that want to increase endurance or improve overall fitness, progressive overload can help you reach your goals.

18:08Continuing though, the key thing here is continuing your, to challenge your body and to promote growth and adaptation through challenging your body. All right. So let's dive into how do you implement those? That's why progressive overload is important. I think I've nailed the head and I hope I have to you listeners with that one specific example that I used that the easiest way that you can incorporate progressive overload and incorporate a challenge to your body.

18:39So you don't feel like that you're doing the boring work is challenge yourself every single day inside of your workouts, every week inside of your workouts. Now let's dive a little bit deeper. Here are a few things that you could implement on a weekly basis, on a bi-weekly basis, on a monthly basis, or from training block to training block to training block. And I'm going to, we'll just dive into it and I'll explain examples. But the first one is obviously what I've already shared upon. Increasing resistance and weight or weight.

19:11Increasing resistance or weight. So by you just gradually increasing the weight used in a given exercise is one of the most common forms of progressive overload. And the examples that I've already touched on this podcast. The next one is adding reps or sets. Increasing the number of reps or sets performed in say a squat, performed inside of a bench press, performed inside of a deadlift can also create progressive overload and force the muscles to work harder. Right? So for two weeks, I'll use an example of what I do for my clients.

19:45On a weekly basis, I have challenged my clients to increase the sets per the opening exercise that they are doing. For example, week one, I had my clients start at three sets of squats. Next set, next week, I had them doing four sets of squats. Next week, I have them doing five sets of squats. Next time I have them doing six sets of squats, seven, eight. But they're keeping the reps the same.

20:16And vice versa. You could literally do, and this is a form of progressive overload. Okay? They're increasing the sets in the given exercise. Keeping the reps the same. But there's more challenge because one week they only did three. Now they're doing four. Now they're doing five. Vice versa. You could have them do five sets. Right? I'm trying to think of an example that I've done with my clients previously. It's probably been a little bit. But they have, on given weeks, had five sets.

20:49However, maybe week one, they did four reps. And then the next week, they did six reps. And then the next one, they did eight reps. And the next one, they did 10 reps. And then so on and so forth. Twelve. Maybe 15 by the end. They're increasing the demand volume on their muscle. Ladies, are you feeling frustrated with body changes you're experiencing during menopause?

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21:56Take charge of your health and join our community of strong, empowered women. Visit warriorbabe.com forward slash apply today to start your transformation. That's warriorbabe.com forward slash apply. All right. Let's get back to the show. To promote growth and build more of it, right? So like for one week, they were used to only doing this. And so maybe they had a heavier weight.

22:27And I would challenge them to stick with that same weight that they use at four reps, same sets, five sets. And then the next week when we increase two reps, I would force them to use that same weight. So that they're using the same weight and increasing reps with it. That's them building, breaking through, building adaptation, right? But most importantly, using heavier weight to do this, to do more work.

22:58And so the muscles being a force to grow here and to be challenged here and to have more resistance here. Those are examples. Inside the warrior babe blueprint, we do this weekly with the workouts inside the app. So like you, everything I'm saying here, you literally do not have to think about it if you become a warrior babe. And then inside of the VIP, a personal coach, which is one-on-one coaching, you work with that coach. They will do this for you and make the programming more individual to your needs. So like everything I'm saying here, these are things that we do inside the warrior babe program.

23:33So if you want to learn a little bit more about what warrior babe does and who we are and what we're about, check out the links in the description below this podcast. The next thing that you can do and implement with progressive overload is rest times between sets. This is the third one. So first one was increased resistance or weight. Second one is adding reps or sets. The third one is decreasing or increasing rest time between sets. So let's just talk about decreasing. Reducing the amount of time taken between sets.

24:03That's what this is. Rest time is so important. If you guys aren't paying attention to your rest time, you could either be spending way more time in your rest or way little time in your rest. And this goes down to your muscle now has had enough rest and is kind of not getting the stimulus that it needs in order to have those muscle fibers broken down. Those muscle fibers are getting recovery during that rest. If you're waiting too long, it can make them build up to where your now next set is way easy.

24:36And you want to find that sweet spot of upwards of like 60 seconds to 90 seconds to two minutes of rest to give it on what exercise you're doing. And being able to jump back in to that exercise right at the time that that rest is done. So when you reduce the amount of time taken between sets, this can increase overall demand on the muscles and promote growth and adaptation, right? So like waiting too long, your body is already kind of recovered here. But like waiting at the optimal time, this will increase the demand that's needed for the muscle to perform in the next set.

25:10And so going from two minutes on a back squat to one week going to one minute the next week, this just overall increases demand for the muscle to be working. And this is a great form of progressive overload. So for like, like for one month I've done with my clients is they will do two 90 minutes, 90 seconds. And then the next month I'll decrease it to 60 seconds. And just that little amount of time forces the body, your body is adapted to one way.

25:43Now we're changing it and we're forcing adaptation in a different way. And then there's other ways like number four is increasing the speed of movement. By performing exercises at a faster pace, you can create a greater demand on muscle and promote progressive overload. Number five is using different equipment. So like switching to a different piece of equipment, like, you know, from a barbell to a dumbbell, this can create a new and more challenging stimulus for your muscle. Right. Like, for example, front squats on a barbell or going to a cable machine and doing front squats there or doing lunges with a barbell, then going to lunges with a dumbbell or even going from a dumbbell to a band.

26:27Right. You're creating more challenging stimulus for the muscle. You could do a dumbbell workout with a dumbbell exercise and then you could go and do that with a band and increase the reps. And it's just different stimulus to the muscle. Number six is a variation exercises. So varying the exercises that you perform can target different muscle groups and create new challenges for the body, promoting growth and adaptation here too as well. So, for example, drop sets can be considered as a form of progressive overload.

26:57Drop sets involve you performing a set of an exercise up until failure, then immediately reducing the weight and continuing to perform additional reps until failure again. This creates an increase in demand on the muscle and forces them to work harder. And this overall, it just is a, these are just techniques and things of how you can implement. Like, right, like one week you could do a drop set. The next week you could use that same exercise and you can move into this next one that I'm going to talk about is focusing on the negative portion of the lift, which is tempo work.

27:33And it's great here and it places more time under tension. So one week you could do drop sets for an exercise and next one you could take that same exercise and you could do tempo work. And tempo work is great. It's one of my favorite forms of progressive overload to implement in my training. It's literally just taking on the, on the eccentric training, on the negative portion of the lift, three seconds coming down. You can even play with the different seconds, not even pausing bottom, coming bottom, coming back up and then in a one second up and then stop not even pausing at the top and coming back down for three seconds.

28:10So you may see this in like three times zero times one times zero, right? Three seconds on the bottom, no pause at the bottom, one second coming up and zero pause at the top and going right back into the motion. I'm actually going to share this on my Instagram soon. So keep an eye out for that and save it so that you can implement that and play around with it inside of your training workouts. Another one is pause sets, pause or pause reps, sorry, pause reps. Pause reps are so great.

28:41You pause at the bottom of a movement. So like think about a squat. You come, you pause at the bottom when you're in the bottom movement of that exercise, you pause there. This challenges you in so many ways and it's so underrated. During this motion, you are challenging yourself in the hardest portion of the lift to maintain good form and to control your body. And this goes so far for you challenging the muscle, providing stimulus to the muscle, providing resistance to the muscle in the hardest motion of the lift, controlling the form.

29:18And then, you know, coming back up. All of these, you guys, those are, I just said seven different ways, right? Increasing resistance to your weight, adding reps or sets, decreasing rest times, increasing the speed of the movement, decreasing the speed of the movement, variation to exercises, using different equipment. I said eight there, but one was all combined together with increasing or decreasing the speed of the movement. Tempo work, pause sets, going faster, going slower. Those are ways of how you can implement progressive overload. Progressive overload, as I said, is so freaking important when you are trying to build muscle.

29:53So use this episode, you know, use the things that I just said. Go try them out in your own if you're not a warrior babe. If you are a warrior babe, that's awesome. Keep implementing these things because there's a reason. There's a method behind the madness, as they say. There's a reason why your trading blocks are the same for six, eight weeks. There's a reason why you're doing the same exercise every day for those weeks. And there's a reason why we're adding temple work. There's a reason why we're doing, you know, decreased rest times, more rest times.

30:24X, Y, and Z. You are increasing weight. There's a reason why. Just do it. Now, if you're not a warrior babe and you don't want to have to think about all of these things, try them out first. Second, when you, like, are not keeping it consistent, then become a warrior babe and follow our workout programs so you don't have to think about it. Again, the link is in the description about what warrior babe is and what we do best. All right? So I hope this podcast has helped you guys. I hope this episode has helped you guys. I hope it's given you an idea, a more, you know, insight on progressive overload and why it is so freaking important.

30:59All right? Peace out. I'll see you in the next episode. Hey, guys. Real quick. If you're interested in taking your body to the next level, lose body fat, build more muscle, feel more confident, do it alongside one of our 30 plus professional coaches. Work one-on-one with her to eliminate all of the guesswork that you may have. And all you need to do is just do the work that she tells you to do to get to those goals of yours. And to learn more, click the link below this podcast and apply to our VIP program right now.

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.