How to Use Progressive Overload to Build Muscle

Nikkiey: Doing it this way, it will help you get stronger in those movements. And if you get stronger in those movements, you get stronger in every other movement as well.

Yo, yo, yo, what's up, you guys? Welcome to The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott, co-founder of WarriorBabe. 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, Nikkiey Stott, and welcome to episode number 53, where I am going to share with you my top three exercises for building muscle.

Then we're going to dive into progressive overload techniques again. I talked about progressive overload in earlier episodes, but it still comes up as a question from you guys all throughout my social media channels, and you want to know more about progressive overload. So we're going to dive into that as well. But first, let's kick it off by talking about the top exercises I recommend for building muscle, and why.

It's not some groundbreaking answer: squat, deadlift and bench press. These compound movements mixed in with some isolated movements. For example, let's talk about a leg day. You're going to hit your squats, right? And then you're going to finish your workout with isolated movements like leg extensions, hamstring curls, glute kickbacks and so on. Okay. But why these three are so important, if you want to do it the right way, is knowing how much you can max out in a one-rep max with these three movements.

So here's what I mean by that, and why I love the squat, deadlift and bench press. You're probably like, Nikkiey, that's powerlifting. Man, that can be anything related to building muscle, okay? What I've taught our WarriorBabes in our Blueprint program is how, in a maintenance or build phase, to specifically program their workouts around these three main lifts, and then use isolation exercises to help build up the muscles around those three, or fatigue those muscles even more as well.

Then you break them down, and post-exercise you build them up with proper recovery and nutrition. Like I said, if you want to do this the right way, these are some serious takeaways, you guys, and tactics you can start implementing into your routine tomorrow or next week. Take your squat, your deadlift and your bench press, and find what you can truly max out in those specific lifts. Then you take that number, take a percentage of it, and progressively program it weekly into your workouts, aiming for a percentage of it.

For example, let's talk about week one. Say you just did a testing week, right? You tested your squat, your deadlift and your bench press for a max. The following week, you're going to take a percentage of that max. Let's do 65% to start. And you do whatever rep range you want in the squat, 6, 8, 10, 12, for as many sets. Starting out, that would be your first lift of the day for your workout. Then you do all the isolation exercises that go with that specific movement.

Right? And this is what I mean by progressive overload. I'm going to talk about this more in depth in a second. In week two, you again take a percentage of your max, but instead of 65%, let's increase it by 5% to 70%. Then you do X amount of reps and X amount of sets in that given week. So you're increasing your weight on a weekly basis. That is a form of progressive overload.

Then in week three, you up it to 75%, and so on and so on. You throw in a deload week and you throw in another testing week. Doing it this way will help you get stronger in those movements. And if you get stronger in those movements, you get stronger in every other movement as well. This is something I love to speak to as a non-scale victory, right? Throw the scale out the window when you're trying to make progress building muscle, as I talked about in the last episode.

Because a non-scale victory is being able to go up in those percentages, aka lifting more weight on a weekly basis, and doing it in a smart way. That is progressive overload. That is a technique of progressive overload: increasing your weight, playing around with sets, playing around with reps, yada, yada, yada. You do it right, right? That's progressive overload. You are gradually increasing the difficulty of your workouts to continue challenging your muscles. And so you're getting stronger.

You're increasing your strength. And that is a non-scale victory, right? You're increasing your strength in the gym. And if you're increasing your strength in the gym, you're getting stronger and you're building muscle, which is amazing. Okay? If you're not increasing the weight or the intensity of your workouts over time, your muscles may not continue to grow and adapt. That's where I like to say, man, if you're just going through the motions on a weekly basis, or you're changing up your freaking workout every single day and it's something different,

then over time your muscles may not continue to grow or adapt. If you're doing that, or you're inconsistent, or you're doing something different every single day, or you're not challenging yourself and you're just going through the motions, man, six months from now, or even a year from now, you could be banging your head into a freaking wall going, why am I not seeing the results I want from putting on more muscle? Why am I not getting stronger?

That's why. Because you're doing all these different things and you're not consistent. Let me say this, you guys. Eating the same thing is boring. Doing the same workouts is boring. Right? Working out and eating right isn't always fun. It's the boring work. And you see all these influencers online showing all of their freaking workouts. They're just doing it for Instagram. That probably isn't the workout they're actually doing. So know that following the same workout program for six to eight weeks and doing the same exercises

may sound boring. But if you're doing it the right way, as I'm sharing with you here with these tactics, then you're going to see strength and improvement in your lifts and in your body. Okay? So do the boring work. Let's just make that a thing. Okay. So those are some high-level tactics, right? I talked about the percentages. I talked about going after your one-rep max. I talked about the squat, deadlift and bench press.

Now I want to discuss the importance of progressive overload and how it can help you maximize muscle growth. You can take those three exercises I just mentioned, go figure out your maxes, program percentages on a weekly basis, and figure out some isolation exercises to do. If you don't want to figure that out, check out WarriorBabe. The programs are below this podcast right now. We can do it all for you. But you can start doing this literally tomorrow. Okay? With those three lifts and how you progressively overload, I already spoke to some weight

and rep schemes and all this stuff. But first, I want you to understand progressive overload in a little more detail than I've already covered. It promotes muscle growth and adaptation. It increases strength. And it prevents plateaus. Some of you are like, Nikkiey, let's talk about the plateaus first. First, let me say that as you continue to increase the stress placed on the muscles, the body will continually adapt, resulting in ongoing progress and gains in strength and muscle mass. Okay? To increase strength, you increase the weight or the resistance used in

any given exercise. That challenges the muscles and forces them to work harder. As the muscles adapt to this increased stress, they become stronger, allowing you to lift heavier weights and perform more challenging exercises. Again, this results in ongoing gains in strength, ongoing gains in muscle mass and all of the things. Okay? Now, preventing plateaus.

Hey, I just want to drop a huge appreciation to you guys listening to this show. It means a lot. I hope you're enjoying it, and there's so much more to come. If you are enjoying it, hit the subscribe button. I'd appreciate that tons, and it would help this podcast reach others who need to hear these messages too. Thanks so much, guys. Let's get back to the show.

If you continue to perform the same exercises with the same weight and the same resistance, your body will eventually become too comfortable with that routine and stop making progress. This is what I mean when I say you cannot just walk into the gym, go through the motions and be like, I showed up for my workout today, woo, that's a win, and do that consistently for six weeks.

If you're not physically challenging yourself, like I always say, in the last three reps of a set, then what are you doing with your workout? You might as well write it off as a waste of your time. Show up there, do the work, put in the work and challenge yourself. Okay? I'm about to share different techniques you can implement with progressive overload. When you do these things, it ensures the body is continually challenged, it's being forced to adapt, and it prevents

plateaus. Sometimes the way you break through a plateau isn't even playing around with your nutrition. It's just, yo, you've got to work a little bit harder in the gym. No joke. I am not kidding you. There have been instances where I've worked with clients and I'm like, talk to me about your workouts. What are you doing in them? I know what I programmed for you, but sometimes I'll even dive into the weights they're using, and I'm like, dude, I know they can go a little bit heavier than that. And this is what our coaches do as well. I'll overanalyze a program, and

if there aren't the results I want to see yet, and I know we're in a deficit and we're doing all the other right things, then I'll say, okay, let's check out the intensity you're bringing to your workouts. Let's check it out. Let's question it. Because literally just turning the notch up in the gym can help you break through a plateau. Okay. So that's diving a little bit more into progressive overload and what it means. Now for some tactics you can implement to break through plateaus and keep the body continually adapting. I'm not saying you apply these tactics every

single day. You try a different technique every week, or every two weeks, or in every single program. I like to do it every block, right? I have clients follow maybe a four- to six-week block or a six- to eight-week block, and the next block is going to have some different progressive overload technique involved in it. Within the blocks, we're always working on increasing weights, playing around with rep schemes, playing around with set schemes and all that kind of stuff. So I have six specific techniques you can take away today.

The first one, which I already spoke to, is increasing resistance, increasing weight. Gradually increasing the weight used in any given exercise is one of the most common forms of progressive overload. Second, adding reps and adding sets, which I already spoke to as well. Increasing the number of reps or sets performed in a given exercise also creates progressive overload and forces the muscles to work a little bit harder. I'm always playing with those numbers inside of one block. But these next four, you can try either on a weekly basis or in different blocks. The third one is decreasing rest time between sets.

What I mean by that is that reducing the amount of time between your sets can increase the overall demand on the muscle and promote muscle growth and adaptation. So going from a two-minute break on a back squat one week to one minute the next. That little change will increase the overall demand on your muscle and push it to work a little bit harder and adapt a little bit more. No joke, it's a game changer. Do a two-minute rest period,

and then the next week try a one-minute rest period. Or try a month of two minutes, and then the next month try a one-minute rest time. It catches up to you, but it feels so damn good. Increasing the speed of the movement would be number four. That's performing an exercise at a faster pace. So tempo work, right? You may see people say do a tempo of 4-0-1-0, and maybe the next week it's 3-0-1-0, or the following week it's 2-0-1-0, right?

This creates a greater demand on the muscles, promotes progressive overload, and promotes growth and adaptation as well. So tempo work, right? Increasing the speed of the movement, aka tempo work, or vice versa, slowing down the speed of the movement. That's number four. Number five is variation in exercises. For example, drop sets, right? Drop sets can be considered a form of progressive overload and a variation in exercises.

They involve performing a set of an exercise to failure, then immediately reducing the weight and continuing to perform additional reps until failure again. This creates demand on the muscle and forces it to work harder, and again, all of these things promote growth and adaptation in the muscle. By continually increasing the stress placed on the muscle, drop sets can be one way to implement progressive overload. And they can help you see some serious gains.

Drop sets are pretty freaking brutal. Try putting them at the end of your workout. They're nasty good. So that's number five, variation in exercises, with drop sets as an example. And then number six is eccentric training. That's focusing on the eccentric, or negative, portion of the lift. Like I already said, tempo work is a great example here, placing more time under tension. Time under tension is a big thing, you guys. Slowing down the movement, mixing in what I

said with four and six here. I said four is increasing the speed of the movement. Six is the opposite: slowing down the movement and putting more time under tension. So think about it. You've got a barbell squat, right? You're lowering into the negative portion of the lift, and all of a sudden, man, it burns, right? The same goes for all the other lifts you could potentially be doing, in the negative portion of the lift. This can be more effective at inducing muscle damage.

Because you're breaking down the muscle inside the gym, you're creating the muscle damage, the tears in the fibers and all that stuff. Then post-workout, you promote the growth by eating right and recovering right. So those are six ways you can incorporate progressive overload techniques into your routine. Like I said, you don't want to try them every single day, but you can try them in block periods.

Then overall, use the broad perspective I shared with you: find your max, and then program percentages of your max. You could even do five by fives, five sets of five, and work from five sets of five to four sets of five to three sets of five. Or start with three sets of five, then four sets of five, then five sets of five, right? There's a plethora of different ways you can incorporate these types of techniques

into your workout programming. Now, some of you are like, I don't fucking feel like doing that, right? I am that way. I don't like programming my own workouts. I have someone do that for me. And there's no shame in having a coach do this for you. So if you want this done for you, apply for our VIP program. We have 30 coaches on the team. They will work with you personally to put together a program that works exactly for you, help you identify these numbers and all of that jazz, and help you build muscle.

More importantly, every time you walk into the gym, you have your plan. You just open up the app and it's right there, and you don't even have to think about it. I love that. I always say our coaches take the thinking out of it, so you can be successful with your workout program and the things you should be eating on a daily basis. Okay. The information about the program is below this podcast. Check it out. That wraps up the podcast for today: the three exercises to build muscle, finding your one-rep max,

using your one-rep max and breaking it down into percentages so you can focus on getting stronger, non-scale victories, yada, yada, yada. And then we dove into those progressive overload techniques. I hope you found this super helpful, and I'll catch you guys in the next podcast. Peace out.

Real quick, the only ask I could ever have of you is to help spread the word so we can help more women lose body fat, build muscle, reach their goals and feel insanely confident. The only way we can do that is if you rate, review and share this podcast. So the single thing I ask is that you leave a review. It will take you 10 seconds, it will mean the absolute world to me, and it may change the world of someone else.