The Apparent Confusion About Progressive Overload

Apparently, there is a growing disagreement online about progressive overload. Most of it comes from confusing cause and effect, while different people use the same term to mean slightly different things.

Brosef’s explanation from the bench next to you usually goes like this: you get stronger by continually adding more weight to the bar. Since strength and load rise together, it must be the added weight that produced the improvement.

This explanation makes intuitive sense and works reasonably well for beginners, who often improve fast enough to add weight almost every workout. However, it puts the plates before the muscle by mistaking the visible result of progress for the process that made it possible.

The process of building strength starts when you expose the body to a challenging training stimulus. In response, the body may improve neural coordination, become more efficient at the movement, and increase its ability to produce force. Once those adaptations occur, the same weight becomes easier relative to your new capacity. At that point, you can adjust the training demand by adding weight, reps, or changing another variable to keep the stimulus productive.

This creates a repeating cycle:

Training stimulus → Adaptation → Improved performance → Adjusted stimulus

Or, more simply:

You perform a set of five reps → You get stronger → That same set becomes easier → You add some weight to keep it challenging.

Increasing the load can help drive further adaptation, but the increase works best when supported by the capacity you have already developed. When someone forces more weight before their performance has improved, range of motion often shortens, technique breaks down, and control suffers. The number on the bar went up, but the ability being trained likely did not.

Another point of disagreement is how broadly progressive overload should be defined. Some people use it almost exclusively to mean adding weight. Others include more reps, better execution, increased range of motion, or more total work. These can all change the training demand, but they do not demonstrate the same kind of progress.

Adding a rep with the same load, range of motion, and technique provides clear evidence of improved performance. Adding another set increases total training volume, which may be useful for hypertrophy, but it represents a programming adjustment rather than direct evidence that performance on a given exercise has improved. Better execution or greater range of motion may also represent meaningful improvement, although changing the conditions of the movement makes comparison less direct.

Progression works best when it responds to meaningful improvements in capacity rather than forcing the numbers upward at all costs. You apply an appropriate stimulus, recover, monitor performance, and increase the demand when your performance supports the adjustment.

This brings us back to the original confusion between cause and effect. Because the weight on the bar usually increases as you become stronger, it's easy to assume that adding weight is what created the strength. The process works as a cycle: the existing training stimulus produces adaptation, that adaptation improves performance, and improved performance allows you to increase the demand. The heavier load then becomes part of the next stimulus and may contribute to further adaptation.

Progressive overload is therefore the ongoing adjustment of training demands as the body adapts. The controversy becomes much easier to understand once you recognize that progression can be both the result of the adaptation that came before it and part of the stimulus that produces what comes next.

Strength and Training Tolerance Are Different Capacities

The ability to lift a weight and the ability to recover from lifting it are not the same thing.

A workout is usually judged by what someone can complete. If they can move the weight, maintain decent technique, and finish the set, it's assumed the training was appropriate. But completing the work only proves that they were capable of producing enough force in that moment. It doesn’t tell us how much the workout cost them or whether their body can turn that stress into progress.

Two people can perform the same exercise with the same weight and have completely different responses. One may recover quickly and return stronger. The other may experience a large drop in performance, remain sore for several days, and struggle through their next workout. They completed the same task, but the biological cost wasn’t the same.

To understand why, we have to look beyond whether the weight moved and consider what the muscle had to do to move it.

Muscle growth begins when the fibers inside a muscle experience enough mechanical tension to signal that they need to become better prepared for similar demands in the future. Heavy weights can create this tension immediately because the muscle has to produce a lot of force to move them. Lighter weights can also create it, but usually only after fatigue builds and the final repetitions become difficult.

This is why hard sets performed close to failure can stimulate growth. As the set becomes more demanding, the repetitions slow down, the body recruits more muscle fibers, and those fibers are forced to produce more tension.

However, the same set that creates the growth signal also creates fatigue and disruption. The body must restore energy, regulate calcium inside the muscle, repair damaged tissue, and return the muscle to normal before it can fully adapt.

A workout provides the reason to grow, but recovery is where that growth is actually built. The body can increase muscle protein synthesis for two different reasons. It may be using new protein to build the muscle larger, or it may simply be repairing tissue that was damaged during training.

Those processes can happen at the same time, but they don't produce the same outcome.

Imagine you're renovating a house. Some of your budget can be used to add a new room, but if you damage the roof first, much of that money has to be spent repairing what was damaged in the process.

Training works in a similar way. When a workout creates enough tension with manageable damage, more of the recovery process can be directed toward building additional muscle. When it causes excessive damage, the body has to spend more time and resources repairing what was already there.

This is why soreness isn't proof that a workout was productive. A little soreness is normal, especially after unfamiliar exercises, but feeling destroyed doesn't mean the muscle received a better growth stimulus.

The same principle applies to exhaustion. Training close to failure can be useful because the final and most challenging repetitions often create the greatest amount of tension in the muscle fibers. But that doesn't mean every set needs to continue until the weight physically stops moving.

Once the target muscle is working hard and the repetitions have slowed down, much of the useful growth stimulus may already be present. Continuing beyond that point can add more fatigue and muscle damage without adding the same amount of benefit.

The goal is to get close enough to failure that the set becomes challenging, while stopping before the cost begins to rise faster than the reward. For most exercises, leaving 1-3 good reps in reserve is enough to create a strong stimulus while making recovery easier.

This becomes especially important because strength can improve faster than training tolerance.

Someone can become capable of lifting heavier weights before their body is ready to handle much more total training. Their technique improves. Their confidence grows. Their nervous system becomes better at recruiting muscle. These changes can increase performance quickly.

However, the structures and systems that support repeated training may take longer to adapt. Muscles, tendons, connective tissue, energy systems, and recovery capacity all need time to become more tolerant of heavier loads and greater volume.

This creates a common mistake. A lifter adds weight and sets simply because they are capable of completing them. Their strength may be improving, but the amount of stress they can recover from hasn't increased at the same rate.

Good training therefore requires more than asking, “Could I finish the workout?” A better question is, "Could I complete the workout, recover from it, and return ready to perform at a greater capacity next time?"

Signs that the training dose is appropriate include stable or improving strength, manageable soreness, consistent technique, and the ability to repeat the workload without a continued decline in performance. Over time, that same workload should become easier to tolerate, or the lifter should be able to perform slightly more without creating a disproportionate increase in fatigue.

If you can survive the session but spend the rest of the week trying to recover from it, the workout may be creating more disruption than your body can productively adapt to. Being strong enough to complete the work is only part of the equation. Strength is the ability to produce force, while training tolerance is the ability to handle that force repeatedly, recover from the stress it creates, and return better prepared for the next session.

Take-a-ways from the past week

1. Essential Amino Acid’s (EAA’s) are better than Branched Chain Amino Acid’s (BCAA’s).

When it comes to making gains you want the full amino acid profile because it has been found that loading up on Leucine, Isoleucine and Valine can have a negative effect on neurotransmitter balance effecting drive and recovery. BCAA’s lack essential amino acids like L-Tryptophan and L-Tyrosine (precursors to dopamine and serotonin) which can throw off neurotransmitter balance over time. Also, net protein utilization are profoundly affected by the limitations of the complete amino acid profile, therefore it is important to have all essential amino acids present to make optimal gains.

2. Essential Amino Acid’s (EAA’s) combined with a Carbohydrate source are best for making strength and hypertrophy gains.

A 2006 study called “Independent and Combined Effects of Liquid Carbohydrate/Essential Amino Acid Ingestion on Hormonal and Muscular Adaptations following Resistance Training in Untrained Men” showed surprising results in that Carbohydrates alone outperformed EAA’s in almost all categories including, Muscle Fiber (Type I, Type IIa and Type IIb) improvements; Post-Workout Glucose Uptake, Insulin response and favorable reduction in Cortisol response. Yet, when EAA’s were combined with Carbohydrates for intra-workout nutrition, the positive effects on all categories were greater than either EAA’s or Carbohydrates alone. The best results for Body Composition were also seen in the EAA/Carb group. Moral of the story, to optimize your workout use EAA’s and Carbohydrates together.

3. The more carbohydrate sources you take in before/during/after your workout the better the absorption rate.

Your body can absorb 1g of carbohydrates from a single source from dextrose, maltodextrin, fructose, cluster dextrine, etc. per minute. However, if you combine sources you can increase carbohydrate uptake into the muscle by a factor of 5. Products like PentaCarb are formulated for this specific purpose and as the name implies, it has five different carbohydrate sources.

4. Improve insulin sensitivity for optimal hypertrophy.

The easiest way to recognize that you are not insulin sensitive is that you do not feel the “pump” when you are working out. The more insulin sensitive you are the better able you are to increase glucose and amino acid uptake into the muscle cells, thereby suppressing cortisol and reducing muscle breakdown. Plus, if you are insulin sensitive, when you eat carbohydrates the are better able to be used for fueling your muscles rather than storing them as fat.

5. Don’t have a bolus dose of Antioxidants around your workout.

This can turn off your insulin sensitivity and reduce the amount of hormetic stress placed on your mitochondrial which are both drivers of growth.

6. Fasting is beneficial, even for those seeking hypertrophy.

Due to the amount of calories one must consume to put on size, the gut can take quite a beating. Fasting allows the gastrointestinal tract to relax and have time to heal so that when the fast is over, nutrients can be better absorbed. A 24 hour fast once a week can offer improvements. Also, intermittent fasting for 3 days a week has the same benefits as intermittent fasting for 7 days a week.

7. Over 90% of athletes are deficient in Iodine.

This fundamental nutrient is often lost through sweat and can cause hydrochloric acid (stomach acid) deficiencies, migraines, insomnia or brain fog if not repleted through supplemental or dietary means.

8. When it comes to nutrition, the 80/20 Rule is Bullshit.

You have to take into account the inflammatory affects of food and the cumulative effect it can have on your body. A study recently produced a study that said 100% of people who consume gluten have intestinal inflammation within 30 minutes!

9. The first step towards success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first found yourself.

This is the basis of all change, and fundamental to my 7 Pillars of Health. Realizing that the environment that surrounds you makes you who you are; the people, the food, the job, the situation all have an effect, whether good or bad. To make a change, start by changing your environment.

10. The things that are done to you or for you are rarely as effective as the things you do for yourself.

Read that over a few times.