How to Use Progressive Overload to Build Muscle

Build that physique you desire.

Want to build muscle? We do that by lifting weights, right?

Yes, but there is more to it than that — that’s why most people who go to the gym don’t look like Arnie.

But many of us want to build more muscle. Many of us try very hard.

Unfortunately, a lot of the advice out there on the internet is outdated. However, the science of muscle building has progressed a lot over the past decade; and with the internet, good information is now far more readily available to the average person.

Thankfully, building muscle is a fundamental process mechanically. It’s called progressive overload.

What is Progressive Overload?

As defined by Kraemer, Ratamess and French (2002), “Progressive overload is the gradual increase of stress placed on the body during resistance training.”

“Resistance training is effective if the human body is continually required to exert a greater magnitude of force to meet higher physiologic demands.” — Kraemer, Ratamess, & French, 2002)

Gradually increasing how much we lift is necessary for long-term “gains”, continuously putting our muscle fibres under stress to recover stronger.

The training process must disrupt homeostasis for our muscles to adapt and grow stronger.

Hypertrophy

Hypertrophy increases and grows muscle cells caused by resistance exercise, such as weight training.

“It is well known that resistance training induces muscular hypertrophy” — Kraemer, Ratamess, & French, 2002

Structural damage to the muscle stimulates the body’s repair response to the damaged muscle fibres, fibres growing back stronger and larger over time.

How to progressively overload

Progressive overload is attained by either adding slightly more weight for the same number of reps or increasing how many reps we do of the same weight.

“The principle of progressive overload must be adhered to for individuals to continually increase muscle size with resistance training.” — Dankel et al., 2017

Either add more weight every month or so, or you might go from being about to do eight reps of an exercise at a particular weight, to then doing 15 reps before you increase the weight.

It is best to follow the same routine each week for the best results. A little bit of variation on the odd exercise is fine if it keeps the exercise interesting. But don’t try and ‘shock’ your muscles by continuously changing your workouts. It’s too hard to measure and track progress objectively if we change exercises and rep ranges too often,

Keeping track of how much you are lifting is essential to progress. training journal

If you are getting stronger, your physique is also changing.

But your goal doesn’t have to be to get stronger. You could be trying to get faster or fitter. Your goals will dictate the style of training. What doesn’t change is the goal is getting better at a particular movement.

Diet

Food fuels performance. Have a small meal around one to two hours before your workout. You want to have enough energy, but you also don’t want your body to be digesting a meal at the same time as you’re working out. Try to include complex carbs in your pre-workout meal and some protein.

Protein Intake

The general rule of thumb for protein consumption to optimise building and maintaining muscle has been one gram per pound of body weight. If we use kilograms, this is approximately double your body weight (e.g. 80 kg is approx 160 grams of protein.

However, this meta-analysis study found no improvement in muscle growth or performance above 1.6g per kg of body weight per day. Their finding means protein intake can be as low as 0.7lb per lb of body weight and have the same benefit.

I talk in-depth about protein in the article below.

Recovery

One of the most essential things in the gym is pushing as hard as possible. Rest long enough between sets so that you can do each set at maximum effort—1 to 3 minutes between sets.

Sleep is when you recover. Few people can train hard and recover consistently on 5-6 hours of sleep, but 8–10 hours is optimum. Sleeping is when we recover. If we can’t recover sufficiently, we eventually break down.

Dedication

Building muscle requires dedication in the gym and with your diet. Consistency is crucial, both with stimulating hypertrophy and getting the right macronutrients (e.g. protein) and micronutrients (e.g. vitamins) to keep you healthy and in the gym.

Track your progress. Use a diary to write down your weight for each lift or an app such as My Fitness Pal. You can then objectively track your progress—the same with food.

Training intensity

You need to train hard every day and put the effort in. As Greg Doucette says — “Train harder than last time.” Many people go to the gym but never train hard enough to yield decent results. If you’re a regular at the gym, you would have seen these people.

Training until failure means getting the most out of every set. You cannot possibly do one more rep. But this is also taxing. Doing this every set, every day, would mean your body eventually breaks down, or you burn out mentally.

You might fatigue halfway through the workout, and next week you might not be able to train as hard — Overtraining. You want to maximise hypertrophy but not overdo it.

After reviewing the current literature, Schoenfeld & Grgic (2019) conclude that with a higher training frequency (training the same muscle group multiple times a week), “training to failure should likely be used sparingly to allow a better neuromuscular condition before the subsequent training session.”

“A potential issue with continuous training to failure is that it may increase the potential for overtraining and psychological burnout .” — Schoenfeld & Grgic, 2019

Training until failure on the compound or multi-joint exercises (e.g. squats, deadlifts, or presses) should be limited due to the high amount of fatigue they create.

However, performing single-joint or isolation exercises is far less physically and mentally demanding, so training until failure can be more frequent.

“Multi-joint movements, particularly those performed using free weights and of a structural nature, are substantially more taxing on the neuromuscular system than single-joint exercises.” — Schoenfeld & Grgic, 2019

RPE

RPE is the ‘rating of perceived exertion’. It is a guide for the intensity level of a set, calculated as a percentage of your 1RM (one rep max) — for example, six reps at 80% of your 1RM. Or, ratings are prescribed from 1 to 10 for intensity level — 1 representing a lift that requires little to no effort and 10 being the absolute maximum a person can lift.

Schoenfeld & Grgic recommend using the repetitions in reserve (RIR) scale — how many reps do we have left in the tank? For example, RPE 8 would mean two sets left or 2 RIR. An RIR of between 1 and 3 is a good number to aim for consistently to train hard enough but still allow the body to recover to overload progressively.

Frequency and volume

Frequency is a driver of hypertrophy and, therefore, required for progressive overload. The more often we train a muscle group, the more it needs to repair itself and theoretically grow.

To build muscle optimally, each body part should be trained twice a week, for 10–20 sets per body part. To focus on building strength, rep ranges should be 1–6, and to focus on hypertrophy, 6–15 reps.

Conclusion

In summary, we build muscle through the process of progressive overload.

Progressive overload is continually getting stronger over time, lifting more weight, or doing more reps, to create a stimulus for growth/improvement. Our muscle then repairs and grows back stronger, growing in size.

This article has explained the progressive overload process in-depth and gives the reader tips on how to optimise their workout to maximise hypertrophy and progressively overload.

Thank you for reading.

If you enjoyed the content, you might enjoy this article about how I have built over 40 pounds of muscle.

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