What is the best way to maximize hypertrophy (muscle growth) and strength? In the fitness industry there are a lot of answers to this question, but we have your answer. Progressive Overload. Now let us tell you why.
When designing a training program for increasing muscle size, the principle of specificity helps us determine which exercises we can choose from when trying to develop each muscle group to its maximum potential. For most programs, they can be split into varying days that target different muscle groups. Push days can utilize a host of exercises that our pull days will not. The principle of individuality helps us decide which of those exercises to select, how to allocate volume, and how many workouts to do for each muscle each week. And the principle of variety makes sure that we continue progressing, and do not get stuck on a plateau.
There are so many varying principles revolving around training and how best to amplify muscle growth and strength. Here at CeeFit we believe that all of these concepts can be broken down into one important concept. Progressive Overload. The principle of progressive overload is less important for hypertrophy at the planning stage, but is more important in each workout, making it absolutely essential for achieving meaningful muscle growth long-term. This is because the presence (or absence) of progressive overload affects the mechanical loading stimulus that leads to hypertrophy.
So what exactly does all of that mean? Simply put, progressive overload means that over the long-term we want to put the muscle under exponentially increasing levels of stress. This will lead to a host of various benefits, but can be broken down by the following:
- Increases in muscle fiber size.
- Increases in the ability of each muscle fiber to produce force relative to its size, probably because of enhanced capacity to transmit force laterally between the muscle fiber and its surrounding collagen layer.
- Increases in the number of muscle fibers that are activated, because of an enhanced capacity to reach full motor unit recruitment (this contributes to an increase in the ability of the whole muscle to produce force relative to its size), and
- Increases in tendon stiffness.
Increases in muscle fiber size are triggered by a workout when individual muscle fibers belonging to the high-threshold motor units experience high levels of mechanical tension. So how do we put this in practice?
Easy. We must structure our workouts with progressive overload, either by increasing the weight slightly, or by increasing the number of reps, then the number of stimulating reps remains the same in each workout, and we continue to experience muscle growth (up to a point). Depending on your experience and your current strength levels determines our starting point and how often we want rotate our schedules. Check out the rest of our Training articles, or contact us if you need help getting started progressively overloading!
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