Progressing Weight Training
In order to get stronger you should record every weight you lift in a workout, then try and beat those weights by 2-4% next time. Having a training diary is the oldest and most time tested ways to ensure you get stronger. Since the beginning of time people have been scribbling their exercises down in diaries, notespads, phones and now apps like the one I use for my online training clients.
Weight training can be that simple.
To all my in person clients that have ever wondered what I'm doing on my ipad when they're lifting, well, I'm recording every weight they lift on my spreadsheet so I can try and squeeze some progression out of them from workout to workout.
How do you progress you ask??
My clients weights tend to get heavier from set 1 to set 4 most of the time. It would normally look like this
Goblet Squat
set 1 - 10kg
Set 2 - 12.5kg
Set 3 - 15kg
Set 4 - 17.5kg
This is called ramping the weight. The reason we do this is multifaceted.
Firstly :
It excites your nervous system.
Strength training requires the nervous system to create the spark that causes muscles to contract. Ramping weights like we do constantly fires the nervous system up from set to set leading to an all out effort on the 4th set. Studies show you are stronger on your 4th set using gradual jumps in load like this than if you just tried to pick it up cold on the first set.
Its also safer. It gets you used to using heavier and heavier weight so its not such a shock on your 4th set and it enables you to gauge your strength better than just guessing.
It’s the best warm up for a joint you can do. It literally warms up the muscles in the pattern they will be used.
That being said how do we get stronger week to week.
A very simple approach is starting a little heavier than the week before. Using the above example a week to week progression might look like this below.
Notice the starting weight has increased and the finishing weight is higher than previous workouts. The total week to week has gone up too. Not everything goes this well though! Sometimes it looks like this below :
Notice on workout 2 they started heavier than workout 1 but did two heavy sets of 17.5. Something like this happens when you're not confident to go from 17.5 to 20kg. But in week 3 they did. Total week to week went up. And then sometimes it will look like this :
You should be starting to get the picture here! Either way by the end of the 3rd workout and assuming your tempo and rest periods have stayed the same workout to workout, you have lifted more weight!
Either way finding progression within your workouts is the key to not adapting to your program too quickly.
In advanced strength training there are very certain ratios you should stick to in terms of progression and percentage of 1 rep max lifted on particular days, but for most folks they dont need such precise indicators.
Progression however is everything in strength training.
Progress over perfection!
See you in the gym
Brad
To find out more about personal training with Brad click below
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