(rock music)
Narrator: Into the progressive overload section here,
and this is essentially going to be the last
we'll say "introductory" section before we actually start
pulling these pieces apart, looking at them in detail,
and then we're gonna put them all together at the end.
So we're looking at progressive overload, right?
On paper it's increasing the amount of work being done.
So it's almost always going to be related
in some way some shape or form to volume.
So I kinda discussed in the intro
how there's a lot of people that have been like
'Well, progressive overload is this',
or 'progressive overload is that',
lots of clickbaity things
like progressive overload is BS or its not,
oh you don't only have to use load to progressive overload.
So we'll get into all the different ways,
but the basic principle here
that I want you guys to get across
when we're looking at progressive overload
is no matter which type of thing that you use
to increase or to progress,
when we look at the way we calculate volume
there's almost always going to be an increase
in volume by some measure.
So for instance, if you add load that's the easiest one,
but if you do another rep that's still more volume.
If you do another set, that's more volume.
If you add a pause that's more muscular work,
so if we're looking at volume as muscular work
that's gonna be more volume.
If you simply improve your technique
and you do less body English so that
the muscle that you're trying to work
has to do more of moving of that load, that is a progress.
Simply progressing in technique as a form of overload,
if that is providing more mechanical work,
more muscular work to the tissue that you're targeting
and less momentum, etc,
that's still progressing volume.
It's just harder to measure aspect of volume.
Right, is being able to measure
"Well how much volume was that bicep curl
versus this bicep curl that was
a little bit better controlled?"
All you can say is that it was a progression.
So depending on how much you need to progress,
how you want to progress,
that may be a focus for one person that's like
"Okay we're not gonna change anything
other than we're gonna become
more strict with your technique."
And so people have made arguments for all of these things,
and I think that's the important thing is to understand
it is all these things, it's not one of these things.
Because everybody like to sell their little thing of
well this is the most important way to progress, or this.
You need to progress in sets,
or no you need to progress in intensity,
or you need to progress in reps and intensity.
The thing is their all tools.
What you wanna do is understand that
we're gonna try to find a way to use them
at the right period of time so that we progress
towards the stimulus that we want.
So the last bullet on this page is well,
we're looking at a physiological goal,
so on paper progressive overload is do more.
In the gym what we're actually trying to accomplish
is a physiological goal of some sort, right?
And so our goal of progressive overload
is to keep the stimulus of training session,
of each individual set, etc,
at a threshold that is gonna
stimulate the desired adaptation.
Because when it comes to stimulus,
there is a dose response to stimulus.
And for some things it's like a bell curve,
meaning that there's not going to be a lot of adaptation
that occurs at a very low stimulus,
and then all of a sudden once you reach a certain threshold
its gonna start to go up and then you'll get some more, etc.
And we'll kinda walk through that.
But it's not necessarily a complete on or off switch,
especially when we look at the fact that
when we're training a muscle
we're training thousands of cells.
So what's going on in each individuals of those cells
is going to be slightly different.
You're not necessarily going to stimulate every single cell
to the same degree in a given rep
or a given set or a given workout.
A lot of this stuff is on a continuum,
but in largely, stimulus is going to looks
like a bell curve, right?
Because there's also going to be
a point of diminishing returns on the opposite end.
So points to take away from this
is that you can't increase intensity, effort, load,
you can't increase or progress in any way
that isn't in some way shape or form
going to lead to increased volume.
It just is for the most part,
especially if we qualify volume as muscular work
and not just the total tonnage.
So keep that in mind.
(rock music)