Easy ways to progress your workout

Sometimes people forget how simple it is to progress your workouts to get better results. On principle that cant be overlooked is the law of progressive overload. This states that to get an adaptation, the training session provides a certain overload. You need to increase the difficulty or stress of each workout if you want to see gains.

Here are some ways to progress

A) Progress with reps-Most basic of progressions. Your goal is just doing more reps with the same weight over a time period. You can only progress like this for awhile before your gains become stagnant. Example:

Week 1-6 reps with 100lbs

Week 2-7 reps with 100lbs

Week3-8 reps with 100lbs

*Just make sure you stay in the rep zone to get the training effect you want. Meaning, don't progress from 10 reps to 15 reps if your goal is gaining muscle.

B) Progress with weight-This is also another basic progression. You simply add weight while keeping the reps the same. Just like above you can only progress for so long before gains slow down else we all would have huge benches by the end of the year just by adding weight. Example:

Week 1-6 reps with 100lbs

Week 2-6 reps with 105lbs

Week 3-6 reps with 110lbs

*Once you get to a certain point, maybe 2-3 weeks you can switch to a different progression type and do for example the following

Week 1-6 reps with 100lbs

Week 2-6 reps with 105lbs

Week 3-6 reps with 110lbs

Week 4- 4 reps with 115lbs

Week 5-4 reps with 120lbs

C) Progress with sets-This is a way to increase training volume. This is when you increase the number of sets per muscle group or lifts. Example:

Week 1-8 total sets per muscle group

Week 2-10 total sets per muscle group

Week 3- 12 total sets per muscle group

* Of course this too cant be done forever without creating a negative effect after a while.  I wouldn't go past 16 total sets for large muscle groups and 12 for smaller for the most part.

D) Progress with rest-This is reducing the amount of rest time between sets while keeping or increasing the work being done. Example:

Week 1: 1 minute rest intervals

Week 2: 40 second rest intervals

Week 3: 30 second rest intervals

* Again, this setup has its restrictions since you cant keep reducing the time forever and too little of time will make it tough to perform maximal lifts if that is your goal.

E) Progress with techniques-You can use things like pre-exhaust/post-exhaust, tempo training, super-sets, drop sets and much more. All of these type of techniques are very tough on the body and should not be overdone.