Work capacity, volume, and progressive overload (this may be why you don't get stronger)

Work capacity, volume, and progressive overload (this may be why you don't get stronger)

There are three main factors in progressive overload

  1. More weight
  2. More reps
  3. Same weight and reps in less time

A HUGE issue that causes a lack of adaption is people adding more weight (or reps) but then taking longer and longer rests.

Growth and neural recruitment are results of adaption to ACCUMULATED stress, its not just your top set, but the result of every set you do in the gym.

Scrolling through insta between sets is (without a doubt) changing your accumulated stress levels.

Once you are out of the beginner stage, adding weight and reps is not always that easy, but cutting rest periods is.

Practically

  1. you should time your rest periods
  2. you should know what is your optimal 'full strength' time is (normally 5-6 minutes)
  3. you should have periods of time where rest goes down to 1 minute (or even 30 seconds) when you are working on capacity.

The dogma that long-time resting to be 'at your best' was created by people that trained for three hours and ate 7000 calories (probably while eating 1000 during training).

Most modern (good) PLs that have jobs and lives train efficiently, which means they don't have three hours to be in the gym (or the CNS to recover from that).

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