I’ve been in the gym for a lot of years now. I’ve worked out in many giant commercial gyms and been employed by other giant gym chains and the YMCA. So after all these years its safe to say that I have seen a lot of things……horrible things that cannot be unseen!

It was pretty much this on a daily basis

You see, I saw so many people doing silly, dangerous, and downright ineffective exercises all the time. For a long time my viewing of this daily dog and pony show made me want to violently shove my lunch fork into my eyes. To make matters worse, when I observe clients working with MOST personal trainers I see programs and exercises that are not much better than the picture above. There is no real structure, plan, or progression to the programs that these trainers are putting their clients through.

I realize that people dont know what they dont know, and so these clients trust their coach to lead them to their goals and they dont realize that they are being put through sub-optimal or even sometimes dangerous programs.

I dont want that for you dear reader! So rather than create an exhaustive list of “good and bad” exercises (which could fill a volume) I am going to give you the most powerful training principle that you need in order to always make progress in the gym.

Progressive Overload

Progressive Overload is probably the most important (and often overlooked) principle in gaining strength and losing fat in the gym.

In a nutshell progressive overload means that you need to gradually put more and more stress on the body in the gym in order to build muscle and strength. You see our bodies desire to settle into what is called homeostasis. This means that our bodies like to self regulate and keep us at a certain base level. So in order to build muscle or lose fat we must disrupt this homeostasis by lifting weights.

For example, lets say that you start lifting in a group exercise class. The class is fast paced and uses dumbbells. It kicks your butt for the first 2 weeks. Then on the third week you find that it is considerably easier and you feel really good about yourself (go you!). Weeks four and five go by and you have the group workout down pat. You are the class rockstar! Several months go by and you keep slaying the workout but you notice that you dont look that much different in the mirror. What is going on?

The group class using the little dumbbells that you have been attending religiously has neglected the holy ghost of training: progressive overload. You see, the group class starts off as a new challenge for you. Your body is only used to going to work and then sitting on a couch, so the class is great and you see some results right off the bat. This disrupts your homeostatic point. After a few weeks though, your body has gotten used to the group class and its not as challenging. Your body has reached a new homeostatic point! It has adapted to the demand of the workout, and now in order to keep progressing and becoming more fit your body needs more of a challenge.

This is why after several months of this, you dont see a ton of changes in your physique. Its because the workout hasn’t really changed much. You also see this with home workout videos. Sure, they work for a few weeks or even months, but they usually are not built with progressing in mind and will eventually leave you stagnant.

In order to keep growing (in our example above) you would need to increase the weight of the dumbbells used, increase the number of reps performed, or otherwise increase your time under mechanical tension in the group exercises.

So How Does it Work?

“Stephen you lover of iron,” I hear you say, “how does this work practically in my workouts? I keep This pretty simple in my own programming and that of my clients. Most importantly you have to keep one thing in mind each time you train. Have I tried to do more this workout than last workout?

With body weight exercises (like push ups, pull ups, crunches exc) this is very simple. Just do more than the last workout. For example, if you can eek out 3 sets of 3 push ups at first, then next workout simply try to do an additional 4th push up. Before long you will be adding 5th and 6th push ups and not long after you will be much stronger and proficient in that exercise.

With weights its a little more complicated (but not much). Say you start off dead lifting a 35lb kettlebell off the floor for 3 sets of 8 reps. Next week try doing 10-12 reps for 3 sets. The week after try using a 52lb kettlebell for 3 sets of 8 reps again. You see how this works? You want to increase the reps and/or the weight each week in order to see sustained progress and great results. Easy enough eh?

To be clear, there are some weeks where this is not possible. Sometimes you will have not sufficiently recovered and adapted from your training because of bad sleep, high stress, a bad argument with your significant other, your house is haunted because its built on an Indian burial ground, or any other number of things. Realize that this is ok and is part of the process. Just go get em next week!

TLDR

You dont need to change up your program constantly or always be on the hunt for the exercise that “works your thighs best.” What I challenge you to put into practice is to always try to do just a little bit more each workout. It doesn’t even have to be for every exercise every workout! But by doing just a little more you will find that little bit at a time adds up to big changes in the long run.

Now go build your Rome.