Weightlifting – Overloading Muscles to Activate Growth
When lifting weights, one thing that drives me crazy is seeing people, both men and women, religiously stick to a rep count during training. Stop at 10 reps because that’s what’s written in your program, when you’re able to do 12, you’re selling yourself short and that should never happen, ever.
The numbers are just figures, and the number you should be concerned about is your body: its shape and percentage of body fat.
Too often, people have some sort of ‘3 sets of 10 reps’ mantra in their mind and that’s what they stick to, like it’s the law, even if their muscles are capable of working harder. Muscles, however, have their own law, and that is that they must be trained hard to the point of overload in order to grow. Only an unusual amount of stress will force your muscles to grow and male or female muscle growth should be your ultimate goal. When you have more muscle on your body, your weight may increase or stay the same, but you become a fat burning machine because the muscle is alive and needs to be fed (calories). More muscle means a lower body fat percentage, a more attractive body, greater strength, and you burn more calories even at rest.
I believe the key to looking good and feeling good is muscle growth, which leads to a lower percentage of body fat. And for muscle to grow, it must be forced to work beyond what is considered “normal” for you at the moment; this is how you adapt to stress and are forced to grow in preparation for more. Your body starts “talking” about how this guy is adding all this hard work, a lot of weight and stress to it, so in order to cope, we better get together and build more muscle so we can do what’s asked of us. Stopping at rep 10 (using 10 as an example, number of reps varies depending on program and goals) when you are able to complete 12 reps with good form is stopping before the muscle building phase of your workout, only for the last few reps. repetitions of a set stress occurs to force growth. Completing 10 reps is simply putting your body under the same stress as you probably did the previous workout. Without progression to more repetitions there is no growth.
Once you agree to push yourself through this mark, the next step is to go back to 10 reps while overloading your muscles at the same time. So if you are able to hit 12 reps the next phase is to add weight, 5-10% more weight is a good starting point as the actual amount of weight you add to a bench press will be more than what do you add bicep curls. When we can complete 12 repetitions again, we repeat the process. Moving forward by overload = muscle growth.
Understand that when you work your chest, for example, you may be doing 8-10 sets of total work, such as 3 sets of incline barbell press, 3 sets of dumbbell flat press, 2 sets of decline press. So in this case, progressive overload doesn’t mean you have to add weight or reps to every exercise. Maybe one week you add a rep or two to the bench press, the next week the bench press stays the same as the week before but you add 5lbs to the dumbbell press, etc. Some phase of your training should progress every week or so.
One last point, when you really set out to complete a set of a particular exercise, mentally remove the previous number of full repetitions from your head. Too often people remember the last time they completed, say 8 reps with good form, so this week they have that 8 rep number on the back of their head as a mental hurdle to compete with more reps. Play the mental game of getting that figure out of your head and do the best you can that day, that exercise, that set.
More muscle translates to a better looking body that becomes more efficient at burning fat, this applies to both women and men. Too often, women avoid weights because they “don’t want to get big,” but it’s hard for women to get big unless you’re genetically predisposed to pack on muscle and lift “big” weights. It’s a testament to see so many natural guys in the gym who would love to get bigger but struggle to do it; It’s not as easy as we think. The overload of the muscles is the action that makes them adapt and react by growing.