What's up, guys?
Sean Nalewanyj, RealScienceAthletics.com.
In this video today we're talking about how to achieve progressive overload if you're
training from home right now and you're limited on equipment.
It's a little bit windy today, so apologies if there's a bit of extra noise here.
Before I jump into the video, I just want to let you guys know that we're currently
running a 20% off discount on all three of our supplements over at Real Science Athletics
until tomorrow, April 25th at midnight.
So if money is a bit tighter right now and you want to stock up on our athletes multivitamin,
pre-workout or fish oil, just head over to realscienceathletics.com.
The link is up here and down below in the description and use coupon code it TAKEOFF20.
I have no doubt that these are the best formulated products available in their categories right
now.
If you have any questions about any of them or you want to compare them to what you're
currently using, just post below or you can also DM me over on Instagram @SeanNalewanyj.
So if your primary goal right now is mainly just to maintain your existing gains, then
as long as you have a set of exercises that allows you to get within a couple of reps
of failure, technically progressive overload is not going to be necessary, okay?
You can just do a basic maintenance routine and perform the same weight and reps from
week to week and that should be enough for your purposes.
However, if you want to continue making muscle building progress during this period, then
progressive overload is absolutely essential just as it always is.
It's the underlying driver that forces your body to put on greater and greater amounts
of muscle over time and without it, you're just not going to see any significant gains.
All progressive overload really means at the heart of it is that you need to consistently
increase the workload on your muscles over time in some capacity.
It doesn't just mean adding more weight to the bar like a lot of people think.
Now, if you do have access to enough weight right now and you're still a beginner to intermediate
trainee, then simply lifting more weight over time should be your primary focus.
But there are a lot of other ways that progressive overload can be achieved and if you're limited
on training equipment right now or you possibly have no equipment at all, then you're going
to need to make use of some of these alternate methods in order to continue making gains.
So let's go over it here.
The first one is very simple and that's to just perform more reps with the same weight.
Like we've talked about in the last few videos here, the truth is that you can still build
comparable muscle mass, at least in the short term, even if you're using very high rep ranges,
definitely up to 30 reps, maybe a bit higher, though I wouldn't go too high since your cardiovascular
system can become a limiting factor in that case, especially if it's a bigger compound
exercise.
But for sure up to about 30 reps is probably a safe amount if we're talking about hypertrophy.
So if right now you can do say, 10 body weight pull-ups, even without changing anything in
terms of weight or technique or angles, you can literally just push for more and more
reps, right?
Maybe one week you do 10 reps, next week push for 11, then 12 and 13 and so on.
It's really that simple.
Or if you can do five handstand pushups right now or 15 decline pushups, same thing, you
can literally just aim for more reps.
That's a perfectly viable method of progressive overload and that will stimulate further and
further muscle growth on its own.
The second method is to perform a more challenging variation of the same exercise.
So this is similar to adding more weight, but instead of adding a greater load using
an external object, you're just going to change the position of your body to apply more resistance
to the targeted muscle.
Now, there are tons of different ways this can be done depending on the muscle group
or the exercise.
For example, it could mean different pushup progressions like starting with a regular
flat pushup, then making it more difficult by elevating your feet up behind you or even
on a wall we're doing side to side pushups or clapping, pushups.
It could mean doing narrow neutral grip chin-ups and then graduating to overhand pull-ups and
then maybe progressing to a sternum pull up to make it even more challenging.
For shoulders maybe you start off with a pike pushup and then you graduate to a handstand
pushup.
For triceps, maybe bench dips is where you start and then you graduate to regular dips
using two chairs.
Okay?
These are just two examples, or sorry, a few examples of many different ones.
The third method is to perform your lifts under greater control.
That alone will go a long way in making a given level of resistance and a given exercise
variation a lot more challenging.
There are two main ways of doing that.
The first is to perform a slower negative and the second is to implement a pause in
the contracted position of each rep or the stretch position or both.
So if right now you tend to perform the negative pretty quickly, let's say one to two seconds
and you're just largely letting gravity do the work, you can slow that down to three
or four, even five seconds to make the lift more difficult.
It doesn't necessarily have to be on every single rep.
For example, let's say right now on Bulgarian split squats, you can do 15 reps and you're
using a one to two second negative.
Okay?
You could start by slowing down maybe the first three reps and then perform the rest
of the reps as normal.
That's technically a form of progression.
The next time, do the first maybe six reps more slowly and then the rest is normal and
then so on.
Remember here that progressive overload, or rather with progressive overload, you don't
have to be improving by leaps and bounds every single time you train, okay?
It's all about small, gradual, incremental improvements and then letting those improvements
slowly add up over time.
As long as you come back to the gym and you do more than last time in some capacity, that's
the most important thing.
But getting back to this particular method, again, you can slow down the negative.
I don't recommend slowing down the concentric.
I think that the concentric should always be performed with maximum force because the
research is pretty clear that that is optimal for size and strength gains.
But the other thing you can do is to implement pauses.
So let's say on an inverted row, right, instead of just pulling yourself up and then lowering
immediately, you can try holding at the top for a one to two second count or on a pistol
squat you can lower yourself down and then hold in the bottom position for a one to two
second count.
Even with just this alone, using a slower negative and then implementing a hold at one
or both ends of the rep, that can go a long way right there in helping you get more benefit
out of less resistance and steadily progressing without having to add extra weight to the
exercise.
Another method you can try, this isn't something I personally use often, but technically it
is a way to make a given weight more challenging and it is another method that can be used
for progression, and that's to implement pulse reps.
A pulse rep is basically where you start by lifting up the weight halfway, then you lower
back down to the starting position, then perform a full rep, go back down to the starting position
and then repeat.
So maybe you have limited resistance on say bicep curls.
Maybe all you have handy is a 10 pound bag of rice, but you can already crank out 30
reps with that pretty easily.
Slower negatives and static holds can be used there, but you can also try implementing some
pulse reps to make it even harder.
So those are five methods right there that you can use to achieve progressive overload
at home without having to add more external weight into the equation.
The very important thing to keep in mind here is that all of these methods can be combined,
okay?
You don't have to just train for more reps or just use more difficult variations or just
alter your technique.
If you start combining all of these methods together, then in practical terms there's
almost no end to how far you can progress and certainly no end if we're talking about
training from home this way maybe just for the next few months.
There are just so many different progression permutations available.
For example, you could graduate from a regular pushup to a foot elevated pushup and train
for higher reps and do slower negatives.
Or you could graduate from a split squat to a pistol squat and implement a two second
pause at the bottom of each rep and do the first five reps maybe in a pulse fashion.
Then in addition to all of this, let's say somehow against all odds you manage to exhaust
all of these different methods and you can do 30 reps per set with the hardest possible
exercise variation with controlled negatives, paused reps and pulses.
In that case, you can also just perform more total work by increasing the total number
of sets performed per workout and per week.
Or you can also increase the training frequency or both.
So instead of 10 weekly sets for quads, you could bump it up to 12 sets, then 14 sets,
maybe up to about 20 sets or so per week.
Or if you're training a given muscle once a week right now, you could increase to one
and a half times a week, then twice a week, then maybe even two and a half times a week
or three times a week at least for a temporary period.
Another way to perform a more total work in general is to implement rest pause into your
training.
So instead of increasing the total number of sets, with rest pause, what you're going
to do is just tag some extra reps onto the end of each set that you're already doing.
So with rest pause, what you would do is perform your regular set, do say 12 reps in total,
getting within one to two rep short of failure, then rest completely for 10 to 15 breaths.
Crank out a few more reps, again, going one to two rep short of failure, then rest again
and then repeat that once or twice.
That's called multi rep rest pause and it's a very good way to add more quality reps to
your workout without actually having to perform an entirely new set each time.
Drop sets are another option here.
I'm not a huge fan of drop sets.
I do prefer rest pause overall, but you could add in a drop set here and there as well to
make a given exercise more demanding.
As most of you probably know, that's where you perform your normal set and then immediately
without resting you reduce the weight, crank out some additional reps and you can repeat
that maybe once or twice.
Then lastly, you can also perform more total work by just going closer to failure on your
sets in general.
I think about one to two rep, short of failure on the bulk of your sets is a good sweet spot
to aim for, but some people out there do recommend as low as three or four reps short of failure.
So if you have been going several reps short of failure, then you can just bump up the
effort level and take things one to two reps short.
Or if you're already going one to two reps short, then you can perform some of your sets
all the way to muscular failure.
I don't recommend performing every single set to failure, but one option would be to
perform, say the first two sets of an exercise one to two reps short of failure and then
finish off by taking the last set all the way to failure.
That's technically a method of progressive overload as well that you can sprinkle in
if it suits your individual situation.
So there you have it, guys.
That's actually 10 different methods of progressive overload that you can incorporate into your
home workouts that don't involve adding more weight to the bar or to your body.
So just to recap, the methods that we covered are performing more total reps, using more
challenging exercise variations, performing slower negatives, pausing in the contracted
position of the rep, pausing in the stretch position of the rep, implementing pulse reps,
performing more total sets, increasing your training frequency, utilizing rest pause or
drop sets and increasing your level of effort by training closer to failure.
Like I said, these can all be combined in various ways and by using different combinations
there's just no way that you're going to run out of different ways to progress and to stimulate
further and further muscle growth.
Just make sure to write down all your workouts in the same way as you would if you were training
at a regular gym, the exercises you did, the amount of weight you lifted if you are adding
external weight, the number of sets you did, the number of reps and whatever extra techniques
you might've used like negatives or pauses or rest pause or anything else.
Then just aim for small consistent improvements each week and let those small improvements
add up over time.
And trust me, they'll add up a lot faster than you think if you track things diligently
and you will be able to grow from this even if you're not adding more weight to the bar.
If you found this advice helpful and you do have access to basic training equipment right
now, some dumbbells, a bench and ideally a pull up bar, then you can check out my Complete
Body Transformation Blueprint Program by clicking up here or in the description box below.
That program will help you get the very best results with multiple training cycles included,
meal plans, video demos, and it can be adapted to your home gym set up.
Once you sign up, just shoot me an email and I'll help you with that.
On the other hand, if your training equipment is very limited, then you can download my
free home upper/lower split that I uploaded a couple of weeks ago on the link for that
is also in the description, and as always, make sure to hit the like button, leave a
comment and subscribe if you haven't already in order to stay up to date on future videos.
Thanks for watching, guys, and I'll see you in the next one.