What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere. Athleanx.com. So you want to get bigger and stronger. It's
actually really, really simple. There's only way to do it, and I suggest you go talk to
this guy. Listen, dude, I got some goodies in here right here for you. This is what I use. I got some
farm school grade HDH low dose. And dude, best of all, low grade beaver tranquilizer. You want any?
I'm good, man. What do you mean you're good? I'm good. Bro, these are gains! Do you want gains? You
don't want gains?! This is where your gains are! In this bag! Actually, he might make you think
that that's the only way for you to get bigger and stronger. But there's a hell of a lot more
ways to do this, especially if you apply a science to what it is that you're doing. And, guys, that's
what I want to make sure I do here for you today. Because it's as simple as two words-- progressive
overload-- but how we define that and the ways we get there is what matters. And a lot of
people will make you believe that the only way to progressively overload and get stronger and bigger
is to just simply add weight to the bar. That is not all the options you have here. I'm going to
show you guys so many more ways to do this that will help you to have a better understanding,
and therefore have a better game plan for getting there faster. All right, so the first thing you
need to do is you need to be willing to define your specific goals. Right, don't just lump them
together-- strength and size-- because we know that they are different. Creating muscle growth
can take us down different paths. We can introduce light weights and do them for much higher reps
and still get muscle growth whereas it wouldn't really affect our strength levels. And likewise,
we can pursue strength, which might limit the number of progressive overload options we have,
but it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to get size increases, especially if we're past
the stage of newbie gains. So be willing to define what it is you're trying to chase. And it's okay
if we're trying to chase both. Just understand that there might be different ways to get to
each of them more efficiently. And on that note, guys, step two here is to realize that not all
the techniques that I'm going to show you here are going to work optimally for every exercise.
And for that reason, I'm going to pit two entirely different exercises against each other to showcase
the strengths and weaknesses. We'll take a simple exercise here like the dumbbell curl,
and we'll put it head-to-head up with, let's say, a heavy compound movement like the dead lift.
And realize that each of those is going to provide us with a lot of similarities in how
we can create progressive overload, but also some important unique differences.
All right, so with lots to cover here, guys, let's get started right off with the most obvious way to
create progressive overload, and that is simply adding more weight to the exercise that you're
performing. So if it's the curl, increasing the weight of the dumbbells that you're curling is
going to increase the strength of your biceps on that exercise. Ad we know, again, that it doesn't
just apply to this variation of the curl, a lot of times strength is generalized. It will occur
through other variations. Even if we broke out a bar bell we would see some increases
in strength that carry over. But the principle itself also applies here to our compound lift.
Right, simply adding more weight to the end of this bar bell, and performing a dead lift is
going to increase my strength. As I am able to do heavier and heavier weights, my strength is
increasing. It's important to note here, guys, that it's not just relative to your one-rep max.
Matter of fact, a lot of guys won't even ever touch their one-rep max unless they're competing.
It can apply to a three-rep, a four-rep, a five-rep, even higher rep levels.
As you're able to do more weight at those levels you are getting stronger. The important point
is that you're progressively adding more weight to the bar at any given rep range,
therefore increasing your strength. All right, so the next one here is actually a bit controversial
because I feel like people throw this word around as if it's the holy grail of training,
and that's volume. Simply increasing volume doesn't necessarily need progressive overload.
Because I could just increase a bunch of junk volume, low effort, low intensity volume and not
necessarily see any increase in gains in strength or muscle mass. That being said, if we're going to
take an example like this where we have five sets of three done with a sufficient intensity of 85%,
you would see that I will have lifted a certain amount of weight by the time that workout is over.
And if instead we increased the number of sets we did with the same exercise, and the same weight,
at the same intensity level, here we look at it increase in the number of pounds that we lift by
the time the workout's over. That is a form of progressive overload. But again, it's dependent
upon the intensity at which we're training. With that being said, guys, I got more to say on that
in point number three. And that point is in the realm of strength training prescription. When
we're talking about intensity we're talking about a percentage of the lift that we're performing.
That being said, I also like to make sure that we point out simply effort level. How
hard are you trying? If you're looking to create a progressive overload, take whatever
effort you provided last time, and do more the next time. In other words, look at this curl.
If you look like this when you're curling, I'm sorry, but there is no opportunity here for you
to really push yourself and create any substantial growth. Certainly not in any significant way when
it comes to progressive overload. What you need to do is you need to start pushing more. You need
to start putting more effort to what you do. This is an example of what it would look like. There's
more effort being performed here. I think if you did nothing else but simply up the effort level
of the exercises you're performing, you would find an amazing opportunity to add both more strength,
because you'd be more focused on the thing you're doing, and more size because you'll
be putting more into what you're doing, and in both cases, see gains. All right, so the next one
here actually doesn't have anything to do with the weight that you're lifting, but more so the
time that you're resting in between sets. You see, your inter-set rest period can actually be a great
opportunity for you to create overload by simply decreasing it. See, if you took protocol one here,
you just did a five by three, at a certain level of intensity, that is going to remain consistent
between protocols. And you added four minutes of rest between sets. This total workout would take
you 18 and a half minutes. If, on the other hand, in protocol two here you decrease that inter-set
rest period by just one minute to three minutes, you see that that total time of the workout would
be just 14 and a half minutes. You save four minutes. However, your output was the same.
For you create that same output in a shorter period of time is going to be a heightened demand
on the muscles that created that output. There is more stress being applied to you and your body,
and therefore a progressive overload, and we didn't even have to touch the weights that were
on the bar. We just had to manipulate how long we were resting in between those sets. All right,
method number five we're creating more progressive overload in your workouts.
It's simply to increase the range in motion of the exercises that you're doing. Now how does that
work? It's not always a given that that's going to actually create any increase overload. Why?
If I were to do a tricep kickback, I've talked about it before, bringing your arm up closer to
your chin on a tricep kickback before you kick it back is doing nothing to increase the demand
on the triceps. If anything, it's actually just increasing the demand on the biceps. So that means
nothing is actually being achieved here. But if the exercise itself is being preserved,
then more range of motion means that the weight has to travel a longer distance, meaning that more
work is done and you're creating an opportunity for overload. If we took the curl for example,
what we would do here is something called a one and a half rep curl. So if I take the weight from
point A to point B from the bottom to the top, instead of just stopping there, if I go back
down halfway to point C, and then I come back up to the top, every single repetition has now become
one and a half. There is more work being done on every rep than there was in a single up and down.
If we would apply this to a deadlift, the best way to do it would be with a deficit deadlift.
Simply standing on top of something to create a longer range in motion for that bar. You can see
here on a standard deadlift that the bar sits about eight and a half inches off the floor.
For me, when I get it to the top, it's traveled a total of 28 inches. That gives us a displacement
of that bar. If I simply stand on top of a two-inch plate, and perform the same lift,
that displacement has increased. Right, I have to overcome the additional two inches. What that does
is I've had to move this bar an additional 10% or more to perform the same exercise.
That is a form of increased overload. Even though the weights stay the same, the travel was longer,
the work perform was more, that's a way that you can actually progressively overload this exercise,
again, without having to change the weight at all. All right, with method number six we actually
now can impact the range of motion without changing or adding any range in motion at all.
All we have to do is increase the effectiveness of the range in motion we're training in.
And that's where accommodating resistance and strength curves matters. So if you look at this
dumbbell curl, we realize that the dumbbell itself provides a level of resistance that's
toughest in the middle of the exercise. Whereas if we use the band we know that the bands get
most difficult at the top of the exercise. Well, if we actually combine the two like you see here,
we're actually now increasing the effectiveness throughout more of the range of motion. Right,
we're loading it in the middle, and still loading it at the end because we're overlapping the two.
That is going to create an opportunity here for progressive overload. We can also do the same
thing here with a deadlift. If I took chains and I added them to the end of the bar, we're not having
to lift the weight of the chains until we get towards the top. As the deadlift gets easier,
the amount of the weight of chains becomes more of a factor. As they become unraveled
and hang more we have more weight of the chains to lift, that is helping to, again, build a
complimentary strength curve. Use accommodating resistance to take the same exercise with
additional implement incorporated into it and make it more difficult with more progressive overload.
Method number seven has to do with the pace at which you perform your lift. Pacing can
be something incredibly effective for creating overload. Look, if I told you to do an air squat,
you'd probably say, That's not really hard at all. But if I told you to do a wall sit and stay there,
how long could you actually sit there? It's going to become more difficult because you're accruing
time under tension. Well, I can incorporate a pause into any lift I do, but we can apply it
to the two that we're focusing on in this video. And that is firstly with a dumbbell curl. If I
simply paused in the middle, the hardest portion of the range of motion, we can make this curl more
difficult. Simply bring it up, pause, then come to the top, come all the way down, and repeat.
That is going to increase the time that we are feeling that tension on every single repetition,
make it more difficult, and create more overload than had we just done it in a standard up-down
fashion. With a deadlift we have the same opportunity here. We could do a pause deadlift.
You rip that thing off the floor, but you stop below knee level, and you hold the bar to be
able to reinitiate without momentum-- we're going to get into that next-- and pull that bar all the
way up to the top. Again, more overload than had you just ripped the bar from the floor
without stopping. So I mentioned momentum, let's talk about it with our eighth technique here,
and that is we want to reduce the momentum in the lift. We can create progressive overload
if we take out the urge to let momentum take over. If I took that dumbbell curl,
and instead of doing it one arm at a time where I have the benefits of getting into a rhythm and
generating some good momentum as I lean into that working arm, we could do them two arms at a time.
This actually eliminates a lot of that momentum, forces us to move more weight and control more
of that weight with our core, which makes this a more difficult exercise. If you haven't tried it,
just try it, and you'll feel that right away. We can apply the same thing here to the deadlift as
well. I'm sure you've seen people do touch and go deadlifts, which will look this,
or a regular deadlift. Now, the touch and go deadlift is not something that should be avoided
altogether. It depends on what you're training for. If you're looking for more of a metabolic
effect from the deadlift, you can use a touch and go form. If you're looking to create overall
strength from the exercise, then you're going to want to stop on every single repetition.
Pull from the floor from a dead stop, hence where the name comes from. Either way,
if you were used to doing touch and go deadlifts, and you switch to a regular traditional deadlift,
you are going to have effectively an increased overload. So there you have it,
guys. Getting bigger and stronger can actually be boiled down to two words, progressive overload,
and it also relies, again, on the goal that you have set for your own training. It's possible to
do both, but it's always more easily achieved if you have a game plan for getting there. And when
you realized it's not just about adding weight to the bar, there's a lot of other things we can do
to speed that up and give us more options in our training to actually make it more fun.
If you're looking for ways to train, guys, and do it a step-by-step way, all of our programs provide
that over at Athleanx.com. If you found the video helpful, make sure you leave your comments
and thumbs up below. Let me know what else you want me to cover. I'll do my best to do that for
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so you never miss a new video when we put one out. All right, guys, see you soon.