Progression: Callouses vs. Blisters, Sunburns vs. Suntans
My favorite overarching concept about progression is an analogy:
Callouses and suntans develop when we have repeated exposure to a stress (friction/force or sun) that does not greatly exceed our current level of tolerance, but exceeds it just enough to stimulate an adaptation response. Your body learns that this stress is coming on a regular basis; it therefore adapts to better handle that stress in the future by laying down more skin, or changing the melanin content of your skin to tolerate the soon-to-be-coming-again stress better the next time.
Both of these only happen with frequent enough exposure to just the right amount of challenge beyond our comfortable capacity. Once a week sun bathing will not change your skins ability to handle the stress, but two days might. Three definitely will, four will do so faster, so on and so on.
But those same stresses, when applied in a more extreme amount to a body that has not been progressed to handle that amount, will result in a blister or a sunburn. These responses then require you to take several days off, just so your body can recover back to baseline, and sometimes you actually end up below your previous baseline if the stress was high enough.
Now, if we take someone who would have gotten a sunburn from 30 minutes in the sun with no preparation, and that person spends 10 minutes a day for a week, then ups that to 15 for a week, then to 20 for another week, before they know it they will be able to tolerate 30 minutes without burning. Same with a callous vs. a blister - something that would have previously blistered you, when progressed to properly and regularly, will no longer blister because your body prepared for that level of challenge.
An important additional point is this - if you progressed smartly to tolerate 30mins in the sun, but you continue to only spend 30mins, your adaptations will plateau. If you want to keep getting stronger, you need to keep progressing the challenge, little by little. It always needs to be a little more challenging than is comfortable, but not too much. Find the Goldilocks' Zone!
Progression: How and When to Increase the Challenge
One of the most apparent difficulties people have is knowing when to increase the challenge, and how to break thru plateaus. Hopefully this will help shed some general light.
There ALWAYS has to be a challenge to create a change, and that DOES NOT mean it always needs to be heavier. The challenge can take many forms, like increased duration (longer set), increased intention (squeezing and engaging the right muscles harder through the whole set), more volume (more sets on the same tissue), or more load (higher resistance).
In general, we will try to find a resistance that is pretty challenging by the last 10 seconds of the set, or the last 2-4 reps. Over time, you use that same resistance, and progress up with a couple more reps as you feel capable of doing so, until you get to either 60 seconds of work, or somewhere around 15-20 reps.
At this point, you take the reps/time down back to 8-12 or 30ish seconds, and increase the weight around 10-15% from what you were doing before. You then work this weight up the same way.
Keep in mind that the resistance you used last workout might feel much easier, or much harder, on your next workout based on a number of different factors like sleep, hydration, and stress levels. The number is how much resistance the machine applies, but the challenge is always relative to your body’s fluctuating ability in every workout. 50lbs for 15 reps on Tuesday might have felt right, but on Thursday that might be too much. Use your first set on each machine to determine how your weights from last workout are feeling, and whether you want to go up, down, or stay the same when you come back to it later in the workout.
Progression: Breaking Thru Plateaus
When you find yourself at a plateau (can’t go up in weight, can’t do more reps with that weight, etc.), the most common solution is some combination of doing a longer set, with more accurate intention (squeezing right muscles the whole time), getting closer to failure with each set, and doing more volume (more sets for the same tissue per week). If you hit a plateau, try these things, but definitely ask me too for specifics!
I would say the most common of those solutions is spending more time under tension. Make sure you are adding reps/time as you get stronger. Most of the time, we need to be working for at least 30 seconds with a challenging load before the internal processes required begin to take place (arterial and venous occlusions, oxygen desaturation, and so on), but we don’t get the maximal level of these things until we have been under a challenging load for 45-60 seconds. If the load you have is too challenging to spend more time under tension, drop it slightly lower so you can operate in that set for a longer time.
You are not dropping it to get to 60 seconds without challenge though! Operative word here is challenging. If the load is not challenging, and you operate with that load for 45-60 seconds, it won’t do much. Somewhere around half of the time spent working needs to be pretty tough, once the foundation is laid with it being tough for last couple reps. We don’t want to immediately start using loads that are challenging for the entire set - we need to work up to that safely and responsibly.
Ultimately, the best way to break through a plateau of progress is to ask me what to do; however, if I am not around, you don’t have a check in with me, and cannot make it to
Progression: Can vs Can’t
This is a screenshot from one of my training manuals that helps impart an understanding of progression. Specifically, refer to the “Can vs Can’t” section on the bottom left. You need to bump up against the edge of the line between what you can and can’t do (challenging yourself to the edge of your capacity, but not beyond that) in order to move the line. If you exceed the line, you will likely regress or need to abort that exercise for awhile to recover. It is a repeated nudging of that line that causes the line to move, and once the line moves, it will take more challenge than before to continue nudging it forward from its new position.
