Progressive overload. What is it? Should you do it? Can it get you out of a plateau?

I'm guessing your hear because you have heard the term progressive overload thrown around in the fitness industry and you want to know what it is , and when to use it.
Let's assume for a second you have been on a fitness journey for a while and you have set in place a workout routine that works for you , but it's perhaps getting boring or you might have found what you once found near impossible to do at the start of your journey is a walk in the park now and you just don't seem to be making any progress , weather it be not building more muscle or you just can't seem to lose that last bit of fat. You don't know what to do and you have hit a plateau.

Their are many reasons you could of stopped seeing progression in your body even though your using the same techneaks you always have and those techneaks have never failed you before, one reason for this could be your body has simply adapted the routine your in , this is where we need to change things up.

This is where progressive overload comes into play. Progressive overload means in short that you are pushing yourself further in your workout routine then you have previously. This can be achieved in a number of ways. You could increase weights when at the gym or you could increase the reps using the same amount of weights you have previously. Or my personal favourite decreasing rest time between sets this can be done by stopping rest time all together or just decreasing the rest time for a few seconds , what ever you think will best suit you like most things in fitness progressive overload is trial and error.

Next time your at the gym or if you do at home workouts why not try increasing the weights you use , if you use 8kg for example why not up to 9. Or more if you think that's what you need. Perhaps you fined squating  for  3 sets of 20 reps with out a rest inbetween the easyest thing in the world why not try to encorporate a pulse on your last 10 reps. With progressive overload the choices are endless and it doesn't have to be difficult strenuous or unrealistic. Incorporating resistance bands can also be an amazing way to achieve a progressive overload their easy to use come in a variation of resistance and are easy to carry around in a gym bag.

I hope you have found this article helpful and hopefully I didn't overwhelm  any one new to the fitness world with information. Learning is part of the fun and I'm still learning every day.