#147: 3 Kinds of Progressive Overload and Practical Tips to Use Them

If you're a woman in midlife and you are looking to get your body back to start feeling strong, looking toned, and recognizing the woman in the mirror again, then you need to be doing progressive strength training.

Progressive strength training is a very systematic way of lifting weights where you apply progressive overload - one of the keys to building strength and muscle effectively. 

In this episode, I describe the 3 different ways that you can apply progressive overload and provide tips on how that looks in real life.

BTW - If you missed last week’s episode, listen to part 1 first, where I explain why this kind of systematic approach is the most effective way to get results from the time you're spending working out with weights.

Enjoy the show!

Resources mentioned: 

• How to choose your starting weight: 

• Fractional plates for small, manageable weight increases: 

• FlipStik phone mount for easy form videos in the gym or at home:

Transcript

#147: 3 Kinds of Progressive Overload and Practical Tips to Use Them

[00:00:00] If you're a woman in midlife and you are looking to get your body back to start feeling strong looking toned, and recognizing the woman in the mirror again, then you need to be doing progressive strength training.

So that is really systematic strength training rather than just random workouts with weights. And in this episode, I'm gonna talk about three different ways that you can apply progressive overload to make sure that you're progressing in your strength training. And if you missed last week's episode, I would go back and listen to that because there I really lay the groundwork and explain why this kind of systematic approach is really the way to go to get results.

So we're talking about people who actually wanna see change happen in their bodies, to feel different in their bodies, see changes in the [00:01:00] mirror. Okay. And if we haven't met before, my name is Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto and this is 40+ Fitness for Women Podcast.

Now, just a quick reminder that progressive overload is the way that we. Trick our bodies into creating more muscle or holding onto the muscle that we have already, and it involves pushing our bodies a little bit out of their comfort zone to trigger that kind of muscle growth. And this can happen in three different ways, and we're gonna talk about those today.

And I am gonna start with the one that I think that most of us probably need to start with, which is getting to a full range of motion. So when you first start strength training, you may actually be very, very weak. Even if you have been working out, [00:02:00] even if you have been going to body pump classes and those kinds of other classes with weights, because that's not actually strength training - it is muscle endurance training, which is a totally different thing. So. What I find is that women who join my program, they are surprisingly weak. Even to themselves. They're surprisingly weak. So often when you get started, you need to modify your exercises a little bit. For example, if you're doing. a box squat, which is a variant of a squat, which is easier for people to start out with.

If you're doing a box squat, you might do a box squat against a higher box and just use your body weight. You know, just do a squat down to the higher box than up and then down and up, and then your progression would be to lower how high the box is, right? Another example is [00:03:00] split squats. So this is an excellent, excellent exercise, but surprisingly hard. So there are ways of making it easier for yourself. One is that you don't go down quite as far in the beginning because you can't get back up from there. Another is that you might go down a little bit further, but maybe you need a table or something to help push yourself back up.

So these are modifications that you have done for the exercise and the first progression that you would then do would be to slowly get to a full range of motion, okay? And that's before you add any weights to this thing. And then the other situation where you may have, uh, a need to work slowly up to the full range of motion is if you have injuries.

Or cranky parts of your body, [00:04:00] which let's face it, we're not 20 anymore. So for me, for example, a couple years ago I had my right knee blow up because I have arthritis in it. And it just really was like I am not tolerating weight on it at all. And once we got that situation under control with the help of a doctor, I mean, I did not figure this out on my own.

I had a doctor helping me and then he was like, okay, now the, inflammation is under control so you can get back in the weight room and get your legs strong to support that joint. And he gave me the instruction that do what you can, that isn't painful. So, for example, I started on the leg press machine and I was doing the tiniest range of motion.

Probably if somebody was watching me and feeling like being critical, they would've been like, that woman has no freaking clue what she's doing. I was just starting with this really, really small range of motion and that was what my knee would tolerate and [00:05:00] I slowly got a little bit more range of motion and a little bit more, and a little bit more, and now I'm to a full range of motion with that.

But then there are those of us who may have the kind of arthritis that has stopped our joints from moving a particular way, or you have, some kind of old injury. And it may be that you will never be at a, at the same kind of. Full, full, full range of motion that you were when you were 20, and that's okay as well.

So I don't want to say that, hey, if you see a 20-year-old who can squat all the way down, you know their butt to the floor that you need to do that. We need to always adapt our exercises to our body. But the first progression that you do is that if you are doing an easier variant of that exercise, that you progress your range of motion, so you're doing your full range of motion.

Okay. 

And one thing I will add to [00:06:00] that full range of motion discussion is that let's say you're doing the box squats and you're starting with a higher box. And let's say you're working in an eight to 12 rep range and you're using your body weight. Maybe in the beginning you can't do a whole 12 reps, right?

So you do want to progress with your reps, and then instead of adding weight, you are going to actually just lower the box okay a little bit, and then start to progress to getting all those reps with the lower box and then. Lower the box some more, and if you're in my membership or my programming and you have a question about this, then please by all means ask. We have the chat in the app so you can approach me with all your questions. All right.

The second way to progress is to increase your reps. Now when you're first starting out strength training and you're starting with [00:07:00] a new exercise or you're returning to one that you haven't done in a while, you're going to need to pick your starting weight. And I have a video for that and I'll link to it in the show notes, but it, let's assume you have found your starting weight and generally I recommend that you choose a weight that you can.

Do reps in the middle of your rep range. Let's use an eight to 12 rep rep range in this example so you have a weight that you're able to do 10 reps with. Well, the best way to progress now is to try to do 11 reps. The next time you do that exercise. And then when you're able to do 11 reps, try to do 12 reps.

Okay. So you are gonna progress by challenging your muscle to do more reps when you are at the point that all of the [00:08:00] sets. That you have done for that exercise. And if you're working with me, you'll either have three or two sets of each exercise in your program. So when you're able to do. Your full reps in all your sets at least a couple times, and it could be that you wanna do it a little bit more.

If you feel like your form is starting to break down, um, then you are ready for progression number three, which is going to be increasing your weights. But before we get to that, let me just mention that before you increase your weights, please, please take form videos because even if you're watching yourself in the mirror, you are only seeing one perspective.

All right? I see so many people standing in front of the mirror doing bicep curls, and it probably looks great from the front. I see them from the side and I [00:09:00] see that they are doing all kinds of weird things with their arms to get those too heavy for them weights up because they are, so interested in progressing that.

They're willing to sacrifice their form to get those weights up. So let's really, I wanna emphasize form is really, really important. In some exercises, it honestly is going to stop you from hurting yourself. And at the very least, I mean, doesn't make any sense to just be doing something crazy just so you can say that I bicep curl with a little bit heavier weight.

No. Okay, so do the form checks and they're easy enough to, do I mean, all of us have smartphones, right? So you just take your smartphone and you. Lean it against your water bottle. You get a perspective from the side, and you can take the video of [00:10:00] yourself. Okay? You can even put it on a bench next to you.

You know, try to do it in a part of the gym where you're not videoing other people. So you don't need to be bringing any tripods in or doing anything embarrassing like that. And actually I use something called a flip stick, which is like a sticker that you put on the back of your phone. I can actually show you what that looks like, and that allows me to stick my phone on any kind of gym equipment.

So it's like a sticker on the back. A link to this in the show notes as well. You flip the. The whatever, the pad down, then their sticky surface is revealed and you just stick it to whatever, piece of gym equipment or the wall or the mirror or whatever, and then to get it off, you just kind of do a little bit of a twist thing and then flip the cover back on.

And there you go. So, but those form checks are really, really important. Okay guys, I want you to be lifting safely and [00:11:00] correctly. So you should, I hope, always have a reference video. If you are one of my members or clients, then you have them in the app. I have demo videos and I have made those very specifically.

I'm like a form Nazi, so, so I really want you to be doing these things, right? So you video yourself, you look at the form video that you've been given. You check. Do I look like the demo video? If you don't figure out what to correct. If you can't tell, if you're not sure, then please, if you're in my programs, then send me your form video and I am happy to check. You can send them to me through the app so it's easy peasy. Okay.

Now, how much should you be increasing? It can be a tiny, tiny increase. The point is just to keep progressing, to keep like pushing the envelope a little bit as you get stronger. In [00:12:00] fact, what I have been taught in the PT courses is that, it's just a few percentage points that you need to increase the weight.

Now, in practice that may not be so easy to achieve because you have certain weight weights, right? Like. You have certain size dumbbells at your gym and, and if you're, working on machines, the pins are certain sizes and the plates are certain sizes. And at home you may have limited equipment, so it doesn't always work so perfectly.

So a few tips for that.

If the jump is too big for you to manage, then you can do things like adding fractional plates. Now these are things that you need to buy and bring to the weight room yourself, but they're like these little clips that you put around the dumbbells and they make them a little bit heavier, and I'll link to fractional plates in my show notes.

The other thing you can do [00:13:00] is put, wrist weights on your wrists, which then make it a little bit heavier. I mean, you know, it's not the same as having a little bit heavier dumbbells. Your grip strength isn't being challenged the same way, but still it's better than trying to go way too heavy or not being able to progress because the next weight is just way too heavy for you on machines. You can hang small plates on the pin or even put them on the weight stack. So let's say your machine only goes up by five kilos or five pounds at a time, then maybe you can put a one pound weight on there. This is something I use a ton for, let's say, shoulder work because shoulders are pretty small muscles, so if you're doing like a lateral raise with a cable machine, one pound is a ton to add to it.

 Now with this whole progressive overload thing, [00:14:00] I want you to keep a few things in mind, especially if you're a woman in midlife. Our bodies have changed, and as estrogen walks out the door, it means that things like our bones, our tendons and our ligaments are weaker than they were when we were in our twenties and thirties.

And our joints may have some arthritis in them and all the things. So slow progression is still progression. Don't feel like, you know, the, the job is to get from zero to a hundred in just a few weeks. The point is just to be systematic and that as you get stronger, you continue to challenge yourself. It doesn't need to be, you know, the. Heaviest thing that you could possibly move, right? I think some people get a little bit too fixated on. I'm not doing it well, if I'm not lifting five pounds more this week than last week, and next week I'm lifting [00:15:00] another five pounds more and next week and next week. It is a slow progression, and that's fine because your whole body needs to catch up and your muscles are actually the ones that are probably gonna get the strongest, the fastest.

Your grip strength is not gonna keep up, and your tendons and ligaments may not keep up either. So what I really have noticed through training hundreds of women in getting started strength training is that slow and steady really wins the race there, and that really keeps them from getting injured and, and these kinds of, it's not even injured. It's like stops you from getting a little bit of tendonitis here, or your wrist starts hurting here. Form checks slow and steady. That is really a recipe for success in midlife.

And then I wanna mention that as you go through your strength training journey, you know the rate at which you're able to [00:16:00] increase weights is going to change in the beginning, even in the first like two, three years. It may be fairly quick, and then you kind of start to reach. Closer to your genetic ceiling. I mean, we cannot get stronger like indefinitely. Otherwise we would be lifting houses after 10 years, right? And that's just not gonna happen. So how do we make sure that we're still stimulating our muscles even when we can't see so much progress? And that is what I'm gonna talk about next week. On the next episode, so be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss that one.

And in the meanwhile, I wanna wish you all happy training.