#148: How Quickly Should You Increase Your Weights?

If you want to get stronger, look toned again, improve your metabolic health, and age well, you need to be building muscle. And to build muscle, you have to keep challenging your body as it gets stronger. And one way to increase the challenge is to increase weights. 

But how fast should you be increasing your weights?

In this episode, I break down: 

• Why form always comes first

• When you’re actually ready to go up in weight (hint: it’s not every session) 

• Practical tips: fractional plates, slow eccentrics, and adding plates to weight stacks

P.S. In the last two episodes, I explained what progressive strength training is and the three ways you can apply progressive overload so check those out for more insights into getting the most out of the time you spend training.

Resources mentioned: 

• Fractional plates

• FlipStik phone mount for form videos

• Episode #146: What Progressive Strength Training Is and Why It's So Effective After 40 

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

Transcript

#148: How Quickly Should You Increase Your Weights?

[00:00:00] If you wanna get stronger, start looking toned again, improve your metabolic health and age strong, then you need to be building muscle. And one of the key things to building muscle is progressive overload.

Progressive overload just means continuing to challenge your muscles as you get stronger. And in the previous two episodes I've talked about what is progressive overload and three ways to apply progressive overload. So if you haven't watched those yet, you might wanna check them out before watching this video.

And today we're talking about something really important, which is how quickly should you be increasing your weight? 

So I. Two sides of this. I see the people who get really into the idea of progressive overload, they start increasing their weights too fast, their form breaks down, and they start getting little injuries in their lifting. And then on the other hand, the people who are [00:01:00] a bit too cautious and they're really leaving gains on the table. So how fast should you actually be increasing your weights? Today we're gonna talk about that, let's get into it.

So your first priority as you go on your strength training journey is going to be to be able to stay on that strength training journey. In other words, to stay injury free. And the way you're going to do that best is by paying attention to exercise selection and more importantly even. To your form.

So in this entire strength training journey, I really want you to focus on form. When you're thinking about progressing, you need to take care of your form as you go. Form videos are an amazing tool to do that. 'cause even if you're looking at yourself in the mirror, you're only seeing one. Part of you.

Plus you should be paying attention to doing your exercise. And a lot of the time you don't have a mirror to [00:02:00] look at. So start taking form videos. Use them in the beginning when you start a new exercise or come back to one you haven't done in a while. And then also when you're thinking about increasing weights, to make sure that your form hasn't inadvertently broken down.

Some things that I see a lot when I look at my client's form videos is that their first few reps may look great, and then by the time they're getting to the last reps, their form is really breaking down. They start to do weird things. And that just tells me that they are not strong enough yet to increase their weights on that particular exercise.

They need to spend more time at the weight that they're at and just improving that form, cleaning that up. And by the way, if you're one of my clients, you can send me form videos anytime through the app. It's super easy. Just take a video of yourself, load it into our chats in the app, and I'll take a look and let you know how it looks from my [00:03:00] eyes.

And I'll also mention that the rep range that I like to work in, especially with beginner lifters, and when I say beginner, it's like the first two years of your lifting, maybe even three depending on how many times a week you're lifting and how consistently, because when you're lifting 12 times, when that's your goal, your weights are gonna be such that they're not super heavy from rep number one. That gives you a little bit of a chance to make sure your form is on point in reps one through three, and then you start getting into it feeling harder and harder and harder. Now, if you're working in smaller rep ranges, which you can definitely do, there's no reason, there's nothing like magical. About eight to 12, you can do shorter rep ranges, but. If you're, for example, doing five reps, if that's like your aim is five reps, then when you pick up your weight, it is already heavy. Rep [00:04:00] number one is already going to be challenging, and therefore you really need to be paying attention to your form at that point. But I'm digressing. Let's get back on the topic.

So how fast should you be increasing your weights? So when you first start an exercise or when you're first starting strength training, you are in a little bit of a ramp up phase. So at that point you wanna pick a weight that feels a little bit challenging in the middle of your rep range. I'm gonna use the example of 8-12 reps so you can do the 10 reps, but it's a little bit of a struggle bus, to do rep number 10 at that point, you may notice that you are increasing reps, increasing weights a little bit faster, and a lot of that is actually neurological learning. Your body's just getting more efficient at doing that exercise, right? It's f iguring out how to recruit your muscle fibers more [00:05:00] efficiently

so that's a little bit of a ramp up period, and that can take, one, two weeks depending on how complicated the exercise is for you to do.

After that is when you start actually getting stronger muscles, right? You start stimulating your actual muscles, and that's why it's really important for you to be repeating these same exercises over and over again for several weeks on end. Because the beginning is actually this ramp up time when you're learning it. Then you can start to progressively overload.

Now if I have to give a general rule of thumb, because I don't know how much of a form stickler you are, whether you're actually gonna use form videos, how coordinated you are, how well you watch the demo video for all the points on where your elbows need to be, or your knees need to be and all that kind of stuff.

What I would say to you is. Try to do another rep or additional reps [00:06:00] each time you train that exercise until you hit the top of your rep range. Now, when you've. Hit the top of your rep range and you're able to do the top of your rep range with all of the sets that you're doing of that exercise.

And I hope you have two or three sets. If your programming has like six sets of the same exercise, then please, please rethink whether you might wanna invest in a little bit more efficient programming. But anyway, when you get to the top of your rep range and you're able to do that with all of your sets, then I would do that for a couple of training sessions in a row at least, maybe even three.

Because you do have those days where you are feeling like a super woman, right? Where you can lift houses, leap over tall buildings, so, so you don't want it to be one of those fluke days where everything was on point. Your sleep, your nutrition, you know, your hormones and [00:07:00] everything was like perfect. So it is good to hit the top of your rep range in all of your sets. At least a couple times. And if it still feels really like a huge struggle to get that last rep maybe even a little bit longer. And then I really would recommend that you do really pay attention to your form when you're doing it that last time. 'cause here are some things that I do see people do when they're really trying to get that last rep because they want to go up and wait.

They do things that end up like hurting themselves, and one of the very, very common ones is that they start kind of twisting their wrist, right? Instead of letting your wrist be straight, like if you're doing a pull motion. You'll start turning your wrists. So it's actually your wrists that are getting that last little bit of the motion to get that exercise done. And that can lead to all kinds of wrist problems, elbow problems. [00:08:00] So, you know, just make sure your form is clean,

because let's not lose sight of the big. Thing that we're trying to do here. The reason we are applying progressive overload is not so that we can be lifting cars. But the reason that we wanna apply progressive overload is that as we get stronger. As our muscles get bigger and stronger, we want to keep challenging them, and if we just lift the same weights over and over again for weeks and months on end, then we are not challenging them. Our muscles have developed to the point where, you know, okay, I can do, 10 bicep curls with five pound weights. Then our muscles are like, okay, well this is just everyday stuff for me. I can do this. No problem, no problem. And that's why you want to progressively overload so that it says like, oh, okay, wait a second. I do need to get a little bit stronger. I should throw a little bit more muscle fibers [00:09:00] into my arm. Right? So that's why you're doing this. Remember the reason we're doing this, and that will help you to understand that, okay, am I actually pushing my muscles out of their comfort zone or am I just really trying to follow this pattern of, I've gotta increase reps and then I've gotta increase weights, and then I've gotta increase reps, and then I've gotta increase weights. Remember what we're doing this for, and not just blindly following the process.

And now one big challenge that people run into when they're trying to increase their weights is that you wanna increase it just a little bit, right? You don't need to increase it much at all to be giving your muscles a little bit more of a challenge. But unfortunately, dumbbells are made in certain increments. The machines have certain increments of weights, so you may find that, okay, I'm able to do [00:10:00] 15 reps with this lower weight, but oh, if I pick up the next highest weight, I can do like. Three. Right. That really happens. I actually have that going on right now because I do skull crushers. I was doing them with () 9 kg (20lbs) weights and like flying through them. Then I pick up a 10 kilo weight and it was like. Three reps. Three reps, and now I've been struggling over the past months and I've gotten up to five reps in all of my sets. Right? So it's, it's been really, really slow going because actually what I would've needed is to have a 9.5kg weight, right?

So some tips, which helps a lot with the dumbbells is to buy fractional weights. Now what these are is they're like little clips that look like a teeny tiny weight plate, but they have a hinge so you can clip it right onto your dumbbell.[00:11:00] 

These are not cheap. You need to get your own, carry them into the gym with your, you know, in your own bag. But super duper handy as far as that goes. Another way you can do it is you can use wrist weights. You know, those old Jane Fonda workout video, wrist and ankle weights. You can put 'em on your wrist.

A third tip is that if you have a weight that you just can't lift, is you can work with eccentrics. So, for example, if you just went up in weights for bicep curls and the new dumbbell, it just, you can get maybe two reps out of it, and that's it.

Then what you can do is you can help yourself. You do one arm at a time. So let's say you're working with your right arm, use your left hand to help you get yourself up into the top position, and then you slowly lower the weight and then left hand helping you get into the top position [00:12:00] and you slowly lower your weight.

And if you do that in maybe two to four training sessions, you do gain more strength with that eccentric. That's called an eccentric movement, and you may find that you are able then to start doing the concentric. In other words, the trip up, you know, when you're, flexing your muscle, uh, more easily after that. I've used that for skull crushers also. That works very nicely. When I was training at home, I had to do that quite a bit and, and I found it to be really, really useful. 

And then another thing you can do is if you've got a machine, then you can add a smaller plate, hang it on the pin, or put a little dumbbell on top of the weight stack depending on what the design of your machine is.

Because a lot of times the weight stacks go up like by fives or tens, and maybe you just need two. Especially if you're doing [00:13:00] things like let's say, a lateral raise, you're using your shoulder muscle and even a small increment on the shoulder muscle is a lot. You're not going to be able to like double the weight suddenly when you're doing lateral raises.

Okay. So. To summarize, remember that progressive overload is really just about increasing the challenge on your muscles as you get stronger, and that's the important point as you get stronger. So if you're not stronger yet, and that may take a little while, then don't increase the weight because you are already challenging your muscles.

Okay? And next time what we are gonna talk about is what to do when your progress stalls and this will happen. Well, most likely in your third or fourth or fifth year of your strength training journey. So this is what you have to [00:14:00] look forward to as you go ahead, but there's also a tip in there for if your progress stalls, even when you're in year one or two.

So remember to hit the subscribe button so that you don't miss the next episode, and I'll see you then.