5 Methods to Make Progress in the Gym
When you are new to training process it’s quite easy to make progress, your body will give your these signs. Week by week your strength will increase, you’ll be able to add more weight to the bar, and your body will look and feel better. But sooner or later you’ll hit a plateau, so your body needs to be challenged. And you’ll need to reconsider your training routine so you can make progress and achieve your fitness goals. The best way to always make progress in the gym is through progressive overload. In other words, to make consistent gains in the gym you need to force your body to work a little harder today than it did yesterday. You can’t keep doing the same old routine with the same old weights for the same old reps and expect to make new gains.
Let’s consider the 5 most effective ways to include progressive overload into your workouts and ensure you compatibly make progress in your fitness journey.
1. Add Weight
Adding weight to the exercises in your current fitness routine is the first way to make progress in the gym. Even adding a little more weight to each of your exercises will make a big difference ultimately. There are several ways to implement this approach but the most common way is to add more weight to each set and then try to hit the same number of reps. Do as many reps as you can. Your body will still be forced to grow and develop strength due to the increased weight.
2. Multiply the Number of Reps
The second way to keep making progress in the gym is to increase the number of reps you perform for each exercise, while keeping the weight the same. The easiest way to use this technique is to add one more rep to each set. If you fail to meet these reps just keep trying until you can get them all. Once you can, go ahead and increase the reps again to keep making gains in the gym.
3. Increase the Number of Sets
Increasing the number of sets for a particular exercise is the third way to overcome a plateau and stay on track at the gym. For this approach, you keep the weight and reps the same and add one set to your total. If you’re able to achieve this extra set on your first try, awesome. Add another set next week. If not, try again the following week.
4. Constrict the Rest Period Between Sets
The fourth way to incorporate progressive overload into your gym routine is to decrease the amount of time you rest between sets. Here, you keep the weight, reps, and sets the same, and just decrease the rest period between sets. By giving yourself less recovery time between sets you increase the difficulty of the exercise performance which, in turn, will help you to make more progress in your fitness journey.
5. Do Supersets
Performing supersets (2-3 exercises in a row without resting) is one more way to ensure your fitness progress. Supersets are highly effective for your workouts. They will also help you achieve increased cardiovascular endurance due to the lack of rest between exercises.
The body needs to receive the stress of progressive overload to get positive and continuous results from your workouts. Now, you know five different ways to do the progress, keep them in mind and good luck!
