The other day, I was chatting with muscle building guru Sean Nalewanyj. “You know,” he said, “so many people don’t understand how important progression is to weight lifting. In fact, progression is the basis for muscle gains. Without it, you’re simply spinning your tires.”
What he means is that you need to be constantly lifting more and more weight. Each workout, you should be improving over the last (even if that just means one more rep than you got last week!). Some weeks, you’ll find that you can’t progress or add weight, or maybe you’ll even do one less rep at the same weight. But the most important thing is that you’re constantly striving to improve over the long run. Progression leads to constant stimulus of the muscles - and of course, that leads to big gains!
Here’s an example from my own workout log for deadlift progression over an 8-week period:
- Week 1: 7 x 395lbs
- Week 2: 9 x 395lbs
- Week 3: 8 x 400lbs
- Week 4: 8 x 400lbs
- Week 5: 6 x 405lbs
- Week 6: 7 x 405lbs
- Week 7: 7 x 405lbs
- Week 8: 7 x 410lbs