Transcription
Hi everyone, Peter here from Flow High Performance. In this presentation, we're going to be covering the principle of progressive overload and how this is the stimulus for adaptation to training.
So first, we need to establish what progressive overload is. And essentially, simply put, progressive overload is making training harder over time. So we need to make training harder over time in order to adapt to the stimulus.
The basis of progressive overload stems from the classic story of Milo from Croton. So essentially, the story goes that Milo started off by carrying a baby calf every day while he was younger. So he continued to carry this calf every single day, and as the calf grew and got bigger, he continued to carry it, and he therefore got stronger. The bigger and bigger the calf got, the stronger and stronger he got because he had to adapt to that stimulus. So in this case, the growing cow was the stimulus, and the adaptation was him getting stronger and being able to continue to carry this cow.
In modern strength and conditioning, we essentially do the same thing, but we have standardized measures. So, for example, when we do strength training, our stimulus is a bar with weights on the end, and we quantify how much this weight is, and we increase that weight over time in order to get stronger.
The reason we need to apply progressive overload is because an overloading exercise disrupts homeostasis, and then the disruption to homeostasis causes a specific adaptation. However, if we do an exercise that doesn't present any overload, we then have no disruption to homeostasis and therefore we don't get any adaptation. So simply put, if you do the same training over time, you will remain the same; you won't adapt, and you won't change.
So essentially, we can apply progressive overload in two main categories: those are going to be progressions in volume and progressions in intensity. So we can progress volume by manipulating certain variables like increasing our frequency, increasing the reps we do, increasing the amount of sets we do, or increasing distances we do. We can also alter our intensity by changing the weight we use, the speed we do something, the average speed of a given exercise, or reducing rest periods. So all these variables can be manipulated in order to alter the volume and intensity and ultimately apply progressive overload over time.
So the first method of progressive overload we have is accumulation, or increasing our volume. And this is going to look something like this graph here, where over time we increase our volume while our intensity remains the same or potentially slightly increases. And this sort of progressive overload is going to be best for structural adaptations, for example, increasing the size of the muscle or getting some connective tissue adaptations. It's going to be good for increasing our work capacity, allowing us to recover better from training, and also, similarly to increasing work capacity, progressive overload by increasing volume is going to build tolerance to subsequent periods of high-intensity training. So essentially, by doing enough accumulation work, when we go through high-intensity training periods or games, we will have the tolerance to actually recover from that stress appropriately without getting injured.
The second method is our intensification, or increasing intensity, and that's going to essentially look the opposite to what we had for the accumulation method of progressive overload. So in this one, the intensity is increasing while our volume remains essentially the same or could potentially increase a little bit as well. And this sort of method of progressive overload is going to be best for any sort of neural adaptations. So if we're in a strength, power, or speed sport, we want those neural adaptations so that we can recruit and utilize our muscle fibers appropriately. Any sort of specific adaptations that are specific to the sport are going to be best during this time, and ultimately, because of that, we are probably going to increase our sport performance more by doing this sort of progression rather than an accumulation progression.
Applying progressive overload at a microcycle level, so going from microcycle to microcycle or week to week, may look something like this: We will present some sort of training and have some sort of overload each week, followed by a de-load period. So in this case, we're starting at week one, progressing over week two, three, and four, and then the fifth week here is actually an easier week of training than the first week we did. And the reason for the de-load is to drop all that fatigue that we accumulated by applying progressive overload. The exact method of progressive overload can be a million different ways; it could be some sort of accumulation progression, some sort of intensification progression, but the point is that it gets harder throughout the weeks, or at least more specific.
So on paper here are some examples. So for some sort of sprint exercise, we might have three sets of seventy meters, four sets of seventy meters, five sets of seventy meters, and six sets of seventy meters, followed by the de-load: two sets of seventy meters. So this would be an accumulation progression for a sprint exercise. We could make this an intensification type progression with the following example: three sets of sixty meters, three sets of sixty-five meters, three sets of seventy meters, and three sets of seventy-five meters, followed by two sets of sixty meters in the de-load. So as we can see here, the difference is that in this case we are maintaining our intensity of how far we're sprinting, but we're increasing the sets to increase the volume, whereas in this case we are maintaining the sets to maintain the volume, apart from week five in the de-load, but we're increasing the distance slightly each time in order to present a specific intensity overload.
For a power exercise, for example, like a squat jump, again we have our accumulation progression, which might be three sets of three at thirty percent of one RM, four sets of three, five sets of three, six sets of three, with a de-load all at the same intensity. Whereas an intensification block, we may maintain the three sets of three volume but will increase the intensity by decreasing the load on the bar, which in the case of a squat jump is going to increase the velocity of the movement. So this could be increasing intensity or decreasing intensity depending on how you look at it; if we increase a load, we'll decrease the velocity, but if we decrease the load, we will increase the velocity. So depending on what's more specific to your sport, this could go either way.
For a strength exercise like a back squat, same idea: three sets of six, four sets of six, five sets of six, six sets of six, maintaining the same load. For an intensification block, we may have three sets of six the entire way and slightly increase the load each week.
And finally, for some sort of endurance exercise, for example, we have interval runs, we may do six sets of one hundred meters at eighty percent of our best, seven sets, eight sets, nine sets, maintaining the distance and the intensity. Whereas in this case, we may maintain the number of sets we're doing and a distance while we're going to slightly increase the speed at which we do that each time, so it's going to increase the intensity while maintaining the volume. And as always, in the de-load period, we have an easier week than previously.
Once we've gone through a mesocycle of progressive overload and done a de-load period, how do we then continue to apply progressive overload over time? So for a mesocycle to mesocycle, it may look something like this: In the blue, we have our first mesocycle where we have four overloading weeks and one de-loading week. And what we then might do in the next mesocycle is have the same structure; at this time, it's going to be a little bit harder than the last block. So as you can see, we reach a peak that's slightly higher than last time, and then we do the same thing again: we de-load, and then we increase, increase, increase, and de-load, and each time each week is a little bit harder than the week in the previous mesocycle. So it almost looks like a waving pattern, although over time it's actually getting harder.
So on paper, it may look something like this: I've taken the simple example of a back squat, and this would be an accumulation type progression. So we may do three sets of six, four sets of six, five sets of six, six sets of six, followed by a de-load all at the same weight. In the next mesocycle, we may do exactly the same progression: three sets of six, four sets of six, five sets of six, and six sets of six; however, we've bumped the weight up by a little bit. Then we de-load, and in the subsequent mesocycle, where again starting back at three sets of six, at this time we have a little bit more weight, and again we progress the volume over the mesocycle, and eventually we've gone from doing three sets of six at one hundred kilos to six sets of six at one hundred and five kilos.
An example of how we may do this for an intensification progression is we may do three sets of six the whole way, as simply just increase the load over the mesocycle, de-load, and then in the next mesocycle we'll do these same reps and sets, but this time we're going to up the weight by a little bit again, and once again we reach a slightly higher peak than last time, and in the third mesocycle we could do exactly the same thing and then eventually reach a slightly higher peak again. So in this case, we've gone from three sets of six at one hundred kilos to three sets of six at one hundred and twelve point five kilos. And these same principles can be applied to any exercise and any training method.
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