Load has a glass ceiling.
Perhaps it's a more common quote, but I heard this from James Macintosh in a lecture this week for the Pre-Script Programming Course.
I'm a huge advocate of giving credit where credit is due. Mac may have gotten the line from somebody else, and if he did, he would be the first person to tell you.
Coming back to the point, I knew this was where we would start this week. I did promise to piggyback off last week's newsletter and dive further into the idea of progressive overload.
The issue lies in the name, so let's break it down:
Progressive: A gradual increase and advancement over time.
Overload: To load with too great a burden.
If we combine those definitions within the context of training, progressive overload is the gradual increase of stress placed upon the body during exercise.
Notice that I said stress there. Not load.
Here is another place I would love to give credit where credit is due. The first time I heard this idea framed through the lens of "progressive over stimulus" was from another very close friend, Jordan Shallow. I've seen the phrase adopted much more widely since then.
The goal is not to think so literally in terms of load, although load is a very important part of the process. The goal is to provide progressive stress to the system to elicit a desired adaptation.
This is where we circle back to my scalar-versus-vector reference from last week.
We need both magnitude and direction.
This is also where the logbook can go wrong and where we start to understand the idea of load having a glass ceiling: an invisible limit that prevents further progress through load alone.
The logbook is useful, but we can't progress load or volume meaningfully forever. Eventually, the sole pursuit of chasing more creates a tradeoff:
Movement quality deteriorates.
The intended direction of the stimulus changes.
Recovery demands exceed what we can manage.
More load or volume stops producing a better outcome.
Even with beginner and intermediate trainees, we need to ask how well they're executing to begin with. We also need to ask how well we've closed the gap between their perception and the reality of their proximity to failure.
RPE and RIR should describe the same reality, but often they don't.
Say a client performs 12 reps on a quad extension and reports an RPE 10. That should represent true mechanical failure, or 0 RIR.
On the final set, you have them perform an AMRAP while giving them some unfriendly motivation. They now perform 15 reps.
That leaves a three-rep gap between their perception of proximity to failure and the reality.
We'll often go through a continuous cycle of coaching technique, calibrating effort, and then recalibrating technique as we begin to see technical failure closer to mechanical failure.
Progress depends on balancing three things:
Quality of movement: Are we directing the stimulus where we want it?
Quality of effort: Are we training close enough to failure to create an adaptation?
Quantitative progression: Are load, repetitions, volume, or another measurable variable moving forward?
Quantitative progression could even come from progressing across more loadable modalities.
A dumbbell RDL may eventually become limited by grip, setup due to the bulkiness of the dumbbells, or the available dumbbell weight. Progressing that client to a barbell RDL gives them a longer runway for absolute loading.
A goblet squat may eventually become limited by how much weight the person can comfortably hold. Moving them toward a front squat or safety-bar squat gives us another opportunity to increase load without abandoning the knee-biased squat pattern altogether.
The movement pattern remains. The modality changes so we can continue increasing the stimulus.
As an aside, novelty also has a place.
When progress legitimately stalls, introducing novelty can restart the process. That doesn't mean changing exercises every week. It means recognizing when we've extracted what we can from the current setup and creating a slightly different environment that gives us somewhere productive to go.
If I were to give you the TLDR, the process is continuous:
Establish movement quality.
Calibrate effort.
Push quantitative progression through load and repetitions.
Recognize when more is beginning to cost us quality.
Recalibrate technique or understand when to adjust the exercise modality.
Rinse and repeat.
These aren't mutually exclusive processes.
Much like our energy systems, all three are working simultaneously. We're simply placing greater preference on whichever quality is most demanded by our current training environment to maximize our outcomes.
Want this applied to your own training? See Online Coaching.
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