Why Your Muscle Growth is Missing the Mark (And How You Can Fix It)

In order to maximize progress and experience sustained results, muscles need to be exposed to a greater stimulus over time. The increase in stimulus will trigger the body’s physiological adaptive responses to meet the new demands that have been placed upon it, with an increase in muscle size and strength. This is called progressive overload.

The principle of progressive overload is essential for achieving muscle growth long-term. It affects the mechanical loading stimulus by allowing us to expose greater amounts of tension from workout to workout, that would subsequently lead to hypertrophy.

When we look at progressive overload as a whole, it’s best achieved by gradual increases in volume, intensity, frequency or time, but it is quite broad in its application:

• Volume is the total amount of work done in workout, typically expressed in sets and reps.
  Example: Increasing the number of reps in a set over a program
  Week 1- 10 reps
  Week 2- 11 reps
  OR,
  Increasing the number of sets over a program
  Week 1- 3 sets
  Week 4- 4 sets

• Intensity is the amount of load expressed as a percentage relative to a single maximum effort.
  Example: Increasing load session to session
  Week 1- 100 kg
  Week 2- 102.5 kg
  OR,
  Decreasing the RIR over a program
  Week 1- 4 RIR
  Week 2- 3 RIR

• Frequency is how often a person trains in period of time i.e. a week.
  Example: Increasing the frequency of training
  Week 1- 3 sessions per week
  Week 4- 4 sessions per week

• Interval duration is the time in between sets of same exercise or between different exercises.
  Example: Shortening the rest time between sets or exercises
  Week 1- 75 seconds
  Week 4- 60 seconds

Let’s look at this practically

If we did a workout and completed 4 sets of 10 reps @100kg’s on bench press, and got within the necessary proximity to failure then we would have achieved a sufficient stimulus to drive hypertrophy adaptations.

However, if we do the same workout and complete the same 4 sets of 10 reps @100kg’s the following week, we will not be providing our body with a greater stimulus than the previous week. This is because once completing the initial 4 sets of 10 reps @100kg’s previously, our body has gone through the necessary adaptations to withstand, and deal with that stimulus. Repeating the bout would essentially be a lower stimulus than the week before, and even lower the week after that, and so on. A lower stimulus means little to no gains.

If we continued that same process week in, week out, you can see how people get to a point where they have hit a plateau with there gains.

In contrast, If we complete our workouts, progressing in small increments of; weight, reps, sets, or rep in reserve for example then we can continue to experience progress in muscle growth and strength.

Understanding Thresholds and Trade-Offs

Up until now it sounds pretty straight forward. Increase the stimulus every week and we will get maximum gains right?

It’s important to understand that all these overload methods have thresholds, from a minimal effective dose, to a maximal effective dose. As we want to maximize gains, we may be tempted to push for the top of the threshold by incorporating a number of these variables (sets, reps, RIR).
To say this won’t give you a maximal stimulus for growth would be wrong. What needs to be considered is fatigue, and the recovery demand on the individual. Driving too much overload and too soon, can potentially hinder long term progress of the athlete through burn out, injury etc.

A well-constructed, thought out, resistance training program will take into account the overload method/s chosen, fatigue and recovery demand of the athlete.

Best Practice Of Overload For Hypertrophy

When we look at the major driver of muscle growth in tension, it makes more sense from a variables perspective to work with volume and intensity primarily. Technically, frequency could be mentioned in this equation, however in most cases that will be directly related to volume, through total set allocation per muscle group, per week.

Using intensity as a model of overload is very simple. Lift a weight through a predetermined range of motion and rep range. Once the subjective difficulty of that set lowers, increase load incrementally and repeat. In terms of what percentage 1RM intensities are optimal for muscle growth, the data shows between 30–85% of 1RM will have a similar growth response, providing the RIR or “reps in reserve” are relative.

RIR is also a very effective progressive overload method. RIR refers to how many reps away from muscle failure we stop in a set. Data shows that between 0–4 RIR achieves far superior gains to 5 reps+, this is because the degree of muscle stimulation is too low when we don’t perform close to failure.
A great way to progressively overload RIR is to start week 1 of your mesocycle at 4 RIR, and work the RIR down over the coming weeks of the program.

The last method we are going to explore is overloading volume. Volume is the amount of total work you do, typically represented in total working sets per week and per muscle group.
As I have discussed in previous articles, the sweet spot of weekly training volume for muscle growth is between 10–20 sets per muscle group, per week. Using this as a framework, we could start on the lower end of the volume spectrum to create enough stimulus for some growth (a minimum effective dose or MEV), example. 10–12 sets per week on quads. We could then accumulate the volume stimulus over the mesocycle, toward a maximum recoverable volume, example. 20 sets per week of quads.

Main Takeaways

The progressive overload principle must be implemented into resistance training programs to achieve long term success in muscle growth.

Using the same load and rep scheme every week will decrease the stimulus applied on the muscle which will effect your gains over the long term. However, if we apply a progressively increasing stimulus to training, we will put ourselves in the best position to achieve muscle growth.

It is important to understand that when working within the variables of overload (intensity, volume, frequency and time), they are thresholds from a minimum effective dose to a maximum effective dose. It is important to consider the overall recovery demand when working at the maximum of a single threshold or multiple thresholds.

Given that tension is the major driver of muscle growth, using a progressive method of manipulating intensity, rep in reserve and volume makes the most sense to drive long term gains.