Understanding Progressive Overload

Progressive Overload is all about stressing the muscles. You stress the muscle, rest, increase the stress level by increasing the weight and increase the repetition of the exercise. This is called progressive overload and is the philosophy behind weight training and muscle building. As you slowly increase the amount of weight you are lifting, you force the body to respond by making the muscles bigger and stronger.

In this way, you are triggering your body’s defense system or survival instincts. The increased stress of the added weights is perceived as a threat. In response the body must increase the muscle mass in order to survive and be better prepared for next time.

Your body won’t want to grow these muscles and it won’t do it on its own. A body has to be forced into this mode. To help this process, you have to increase your diet. Extra muscle will require extra nutrients and food energy. Your body only operates as good as its energy supply. The muscle you currently have was the right amount as far as your body was concerned up until now.

Now you have to make it believe that it needs to grow more muscle. To make this believable you have to:

• Increase your stresses by doing progressive overload weight training

• You must feed your body what it needs in order to build and sustain this new muscle growth

• You need to give your body time to grow these muscles by providing it with lots of rest.

The one main thing to remember is that your body is smart and if you don’t consistently send the same message, it won’t believe you.

However, if you put all three items together into a program and stick with it for weeks on end, then the muscle gains are yours.

*Article courtesy of Build-Muscle-Gain-Weight.com. Learn how to gain weight fast