🏋️Progressive overload

The body adapts to a load it has met and then stops adapting. To keep getting stronger, the demand has to rise a little over time: more weight, more repetitions, more sets, or the same work done better. Then comes the half people skip. The adaptation happens during recovery, so the plan needs easy weeks as much as hard ones.

Bram Keller calls it this when pressed, and a little more than last time otherwise. He writes it in pencil.

• Small steps. On the squat that has meant 2.5 kg, and not every week.
• One variable at a time.
• A deload before I think I need one. Leave one in the tank.

Example: 📂 Three strength blocks. Block one began on 6 January with 72.5 kg for fives. On 17 November I squatted 85 for one. Nothing dramatic happened on any single Monday in between, and one whole week in March was deliberately easy.

Often confused with: training to failure, or adding weight every session for ever. Linear progress ends. What replaces it is patience arranged in blocks.

What I concluded from the easy weeks is a different note: 💎 Rest is part of the programme and not a reward for it.