Progressive resistance training is a great way to gain lean muscle. When you lift weights, your muscles are being challenged to grow stronger and bigger if you apply progressive resistance techniques.
You do this by increasing the force and/or increasing the amount of sets and reps you do over the course of your training cycle.
Over the course of say 12 weeks you add a little bit of weight on each week to each exercise. In bodybuilding rep ranges are between 10-15 usually. On week one of the barbell curl you would choose a weight that you can do 10 reps with. The next week you do 12.
Then You hit 14-15 on the next workout. Once you go to the next workout you increae the weight. You will probably drop down to 10 reps again and repeat the process.
Over the weeks and months using progessive resistance training your muscles will be overloaded with a high amount of resistance, meaning that your body will need to signal to the brain we need to get stronger as this is placing too much tax on your reserves.
The reistance can be extra reps, extra weight and extra sets. Time under tension which is another pillar of bodybuilding. You can increase this by slowing down the eccentric portion of the weight (the lowering of the bar during a barbell curl). Fighting against gravity produces a very taxing effort on the body.
What’s The Goal Of Progressive Resistance Training?
The goal of progressive resistance training is to overload the muscle fibers in a continuous manner. Once your muscle fibers are overload small tears appear in them. The body has to repair this and it is actually quite good at it.
Once you continually do this the brain understands there is more continual force being placed on the body so it has to increase your muscle size to deal with the new added stress.
A great benefit of progressive resistance training is that it it produces satisfying results. If you get it right and don’t overtrain, and have adequate nutrition, your imorovements usiually go in a linear fashion.
As you increase the amount you can lift progressively you will get stronger. If hypertrophy is your goal and you get the rep range right your muscles will increase in size.
Now this does get harder and result slow down as your training cycle goes by, but you can adjust your training program o compensate for this and avoid burnout.
Once your bodybuilding progress stagnates with your routine this is called a plateau. Once you reach yours you need to switch up your routine. It doesn’t have to be that dramatic, and one of the best ways to deal with this is by cutting the weight, dropping the sets and reps and building back up again.
Bodybuilding works well when you refocus and build up to speed again in a linear fashion. Training full bore all the time is bad for your joints and will cause you to stall quicker than you think.
It also taxes your motivation and once that goes its hard to make progress in the gym.
Metabolism Boost
Another thing that happens during progressive resistance training is that it improves the way your body processes nutrition. Because your muscles are working so hard, your body is also working out to help fuel it. Your body is able to absorb nutrients more efficiently and you will be able to lose fat and gain muscle much faster.
Your metabolism speed increases as you regularly work out. One of the benefits of this is it aids in fat burning. Keeping muscles takes a whole lot of energy and one of the most efficient ways your body fuels your muscles is by using fat cells for energy.
The next benefit to your body is that it becomes much more resistant to illness and injury. As you become stronger your bone density thickens. This is key to preventing bone degeneration as you age.
You can also take this type of training further by starting muscle building with powerlifting. Power lifting uses a lot of heavy weight and low reps. Although it is much different than progressive resistance training, it does have a lot of complimentary advantages.
For example, it can help you dramatically improve your strength, which when applied with bodybuilding can take your size to a new dimension.
Power lifting can be provide much needed relief from long bodybuilding workouts. You can even incorporate powerlifting and bodybuilding into the same routine. also allows you to gain more weight than you would if you were doing traditional bodybuilding.
It will give you more exercise to do and you can lift much heavier weights for longer periods of time
With power lifting, you will start to gain strength and endurance, both of which are vital to muscle building.
In addition to power lifting, you can also perform strength training to increase the level of your muscles. Strength training can also be done using free weights or machines.
Free weights are a great option because they allow you to work out just about any muscle group. This means that you can build muscle on any part of your body.
The main advantage of strength training is that it provides you with a very effective way to get bigger muscles. They can be used for a variety of workouts.
You can work out each muscle group with a different weight and then you can progress to heavier weights as you progress. In addition, you can switch up your weight as the weeks go along.
The only disadvantage to progressive resistance training is that you cannot work out as fast. You will also have to use a heavier weight for your exercises and this can be a little bit frustrating. You will have to train consistently in order to achieve great results.
There are many other benefits to bodybuilding and strength training. You will be surprised how much more resilient and confident you feel when you achieve new goals with your training routine.
That can be increased poundages, new personal best lifts and increased weight and musculature. Occasionally you will hit of these in a spectacular home run. Consistent training is the secret.