In the last article, I presented a method for progression in which a pound of weight is added to your lifts over and over again. I know that it is common to hear about strength training programs that promise huge strength gains in a short amount of time. This is possible for a while, but you won’t experience rapid strength gains forever.
There comes a time when you will have to change the way in which you make progress if you want to keep on improving. One way to accomplish this is to make small gains by adding a pound to your lifts over and over again. Small gains accumulate into huge gains over time. The key to adding a pound to your lifts is to add it to the right amount of effort.
The Right Level of Effort is Important
Using the right level of effort for your workouts will insure that your body is responsive when a pound of weight is added. If you add weight to the right level of effort, your body will gain strength to keep the additions of weight from becoming excessively strenuous. This is one of the purposes that your body has for gaining strength. Strength gains make it easier to lift heavier weights so that additions of weight will not become harder and harder to the point where they become excessively strenuous.
Of course your body can only keep additions of weight from becoming excessively strenuous if you start with weights that are not excessively strenuous in the first place. If you add to weights that are already excessively strenuous to lift, they will simply become even more strenuous. Don’t make the mistake of making something that is almost impossibly hard to lift even harder with added weight. Start with the right amount of effort.
If it is so important to start with the right amount effort, then how do you determine this? The basic guideline for determining this is to push your training very close to the point where it becomes excessively strenuous, but stop right before you reach that point. There are three stopping points that should be used to push as far as possible without reaching the point of excessive strain. These three points will first be listed in this article, and explained in more detail in the articles to follow.
3 Stopping Points to Avoid Excessive Strain
- The limit rep and marker rep tell you when to stop repeating reps during a set
- The limit set and marker set tell you when to stop repeating sets.
- Your capacity to maintain a strong lifting motion tells you when to stop adding weight to a heavy single rep.