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Linear Progress?
December 3, 2009
I always advise all beginners and hardgainers to concentrate on making linear progress (either by adding more reps or more weight) at each and every workout. Add a rep or a plate and you will make pretty consistent gains for quite a while. This is one of the key components to the Muscle Gaining Secrets program.
Eventually, however, you’ll no longer be a beginner or a hardgainer and then the whole game changes. It will become more and more difficult to make linear progress on a consistent basis. This can be hard to accept at first and become quite frustrating if you let it. But you have to take a step back into reality and accept facts. If you were able to add five to ten pounds a week to your bench ad infinitum you would be pressing 1,000 pounds in a few years. Obviously this isn’t possible.
You also have to accept the fact that you will have off days. You won’t always be able to set PR’s. This doesn’t mean you haven’t made progress or haven’t gotten stronger. It could just mean you haven’t been eating or sleeping properly, you’re too stressed out or it could be hormonal. It could also be one of fifty other things. The point is it happens. On days like this just do your best for the day and know that you will come back stronger at your next workout. If you set a new five rep max squat of 365 two months ago and today you can only do that weight for five reps again, that doesn’t always mean you failed. Tomorrow or yesterday you may have gotten it for eight. Your strength levels will vary from day to day. As long as you are able to go up at most workouts and on a long term basis you are getting consistently stronger, that’s all that matters.
As you get stronger variety becomes more important to your long term success as do planned deloading periods and extreme variances in volume and intensity. This will be explained in further detail in Triple X Muscle, which I will be unleashing on all you mofo’s some time in January.
As always, thanks for reading.
Train hard.
Please leave your comments below.
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6 Responses to “Linear Progress?”
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Renegade Approved
Again, always useful. Always informative.
I have experimented with variances in volume and intensity. In the late 90’s/early 00’s I followed this 6 week cycle:
- Week1: 2 sets, rest 120 s., 8-11 reps.
- Week2 and 3: 3 sets, rest 90 s., 4-7 reps.
- Week 4: 4 sets, rest 60 s., 8-11 reps.
- Week 5 and 6: 5 sets, rest 60 s., 4-7 reps.
I lifted heavy weights, to failure, 5 days a week and didn´t take weeks off. I made enormous progress in a short amount of time, but I also ended up getting “stuck”, lifting the same weights for several weeks. Somehow my strength and my motivation started to diminish. After several cycles I was severely overtrained. The mere idea of training ended up making me sick.
What a relief to hear stuff like this coming directly from you. I think mentally this will help to think about in the future and not be so hard on myself like I usually am if I have an off day or even just one bad set. It’s great to check the blog to get some mental health benefits from you on top of the physical. Always appreciated.
Hey Jason, interresting post again, but i have a question about it.
When you say “it could be an hormonal problem” could you detail that please ?
Like a low testosterone level for example ? ( a too low level could be a problem on building muscles ? )
If you have a problem like that, what can you do about it ?
thanks again.
[...] Feruggia has another great article bringing everyone back down to earth from their discussions of supersets, cluster training and other [...]
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