Linear Progress?

Posted by Jason Ferruggia

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.

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