Progressive overload is a concept that we must implement if we want our bodies to adapt and become bigger, stronger, and faster. We must continuously demand more out of our bodies if want them to grow into better versions of themselves. Muscles don't grow on their own; They must receive an adequate stimulus that tells our bodies we need more out of them. The thing is, is that every time the body the adapts, the bar for adaptation gets set a tiny bit higher. This is where overload strategies come in.

Double linear progression (DLP) is simple, flexible, and easy to implement. It allows for a great degree of freedom and autonomy, and also caters to auto-regulation. Its also very effective at making our bodies get bigger and stronger. It means that we progress reps and weight, one after the other. First, we take a challenging weight and we increase the amount of reps we can do with it (linear rep progression). Once we're able to do more reps with it (i.e. its no longer as challenging), we increase it too (linear weight progression). We repeat this pattern over and over again until we're big and strong.

In my programming you will see me assign a general rep range for a given exercise. Something like 5-10 or 6-12 in most cases. Your goal will be to incrementally rise to the top end of these ranges over time with your chosen weight across all your sets.

You're going to choose a weight that challenges you and forces you into the lower end of the prescribed rep range. Over time, as you progress, you will be able to use this weight in the higher end of the rep range. At which point, you will increase your weight selection by the smallest increment possible in order to force yourself back to the lower end of the prescribed rep range.

An important concept to understand and to become better at gauging for yourself is the idea of "reps in reserve". This is the number of reps you believe could perform with good form after your final rep of a set. This is a skill, and trainees will become better and more accurate at gauging RIR over time. The majority of the time I want you to be pursuing somewhere in the 0-2 RIR range. This is meant to give flexibility so that you can auto-regulate based on how you're feeling (i.e. your recovery status, energy levels, etc.) as well as what point in the program you are in and how you're progressing.

In general you should start a program off around with a higher RIR (like 2) as you learn what weights you are going to use for the program. As the program progresses you can work into 1 RIR, and leading up to a deload week, you can start pushing into 0 RIR. I write these in the programs as guidelines, but learning how to auto-regulate is also key.

Additionally, by following this methodology, your 1st set on an exercise should be your best set that day assuming your weight selection was appropriate and you accurately gauged RIR... This means you should not be able to perform as many reps on subsequent sets, and in fact, this should be your goal... If you are able to perform equally well on subsequent sets, it means your 1st set was too easy; either not enough weight or you didn't gauge RIR appropriately.

Its important to understand this concept and methodology, as it ties in to how we use double linear progression very closely.

So what does this look like in practice? Lets see an example of someone properly following this whole methodology: