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Nick-E’s Guide to Planning Progressive Overload for BWF
As we know, progressing in BWF is not quite as straight forward as it is with access to freeweights, especially those that can be micro-loaded (2.5, 1kg or 0.5kg at a time). With weights, you can simply add a bit more weight every time you need to progress. However, in BWF there are huge jumps in intensity/difficulty between progressions, and so the way we bridge that gap to get sufficiently stronger to challenge the next progression is by adding reps.
Note: While this is primarily designed for BWF exercises, this system below can also be used when progressing with weight if you do not have easy access to micro-loading plates for sufficiently small weight increases (and as such, need to progress in 5kg or 10kg increments). In this case, instead of increasing reps to build up to the next BWF exercise progression, you are building up to the next jump in weight! Same concept.
Simple Progressing: Adding Reps
All examples in the below section will be assuming that you are training 3x per week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but this system works fine for higher frequencies as well.
1 Rep per Set per Session
This is the first and fastest rate of progression you will see. It, along with adding weight every session, is what is commonly referred to as “Linear Progression”. This works best for people who are fairly new to exercise overall, are coming back to training after a long period off, or when getting used to a new movement/lift you’ve not done before and are still learning form/limits with.
For Example:
Mon: 3×5
Weds: 3×6
Fri: 3×7
1 Rep per Set, Every Other Session
When you first fail to progress your reps per set on a session, you can simply start doing every other session. This will happen sooner or later depending on the difficulty of the exercise (e.g. you will be able to linearly progress squats much longer than pullups)
For Example:
Mon: 3×5
Weds: 3×5
Fri: 3×6
Mon: 3×6
Weds: 3×7
1 Rep per Set, Every Week
When you are unable to progress more than 2 times in a row. You can start progressing 1 rep per set every week. For 3x per week routines this will look similar to the above, but for a 6x per week program this gives a large buffer.
Mon, Weds Fri, Week 1: 3×5
Mon, Weds Fri, Week 2: 3×6
Mon, Weds Fri, Week 3: 3×7
1 Rep total per Session
When you find yourself unable to progress reps per set weekly more than twice in a row, you may want to pivot to 1 rep total every other session. It is a similar rate of progress but it is slightly more gradual
Mon: 3×5 (5,5,5)
Weds: 6,5,5
Fri: 6,6,5
Mon: 3×6
1 Rep total Every Other Session
Same as before, if you find yourself unable to progress 1 total rep more than twice in a row, move to every other session.
Mon: 3×5 (5,5,5)
Weds: 3×5 (5,5,5)
Fri: 6,5,5
Mon: 6,5,5
Weds: 6,6,5
Fri: 6,6,5
Mon: 3×6 (6,6,6)
1 Rep total every week
Finally, if you are unable to progress 1 total rep more than twice in a row on every other session, start trying to progress 1 total rep every week!
Mon, Weds Fri, Week 1: 3×5 (5,5,5)
Mon, Weds Fri, Week 2: 6,5,5
Mon, Weds Fri, Week 3: 6,6,5
Mon, Weds Fri, Week 4: 3×6 (6,6,6)
Each of these methods, in this order, is progressively slower and slower progression, but as you continue to train, your ability to improve at the same rate as when you were new will not be maintained. As such, you will need to move on to a slower
Here is a graph showing the number of sessions it would require to go from 3×5 to 3×12 of any given exercise if performed 3x per week.
In reality, your progression will probably follow a movement through all the progressions methods, from faster to slower, and so it will look a lot more like this:
All these models above can keep you on some form of a ‘semi linear’ progression for as long as possible. If/when you are unable to progress a single total rep for over 2 weeks, look below to the ‘Addressing Plateaus’ section
Intermediate Progression: Manipulating Other Variables
Manipulating Reps/Sets for Total Volume Progression
If you are struggling to add reps, the next best solution is to increase sets + decrease reps temporarily to give your total volume a boost, and then work back to the original number of sets having broken through that plateau.
For example:
Say you are stuck at 3×7 and can’t do 3×8 or even 8,7,7. That would suggest you are at your limit strength wise at 3×7, so you won’t be able to add any more volume This is a total of 21 reps.
By dropping to 4×5, you will be doing 20 reps (nearly the same total volume) at a significantly easier intensity. Then if you add a rep per session (for example), you will be up to 4×7 – or, 28 total reps – in 9 sessions, all while giving your body a buffer to continue to adapt in.
Once you’re doing 4×7 reps, you can do one of two things:
– Drop the extra set, and add a rep. In other words, go back to 3 sets, try 3×8 this time and progress from there
– Re-test your max reps and then do 3 sets for 1-2 less than your max (e.g. new max is 11 reps, start on 3×9)
If you find you are still stuck, you can either move on to the Progressing Rest section, OR split your volume again, into 5 sets E.g. 5×5 (25 total reps), 1 rep per session gets you to 5×7 (35 total reps) in 11 sessions.
By this point, you have not ever done more reps than 7, but you’ve progressed your total volume from 21 to 35 reps (more total volume than 3×11!) over a period of 20 sessions. Not the sexiest rate of improvement, but it’s something!
I would not recommending splitting volume any further than 5 sets or your workouts will become long and unwieldy.
Here is a graph showing this process, and how ‘un-linear’ progression starts to get by this point:
But as you can see by the trend line, its still going up over the long term!
Progressing Rest
Another thing you can do, especially if you are finding adding reps to the latter sets is difficult, is to keep reps and total volume the same, but progress your rest.
E.g. You are currently doing 3×7 reps with 2 minutes rest. You are struggling to progress, to 3×8 or even 8,7,7, so you try:
Session 1: 3×7 with 110s rest
Session 2: 3×7 with 100s rest
Session 3: 3×7 with 90s rest
Session 4: 3×7 with 80s rest
Session 5: 3×7 with 70s rest
Session 6: 3×7 with 60s rest
In 6 sessions (or 2 weeks at 3x/week frequency), you’ll have halved the rest time needed. You can then try to progress to 3×8 with the usual 120s rest.
As with the rep progression tiers, you can also drop 10s of rest every other session or every week if needed.
Advanced Progression: Periodization
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