Progressive overload when the scale is falling — one year on Writing it up because I had to work it out twice and would rather nobody else did.
The question about Progressive overload that I actually want answered is the second one below. The first is context and I have kept it short.
Both are stated with units, and I have said what I already checked so that nobody repeats it.
Progressive overload was covered in the wiki last year and the page has a review date on it, which is a better starting point than my memory of a thread.
I would be cautious about generalising from the Progressive overload example above. It is a good example. It is one example.
Post #5 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
Nothing here is medical advice and anybody with a relevant condition should have a programme reviewed by somebody qualified rather than assembled from a forum.
Two sources, same conclusion, and I could not rule out that one copied the other.
My understanding of Progressive overload is a few years old and may have been superseded. If it has been, I would genuinely like to know rather than keep repeating it.
Narrowing post #10, because the general version has more than one answer.
Anybody returning after a break should expect to start lower than they left, and expecting otherwise is where injuries come from.
This is the sort of thing that ought to be settled and apparently is not.
Everything in post #8 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
Adding a small correction to the Progressive overload summary above rather than a disagreement with it. The substance holds; one of the figures is out by a factor that matters.
Marking my place. If it changes for me I will come back and say so.
Cardiovascular work has its own benefits and is not a substitute for a resistance stimulus for this particular purpose.
I read post #12 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
The version of Progressive overload that I was taught turned out to be a teaching simplification. Useful, and not true in the way I had assumed it was.
One caution on Progressive overload: everything above assumes the underlying documentation is what it claims to be. That assumption is doing real work and is rarely stated.
Reduced appetite makes fuelling a session harder, and that is a practical problem with practical solutions rather than a reason to stop.
The practical version of Progressive overload is three sentences long. The rigorous version is three pages and reaches the same conclusion with the conditions attached.
The reports here that state the programme, the load and the timeframe are useful. The ones that state an outcome are not.
I think the Progressive overload question is answerable and has not been answered, which is a more optimistic position than most of this thread.
Confirming post #21 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
Anybody returning after a break should expect to start lower than they left, and expecting otherwise is where injuries come from.
A partial answer, offered because a partial answer beats none.
An update on my earlier Progressive overload post: the pattern held for another six weeks and then stopped, which I did not predict and cannot explain.
Coming back to post #25, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
Strength and hypertrophy respond to different things, and preserving one during a deficit is a different objective from building the other.
Old habit: I write down the expected answer before I calculate it.
Post #25 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
Distinguishing three things in the Progressive overload discussion that keep getting used interchangeably: the observation, the proposed mechanism, and the recommendation that gets attached to both.
An honest declaration on Progressive overload: I have a prior here and it is strong enough that you should weight what I say downward. Stating it rather than hiding it.
The arithmetic in post #29 is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.
Nothing here is medical advice and anybody with a relevant condition should have a programme reviewed by somebody qualified rather than assembled from a forum.
I would be glad to be shown a cleaner way of putting this.