Progressive overload when the scale is falling — one year on posts 151–168
This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
A note on how Progressive overload gets discussed rather than on Progressive overload itself: the confident posts get the replies and the careful ones get ignored, and the careful ones have been right more often.
Where I part company with post #149, and it is a narrow parting.
Worth stating the null on Progressive overload before we explain it: the observation may be nothing. That possibility deserves a sentence and usually does not get one.
Post #153 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.
Strength and hypertrophy respond to different things, and preserving one during a deficit is a different objective from building the other.
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Where the Progressive overload discussion usually stalls is that nobody wants to say "I do not know" and everyone is willing to say "it varies". Those are the same sentence with different clothes on.
Anybody returning after a break should expect to start lower than they left, and expecting otherwise is where injuries come from.
Happy to expand any of that if it is the useful part.
Confirming post #157 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
My position on Progressive overload is current rather than settled. I have revised it once already and I expect to again, so treat it accordingly.
On post #157 — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.
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.
Not the answer, but possibly the question that gets there.
That reframing is the whole thing. The facts I already had.
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Anybody returning after a break should expect to start lower than they left, and expecting otherwise is where injuries come from.
Coming back to post #159, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
Two questions I would want answered before drawing anything from the Progressive overload data above: how were the cases selected, and what happened to the ones that dropped out.
I have been on both sides of the Progressive overload argument in this category within eighteen months, which should tell you how strong the evidence for either side is.
Reduced appetite makes fuelling a session harder, and that is a practical problem with practical solutions rather than a reason to stop.
This settles it for me, at least until somebody posts a reason it should not.
Progressive overload is worth one more sentence than it usually gets, and the sentence is the one about how the number was arrived at.
The reports here that state the programme, the load and the timeframe are useful. The ones that state an outcome are not.
This topic was referenced in
- About the Resistance training categoryNutrition & Training › Resistance training · 4 replies
- Second pass at: Programming during a large energy deficitNutrition & Training › Resistance training · 100 replies
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