Progressive overload when the scale is falling

Posting this under the heading it deserves: Progressive overload when the scale is falling Everything below is what sits behind that.

Trying to establish the boundary conditions on progressive overload. The general claim is fine; I want to know where it stops holding, because that is where I am operating.

Three edge cases below, in increasing order of how far outside the usual range they sit.

A request rather than an answer: could whoever has the primary source for progressive overload post it? I have seen the claim three times this month and each version had lost a qualifier.

Anybody returning after a break should expect to start lower than they left, and expecting otherwise is where injuries come from.

It is a small point and it changes the answer, which is an awkward combination.

The useful distinction on progressive overload is between what was measured and what was inferred from it. Both end up in the same sentence and only one of them has error bars.

Building on post #4 rather than restating it.

Two claims get bundled together under progressive overload and they need separating. The descriptive one — this is what was observed — is usually well supported. The causal one — this is why — usually is not.

Almost every disagreement in threads like this one dissolves once you say which of the two you are making.

Reduced appetite makes fuelling a session harder, and that is a practical problem with practical solutions rather than a reason to stop.

That is a description of practice, not a recommendation of it.

I would rather this thread reach "we do not know" about progressive overload than reach a confident answer that nobody can support when asked.

Helpful, and short, which on this subject is harder than long.

Two things can be true about progressive overload at once: the mechanism is plausible and the evidence for the size of the effect is thin. Most of the argument here is people defending the first against attacks on the second.