The Pacing of Progressive Overload

Everyone agrees that if we are to make legitimate progress with your strength training then progressive overload is the non negotiable practice to engage in.  What this means is that at some point along the timeline of your training you are going to have to increase the stressors of training.  Now this can be done through intensity(increasing of the weights lifted) volume(increase in the total amount of work), density(more work done in the same amount of time) or frequency(more work accomplished in a shorter time frame).

What often is not discussed is how quickly to change these or alter these stressful variables of progressive overload.  How brief or how long do you need to train with the same stressors before you are in need of fresh stimuli in order to continue progression?  The reality is that too much of a good thing is a legitimate issue when it comes to training.  Raising the weights every week is unwise.  It's a steep cliff that minimizes the ability of the body to recover from those frequent intensity increases.  What eventually everyone looks for is the pacing that works long term.

When I was in my first year of track and field in junior high school I promised the head coach that I would run the 1500 for him my first year as long as I could run the sprints the second year.  So I trained with the distance runners and did a lot more distance running work than I had ever done.  It was very different from sprinting and the sports that I was used to.  So it took awhile but I eventually got used to running half mile, quarter mile and even mile repeats regularly in practice.

On the day of the first meet though it dawned on me that I had never actually toed the line of a distance race.  There were no blocks to sprint out of and I had no real frame of reference as far as how quickly to head out in the first quarter mile.  So when the gun went off I just sprinted the first quarter mile like it was a shorter race.  Through all the excitement and crowd noise I could still hear my coach yelling at me from the outside of the track.

"PACE YOURSELF!! YOU ARE GOING OUT TOO FAST!!  YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!!"

I went through one lap so fast that I had the lead on the whole field.  Stoked by this reality I resolved myself to see how long I could hold onto this lead.  I managed to keep the lead into lap two and my coach yelled louder still.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!  YOU HAVEN'T TRAINED TO DO THIS!  SLOW DOWN OR YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!!"

Somewhere between lap two and lap three something changed.  The pace that I was able to hold so easily for the first two laps suddenly became impossible to keep up.  I felt my legs becoming impossible to move at the same pace and my lungs started to seriously have trouble getting oxygen in.  I was starting to slow down and I couldn't do anything about it.

One runner passed me......

Not too bad I thought......I can be ok with second place as long as I don't slow down too much more.

Another runner passed me.

UH OH!

Then two runners passed me....and then three more passed me on the outside.  In a flash it seemed like half the field was whizzing by my right shoulder and I couldn't do a thing about it.

I ended up finishing the race somewhere in the back of the pack.  I didn't lose but I definitely didn't win.  More than anything though I felt foolish for going out like a jack rabbit who got scared by a gun shot.  My coach came by and just laughed at me.

"So what did we learn today?  Maybe you should listen to your old coach next time and don't go out so hot.  You might not die so badly on the last two laps!"

I apologized for not listening and said I would never do it again.  I learned my lesson and learned to pace myself pretty well in every race after that one.  I placed a little bit better in every race after that one and I definitely never bolted to the front of the pack again.

Where I am going with this whole story is that often what happens in strength training, weightlifting, powerlifting, etc. is that we pick a pace that we believe to be sustainable and maybe for the first year or two it is.  However, when year 3 rolls around we have difficulty with continuing progressive overload at that pace.  The body starts to give little signs that the pace is not sustainable.  The shoulders are a little stiffer than normal.  The hips and back ache a bit more on every lower body day. The knees are sharp occasionally when for the first two years they were completely quiet.

These are all little signs that if there isn't some kind of intervention that the pace of programming is too aggressive or that the recovery from those stressors is insufficient.  Now it could also be that it's a blend of the two factors but ultimately if you can pull back the training stress and automatically make it easier to recover from training then that should be a consideration.  

If you are in your 20's and 30's now is the time to learn this lesson and not sprint.  You are going to want to train for the next 40-50 years in order to prevent osteoporosis and osteopenia from becoming a part of your life.  If you are in your 40's and 50's you really need to lock in some decently wise practices because you likely only have 20-30 years left to train.  If you are in your 60's and 70's it's really important that you train every week but you leave a lot left in the tank on the regular. If you are in your 70's and 80's it's critical that you keep moving however you can and if you train too hard you may run into limitations with movement.  So you can't pace this process too hot!

The reality of training is that you have to recover from it in order for it to be of benefit to your life.  If you jump to the front of the race early and don't take your time to establish good training practices with proper progressions you will make it really hard for your body to recover from training.  The challenge really isn't how hard you can work and how much work can you accomplish in a training session, training week or training month.  It's how are you handling the pace of progressive overload with the recovery options you have available to yourself.  If you want to make progress 20 years from now.....you don't have the option to risk surgeries in your first decade of training.  That only inhibits your ability to continue to make progress.

Instead find a sustainable pace where you can train, recover and improve like clockwork.  Whether that is quarterly, 2X a year, 1X a year or every 4 years......it doesn't really matter.  The important part is to stick with a pace that works for you.  Since tendons, ligaments and cartilage are all structures that take much longer to heal than muscles you want to consider that muscular recovery is only one part of the equation.  If you want your whole body to become the strongest and healthiest version of itself in advanced age the reality is that you can't just go by how often and intensely you feel DOMS to determine how good your training is.  Your movement quality is the most important thing to preserve if you want to live with the various training stressors over long periods of time.  If you preserve that with proper pacing of progressive overload you may just find yourself training with weights in your 70's and 80's that keep you out of the nursing home and the hospital.