How and Why to Increase Weight Training

Here are a few signs that it might be time to increase the amount of weights or the amount of repetitions that you’re currently using in your weight training sessions.

-  If you feel like you’re not getting anywhere at all, or that your progress has levelled off.  This indicates that the muscles are accustomed to the amount they are lifting.

-  If the current amount of weight doesn’t feel like a challenge.  Your muscles need to be challenged and to be stressed because that’s how they will grow.  Strength training exercises will bring muscle fatigue in less than 15 reps.  If you find that it’s easy to carry on past this, it’s definitely time to pile on some more lbs.

-   If you’ve never increased the amount of weights, it’s time brother!  That initial series was just a starting point.  You’ve got to continue to progress in amount of weights lifted or you won’t progress in building muscle and strength.

Remember that resistance is critical because strength training is about building and maintaining a level, and then building and maintaining another higher level, and so on. 

How to Increase Your Weights

Set up your training goals over a period of 12weeks. Go slow, and pay attention to how your body is responding.

The concept should be to increase the amount you lift in a specific key exercise movement over the six weeks.   So it is important to identify for each body part that exercise movement that will be the hurdle.  Here is what I recommend: Chest – barbell bench press; Back – dumbbell row; Shoulders – military press; Thighs – Squats; Calves – calf raise; and Hamstrings – reverse leg-curls.

You will need to ‘keep score’ in the gym so you definitely need to come to the gym with a pre-routine and as you perform the exercises you need to score the amount of weight you used! Trust me, you will love looking back at your ‘scores’ weeks later with lots of pride at you much you have improved.

You should work in blocks of 4 weeks; and will do 3 of these blocks; totalling 12 weeks to big gains!

In each 4 weeks block – Weeks 1, you should do reps of 12; Weeks 2, reps of 9; Weeks 3, reps of 6; and Weeks 4, reps of 3.  In Weeks 1 and 2, on the last set of each exercise, do one ‘pause and rest’ set.  And in Weeks 3 and 4, on the last set of each exercise do a ‘drop’ set.  A ‘rest and pause’ set is rest 15 to 20 seconds after the last set, and repeat the set to fatigue.  A ‘drop’ set is where you immediately do another set but reduced weight (20% to 30%) to fatigue.

So you will be increasing the weight on exercises from Week 1 through to Week 4; and of course increasing the weight of the exercises from Block 1 through to Block 3.  That is why you need to keep score in gym!

Increase the weights very carefully and don’t overdo it. You want to improve and not get injured 

Your goal is to fatigue muscles.  You’ll be doing this through the added weight which will make those muscles work harder and become accustomed to harder loads.  The ‘rest & pause and ‘drop’ sets will fool or shock your body to accepting more loads. Always focus on good form! Taking a set to fatigue means you almost cannot do the last rep.  NEVER GO BEYOND THAT – IT IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.