I hope everyone is having a great week. Last week I discussed the concept of progression and I believe this is the most important concept of exercise especially resistance exercise.
If you want to improve your fitness levels and strength progression is the foundation. The simplest way to do this is to measure your performance on just one set per exercise.
Take the example of the pull-up exercise. If today you perform a set of pullups and can only complete one repetition you now have a baseline. Every day you perform the pullup exercise your goal is to increase the number of repetitions completed. This is a very simple example of progression but many people lose sight of this concept. Even advanced trainees get caught up in doing many sets and exercises that they lose sight of progression. Also, measuring progression becomes more difficult the more sets and or variables you add.
Most need to follow a simple linear progressive plan for many months. In the example above your goal may be to complete 8 pull-ups after 6 months of consistent exercise. This would be an 8 fold improvement in performance. Is that possible? Absolutely. I have witnessed this type of progression over and over.
Advanced trainees will likely need more variation but the Large majority are so far from that status that we must stay laser-focused on progressive and linear exercise.
I hope this helps. Stay focused.
Stay strong,
Michael