When To Increase The Weight You're Lifting
In this instructional video, Eric Roberts explains how lifters can determine when to increase the weight they lift by applying progressive overload through two primary strategies: linear progression and double progression. He first defines progressive overload as the need to continually challenge the body to stimulate muscle growth, outlining weight increases and rep increases as the main methods. Linear progression involves adding a set amount of weight each week, especially effective for beginners and compound lifts. Roberts then categorizes exercises into compound, accessory, and isolation movements, noting that compound lifts can handle weekly weight jumps while accessory and isolation lifts often require more nuanced progression. Double progression uses a rep range (e.g., 8‑12 reps); lifters add reps within the range before increasing weight and resetting reps to the lower bound. He demonstrates calculations of total tonnage to illustrate how even a single extra rep adds significant volume. Finally, Roberts recommends combining both methods in program design: start workouts with 1‑2 compound lifts using linear progression for 4‑5 weeks, then follow with accessory/isolations using double progression, adjusting weight as soon as the top of the rep range is reached. He also references his online coaching program, the Clubhouse, for further guidance.
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If you're somebody who's lifting weights, when is it time to increase the weight you are lifting in your workouts? Well, I'm going to go ahead and give you my 2 favorite strategies to help you do just that. The first strategy is going to be called linear progression, and the second strategy is going to be called double progression. But before I cover both, the reason that it's so important for you to lift heavier weight in your workouts is maybe something you had heard before, which is the term Progressive overload. I think a lot of you know fitness people like to throw out this term progressive overload, but what does this actually mean? So in the very simple terms, you need to give your body a reason to build muscle. This is one pound of muscle. You need to give your body a reason to build this and get stronger. If you don't give it a reason, it's not going to build muscle. So this progressive overload is essentially you just doing more. Over a period of time to force your body to build muscle and get stronger. The best ways you can have progressive overload are going to be either number one, increasing the weight you are lifting. So lifting heavier weight, which we will talk about in this video. The second best way is to increase the reps you are doing. There's a limit to this though, which we'll talk about a little bit later in this video. Increase the reps you are doing. These are the 2 best ways. Now there are other ways to have progressive overload. Like for example, If you lift the same amount of weight for the same amount of reps, but let's say you have better form, okay, technically that is progressive overload. Or if let's say for example you have the same form, the same weight, the same reps, but let's say you have like better control of the weight, maybe you control the weight more on the way down. If you're doing like let's say a squat, you maybe go slower on the way down so you have better control. Or let's say for example like you do the same weight and the same reps, but it's just Easier. So things are getting easier over time. That is a form of progressive overload. But every single one of these, I could keep going. I could do a whole separate video on progressive overload. Maybe I will. But for the context of this video, we're trying to go back to one of these 2 things every single time, because those 2 things are what you need. Again, where did my 1 pound of fat go? Sorry, 1 pound of muscle. These 2 things are what is going to help you build the most of this. which is gonna change your body, get you stronger, prevent injury, all the great things you wanna have happen. The first one is gonna be linear progression. So let's say, for example, you are doing 3 sets of 5 reps and you're doing 50 pounds on a squat, okay? So you're doing squat, 3 sets, 5 reps. This is week 1. Let's say week 2, You now go in and you do 3 sets of 5 reps at 55 pounds. So you just simply increased by 5 pounds. Let's say week 3, you go in, 3 sets, 5 reps at 60 pounds. So all you're doing week to week to week is you are slightly increasing how much weight you are lifting. Every single week. This is probably the most common form of when to lift heavier weight in your workouts. This is especially for people who are, number one, a beginner, because usually the more beginner you are, the more room you have for progression. Because not only are you just— you're so new to the movement so that you're getting better at the movement every time you do it. Every time you go in and do your squats, you're getting better at squats. So you're going to be able to lift more weight. You're going to be able to push yourself a tad bit more. You're getting better at pushing yourself and pushing yourself close to failure. So from that aspect, the beginners will usually be able to have this linear progression scheme, and it's usually best on what we call compound movements, which here's a whole different lesson for you in and of itself. There are usually 3 kinds of exercises. There is going to be a compound exercise, and I'll write this over here for right now. There's going to be a compound exercise, an accessory exercise, and an isolation exercise. So what are compound exercises and what are isolation and accessory? Compound exercises are things like your bigger movements. Think squats. Think deadlifts. Deadlifts, think chest press, bench press, think shoulder press, think hip thrust potentially. These are bigger movements where you are able to move a lot more weight. Whereas let's say for example you're going into an accessory or an isolation movement. Think of an accessory movement as kind of like it's still a, a big movement. Let's take a reverse lunge for example. If you're doing a reverse lunge, that's still a pretty significant movement, but it might not be as, as big of a movement as a squat or as a barbell deadlift or something like that. Or let's take a, you know, a one-arm lat pulldown or a regular lat pulldown. Still a pretty big movement, but it's not necessarily like as big of a movement as a barbell bench press or a dumbbell shoulder press or something like that. So your accessory movements kind of come right after your compound and your isolation movements. These are things like bicep curls, tricep extensions, shoulder raises, And the reason this is important to know this for this linear progression, these ones right here are much harder to add weight to week over week because the compound movements are so big. They allow you to add weight pretty much every single week. You're not like, if you have a bicep curl, you're not just going to go in and you probably know this, or like a shoulder raise. You're not just going to go in and do like, okay, week 1, I did 10 pounds. Week 2, I'm doing 15 pounds. Week 3, I'm doing 20 pounds. I think, you know, that is not how that goes for a shoulder raise, right? But that would be, that would be unrealistic. But for a squat or a deadlift, that may very well be able to happen for you. So beginners and compound movements, these are the places where, and essentially with this, you would just keep adding weight until you can't. Like you would just keep trying to add weight every single week until you can't. But that's why there's 2 different models here. Let me get my eraser. There's 2 different models because eventually this is going to run out. You're not just going to be able to, even for a squat or a bench or a deadlift, you're not just going to be able to do this week over week over week. Otherwise we would all be like lifting houses and lifting cars and all that crazy shit. And like we talked about for the other movements, like a lat pulldown, you're not just going to add, you know, 20 pounds to your lat pulldown every time. You're not going to add 10 pounds to your bicep curl every time. So there has to be another way to know, another strategy to be able to increase the weight you are lifting in these other movements, right? There absolutely is, and that is something called double progression. So let's talk about what double progression looks like. Over here on the linear side, remember we had just 3 sets of 5 reps, and that was the same. We kept the reps and the sets the same, and we just tried to increase the weight every week. Now again, we know we're not going to be able to do that every single time. So what do we do? We come over here to this double progression. Again, that's what it's called. Now instead of 3 sets of 5 reps, or by the way, these reps are just, you could make this 3 sets of 8 reps or 3 sets of 10 reps or, you know, whatever the case may be. We'll use 3 sets of 10 reps because that's a pretty common one. Okay. Instead of doing 3 sets of 10 reps, here's what we're going to do. You are going to get a rep range, so 3 sets of, let's say, 8 to 12 reps. And this is very, very critical, and stick with me here. The reason this is so important is because here's what this double progression is going to look like. Let's say week 1, you are doing 3 sets Of 8 reps at 50 pounds. Okay. We'll kind of match it to what we had over here. The next week, let's say you do 3 sets of 9 reps at 50 pounds. You basically just added 1 extra rep to each of your sets. You kept within the rep range you're doing. You just added a rep because again, you might not be able to go from 50 to 55 pounds because you might only be able to do 3 reps with 55 pounds or 4 reps with 55 pounds. So what do you do if you, if you only had 1 rep to shoot for, what are you going to do? Just like do 3 sets of 5 reps for the rest of your life and never increase? This way you can still add a rep and be within the rep range. And so let's say week 3, uh, you know, you doing 3 sets of 10 reps at 50 pounds. And let's just say week 4, you know, you went like Super Saiyan or something. And you now are doing 3 sets of 12 reps at 50 pounds, right? So you worked your way all the way up to 12 reps at 50 pounds. Here's what you're going to do. Because you have now hit the top end of the rep range, 12 reps, and again, the rep range, this could be 8 to 12, this could be 4 to 6, this could be 6 to 8, whatever. But if when you hit the top end of the rep range, Here's what you're going to do. You are now going to increase the weight that you are lifting and decrease the reps back down to the bottom of the rep range. So week 5 would look like 3 sets of 8 reps, back to the bottom of the rep range, at 55 pounds. And this, this is actually my favorite way of doing when to lift heavier weights. Because now this is going to allow you to over time continuously make progress no matter what. You can do this on any exercise. You can do this on any rep range. Again, the rep range, it could be 3 to 5 reps. It could be 6 to 8 reps. It could be 8 to 12 reps, 12 to 15 reps. But when you give yourself a rep range, you take away— this is so like, there's only one thing you can do to eventually lift heavier weight. Is just lift heavier weight. But if you are able to add reps and then you can add weight, you're building yourself up. You're still making progress and you're still having that progressive overload. Because remember, what did we say about progressive overload? Right? Obviously it was needed to see the best progress and force your body to build muscle. But progressive overload just means you are doing more than what you're doing right now. So again, if let's say for example, If you only— and here's the cool part— if you only do 1 more rep, that is still more than what you did last week. If let's say you only did 1 more rep on 1 more set. So if I really quickly— let me get my eraser here. You could even do something like this. If let's say instead of doing 3 sets of 9 reps at week 2, let's say maybe you're somebody who maybe you're more getting to that intermediate or advanced You could do 1 set of 9 reps at 50 pounds, and then you could do the other 2 sets of 9 reps— I'm sorry, 2 sets of 8 reps at 50 pounds. So you only did 1 set that was at 9 reps. But then let's say week 3, you do 2 sets of 9 reps at 50 pounds, and you do 1 set of 9 reps— of 8 reps. At 50 pounds, right? You can kind of see here, even if you only do one or two sets of one or two more reps, that is still more than what you are doing previously, which is going to lead to you building muscle and seeing the progress that you want to see. And I can already hear it now. Some people are like, oh my god! That's only you know you're only doing one more rep. Okay, let me show you something. This is a little coach trick. I use this sometimes for our clients inside of the clubhouse. Which the Clubhouse is just my online coaching program. You can find more information about that in the link in the description of this video if you would like. But there is something called total tonnage. And essentially professional weightlifters use this to figure out like how much weight they are lifting throughout the course of a workout. So for the total tonnage, you take your sets times your reps times the weight that you lifted. Okay. So let's go back to the previous example. If you do 3 sets of 8 reps at 50 pounds, right? That comes out to 1,200 total pounds lifted. It's probably crazy, right? You're not lifting 50 pounds. You're lifting 50 pounds for 8 reps for 3 sets. That means you actually lifted 1,200 total pounds. It's kind of crazy right now. Stick with me. It's going to get even crazier. Let's just say you did 3 sets of 9 reps with 50 pounds. Again, only 1 more rep. That would actually come out to— this board is slanted, sorry— but 1,350 pounds. So you lifted, just by doing 1 more rep, you actually lifted 150 more pounds from that 1 rep. So the next time you go into your workouts, you're like, oh my God, maybe I didn't have the best workout. Or, I was only able to lift an extra rep on an exercise, or something. That adds up. Now, think about this. If you do this throughout the course of your bicep curls over time, your shoulder raises over time— I get often, a lot of my clients tell me, they're like, I can never progress on shoulder raises. Well, if you went from 8 reps with 10 pounds to 12 reps with 10 pounds, you are lifting hundreds of more pounds than what you were before. That is the ever elusive progressive overload that we have been talking about and the whole reason that we're trying to do this and, and build muscle and get stronger. All of this is doing more work and this is all you're trying to do. Remember, your body is stupid and I'm not saying that as an insult. I'm just saying your body doesn't know like what's going on. It just knows like, are you doing more? Are you adding more stress over time? To give me a reason to build this muscle that we're looking to build. All right. So as long as you're doing that, this strategy right here, I think is the best. Now I'm going to end with what I think, what I usually do for a lot of our members inside of my clubhouse. You might be like, Eric, which one's better? Linear progression, double progression. There's both. So why not use both? Here's typically what I do for our workout programs inside of the clubhouse. I usually start the workout with 1 to 2 compound exercises that we are looking to progress week to week. And so let's say, for example, I'll give you an example leg day. How about that? If the first exercise is a barbell back squat, I might do 3 sets of 5 reps. And the intention here is we're going to try to lift heavier weight week over week. So usually we keep our workouts for about 4 to 5 weeks in a row and then we switch it up. So if week 1 I'm lifting 100 pounds, week 2, 105 pounds, week 3, 110 pounds, week 4, 115 pounds, all for 5 reps. Because again, if you're able to just like add weight, then add weight. Cause that's eventually what we're trying to get to with the double progression anyway. It's just sometimes that's not going to be feasible. So let's say you start with that. That's your compound movement for the day and you add that. Then let's say you go into like 1 to 3 accessory exercises. So this for a leg day could look something like the second exercise is a dumbbell Romanian deadlift, a dumbbell RDL, and this could be 3 sets of 6 to 8 reps. Again, remembering that like that 8 to 12 reps I showed you earlier, there's nothing special about 8 to 12 reps. It was just an example rep range. But then let's say like week 1, I'm doing 3 sets At, you know, 50 pounds for 6 reps. Week 2, 3 sets, 7 reps with 50 pounds. And then week 3, 3 sets, 8 reps, 50 pounds. Cool. By week 4, I'm going to go ahead and bump up that weight and do 3 sets of 6 reps with 55 pounds, right? That was my double progression model. Let's say the next exercise is a hip thrust. Okay? Same kind of concept would potentially apply. Let's say you're doing 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps. You would follow the double progression model. And if, let's say, you finished with a hamstring curl for 2 sets of 12 to 15 reps, you would follow that same progression model over time. And the one last thing I want to make very clear with this progression, uh, the double progression: if you find you can go from 3 sets of 6 reps and then next week go 3 sets of 8 reps with the same weight, you don't have to wait Like, if you find— sorry, this board is completely fucked. Support the channel so I can get a new fucking whatever holds this board. Drop a comment. When you're doing this right here, if you find— again, I'll just give you an example for the hip thrust. If let's say week 1, you're doing, you know, 200 pounds on a hip thrust for 8 reps, and the next week you're like, holy shit, I can do 200 pounds pretty easily for 10 reps. You don't have to wait to increase the weight. Just the next week, go to, you know, 210 pounds for 8 reps. Like, you can increase quicker than just going like 1 by 1 by 1. If you want to follow this, you can, but if you find you can go a little bit heavier, then— I'm just going to hold this board— then you can do that. All right, I hope you found this video helpful, and if you are interested in learning more about my online training program, you can click the link in the description of this video. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you next time.
