Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How to Use Double Progression to Get More From Your Workouts

Episode Date: October 22, 2018

When you first start lifting weights, getting stronger is simple. Show up, add weight to the bar, and hit your reps and sets, and go home. As you inch your way toward your natural muscular potential, however, progress slows. You’ll start missing or even losing reps, feeling burnt out and overtrained, adding little if any weight to your lifts for months. Where to go from here? There are a number of ways to keep progressing in your weightlifting workouts, but one of my favorite models is known as double progression. It’s a simple method that anyone can put into use right away, and it’s one of the most effective ways to keep making progress after your newbie gains begin to evaporate. So, in this podcast, you’re going to learn what double progression is, why it works, and how to do it right so you can get the needle moving again. Ready? Let’s start at the top. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, this is Mike and welcome to another installment in my in five minutes or less series where I answer one common question quickly and simply because while long form content is great, sometimes it is also nice when someone just gets right to the point and tells you what to do and how to do it in five minutes or less. And that's what I do in these episodes. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for women, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger. Now, this book has sold over 150,000 copies in the last several years, and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has

over 1,200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that keep women from ever achieving the lean, sexy, strong, and healthy bodies they truly desire, and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate female body, then you want to read Thinner, Leaner, Stronger today, which you can find on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can actually get the audio book 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audio books. I myself love them because they let me make the time that

I spend doing things like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth into more valuable and productive activities. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, simply go to www.bitly.com slash free TLS book. And that will take you to Audible. And then you just have to click the sign up today and save button, create your account. And voila, you get to listen to Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for free. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now at least. Let's get to the show hey mike matthews here from muscle for life and legion athletics back finally with a new video podcast i know i haven't done this in a bit um although i do have a good excuse as i have mentioned a couple times in my normal just audio

only podcasts that i have been absent from most everything for the last couple of months because I was slaving away at the new and upcoming third editions for my books for men and women, Bigger Than You're Stronger and Thinner Than You're Stronger. And now that all that work is done, including the recording of the audio books, which I did myself, which was a huge pain in the ass. Literally, I sat there for 80 hours over the course of like three weeks recording this stuff. And the books are not that long, fortunately, but it takes quite a bit of time to record audio books, especially when that also kind of serves as a final draft because inevitably I'm finding things where I'm reading

and I don't really like how that reads or I think of something else that should be there or I should say it a bit differently or whatever. Anyways, it's all done now. So I'm back on my normal content grind, which means doing weekly video podcasts like this, weekly audio podcasts, which I'm going to do three a week of. I made a new schedule. Instead of five, I think it's maybe a bit much. I'm going to go three a week and I'm going to be working in more interviews. Some of them are going to be short monologues like this. Some of them are going to be long monologues. And next year, I want to put a bit more resources, time and money into the podcast, which means we're going to be moving into a new office space next July because our current lease is up. Yeah, it's like June or July. I'm stuck in the building. I mean,

until June or July next year. And currently in the, in the space that I'm in, I don't have enough room to do anything in terms of building out a little podcast studio because there are too many people and not enough space. However, in the new space, I'm going to build out a little studio and then I'm going to fly guests in who I want to interview, which will be fun because we'll get, you know, we'll set up the whole HD camera thing. So it'll be like a real media type of setup. And then that will give us not only podcast content, but also YouTube content. So that's what's coming next year. For now, I'm going to continue my low rent shit like this and the current setup I have with interviews being done over Zencastr

and so forth. So anyway, let's get to the point of today's video podcast, which is progression and specifically the double progression model, which is one of my favorite models for progression, something that I myself have been doing for many, many years now. I have intermittently used some linear models, but I always come back to this double progression model because I like it for a number of reasons. And I'm going to tell you these reasons. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying

this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at MuscleForLifeFitness, Twitter at MuscleForLife, and Facebook at MuscleForLifeFitness. We should probably just start with a quick little overview of progression and why it's so important and why you need to have some sort of progression model in your training. Now, if you are going to increase the amount of mechanical tension that your muscles have to produce over time, what's the best way to do that? Well, the easiest, most straightforward, and I think it's not controversial to say the best way to do that is to add weight to the bar over time, to get stronger over time. And that then requires a system. Should you just add weight every week? Should you try to add reps every

week? Should it be every two weeks, every month? How you structure that is your progression model. Now, some training programs have what's called a linear model where you are adding weight on a set schedule. So you might be adding five pounds to the bar every week for certain exercises for a number of weeks, or maybe it's every other week or something like that. Again, it progresses in a linear, predictable way. Now, linear progression can work very well. Of course, there are a number of programs, again, particularly strength training programs that use linear progression and to good effect. However, it requires proper programming.

It requires intelligent programming. It also requires, though, a fair amount of stability and predictability, I guess you could say, in your training and in your lifestyle. Because for you to be able to stick to the plan, you're gonna have to make sure that you are sleeping well, that you are eating enough food, that you don't have too much stress in your life, that you are not missing workouts,

because you can quickly fall behind if you don't have all of those things in place. And then when you get in the gym, you try to increase anyway, and you can't get it. You miss your set. However, if you would have been sleeping well the previous nights, or if you would have been eating enough food, or maybe stress levels were too high, whatever, and if they were lower, then you would have gotten your set. And if that happens too often, you are going to fall very behind in your progression. You are not going to progress as the program intends. And on the flip

side, you're also going to have times where you actually feel good. You finally did get enough sleep for enough nights in a row or ate enough food or had low enough stress levels, whatever, to feel good. But because of how the program is laid out, you're not supposed to progress that day or even that week because you were supposed to progress the week before. And so now again, you are missing an opportunity to maybe make up for some lost ground. So first, let's just talk about what double progression is. It's very simple. It is a model where you are aiming to get a certain number of reps for a certain number of sets with a given weight before you add weight to the bar. So for example, in my bigger, leaner, stronger program for men, which of course is changing a little bit with this new upcoming third edition, not too much, but a little bit,

little bit with this new upcoming third edition, not too much, but a little bit. Previously it used double progression. It still does. And what I recommend is that you progress, you add weight to the bar when you get one set of six reps. And then if you do that and you can't get at least three reps, you go back to the original lighter weight and work with that until you can get two sets of six reps, at which point you should progress back to the original lighter weight and work with that until you can get two sets of six reps, at which point you should progress back to the heavier weight. And to specify there, I recommend an increase, a total increase of 10 pounds. So if that's a barbell exercise, you are adding five pounds to either side. If it's a dumbbell exercise, you are going to the dumbbells that are five pounds heavier each than what you're currently using. And in my

thinner leaner, stronger program, which is for women, it's the same concept, but you are working in the eight to 10 rep range instead of the four to six rep range. Meaning that when you can get one set of 10 reps, you go up in weight, you rest, you do your next set, or if it's your final set for the workout, then you pick it back up on your next workout the next time you're doing that exercise. And if you can't get at least seven reps, you know, one short of your low on your first set after you progress is okay. You know, so if you get seven reps, that's fine. But if you're getting six, five or less, then you drop back to the original weight and then you work with that until you can get two sets of 10 reps at which point you move up. And the only other things you really need to know to put this double progression model into use in

your training, regardless of whether you're following my programs or not, it doesn't matter really what program you're following. If you are doing resistance training exercises regularly, you need to have some sort of progression model, or you will just get stuck in a rut. And so to put it into play, there are really only two other things you need to know. One is how intense should your sets be? And the simple answer to that is you should be ending most of your resistance training sets, your working sets, your hard sets, your muscle building sets, whatever you want to call them, about two reps shy of technical failure, which is the point where you can no longer maintain proper form,

where your form just starts to break down. That is technical failure. And you want to be, you want to be ending your intense, hard working muscle building sets about two reps short of that point. So you could go one, maybe two reps more, and then your form would start to fall apart. And by the way, if you'd like to know more about that reps and reserve RIR, as it's referred to also related is RPE rating of perceived exertion, head over to legionathletics.com and search for RPE. And you will find an article that I wrote on it. And I also recorded a podcast on RPE. I think it was posted in the last month or so. So if you just go back and look, um, in the last, I think it's like six to seven episodes, you'll find an episode on RP. So you could listen to that if you don't want to read. So anyways, that's the, that's one thing you need to know to put this double progression

model into play effectively, and also is just rest times. So I would say rest anywhere from two to four minutes in between your heavy, hard muscle building sets to give your body and your muscles enough time to recuperate. So you can give that almost maximum effort required in each set. And one other thing I should quickly just touch on is this point of auto-regulation, which I like to combine with double progression because it allows for maximum flexibility and it allows you to push when you are feeling good, when you have high energy, you've got enough sleep, you've eaten enough food and the weights are feeling light and you really do feel up to progressing. And it allows you to back off when the opposite is true. When you are struggling to get through your workouts. And, you know, sometimes, yeah, sometimes it happens to me

where I'm just going through the motions and I simply do not feel, it's not a mental thing. Like I do not have the physical capability to move up to even maybe get an extra rep over, over the week before on whatever exercise I'm working on. And sometimes it can go like that for a few weeks on certain exercises. You are simply not able to progress. It wouldn't matter if what your coach were to tell you to do in terms of adding weight or gaining reps, it's not going to happen. And then all of a sudden you get under the bar one week and you

just feel good. You feel strong. Everything feels solid, tight. Again, the weights feel light and you can progress. And then maybe not only on that exercise, but on the following exercise as well. And you can progress maybe not only on that exercise, but on the following exercise as well. And I've experienced that many, many times. Rarely ever has my progression truly been linear simply because, and I don't think it would have been, even if somebody would have told me to try to make it linear, I wouldn't have been able to simply because of the stuff that I mentioned. Sometimes sleep is better. Sometimes it's worse. My diet has always been fairly tight, but sometimes stress levels are higher, sometimes they're lower. And sometimes there's probably psychological things that come into play that we're not even aware of that impact our training capabilities and what ultimately,

what we can do in terms of sets and reps with given weights. So what this means then is you go into every workout with the goal of beating your previous workout. Even if that means one set of one exercise for one rep, if your first set on your first exercise, let's say it's a heavy barbell exercise, it's a barbell squat, a deadlift or whatever. If last week you had 225 pounds in the bar for four reps in this week, you get five and the rest of your workout is exactly the same. You are not able to do anything more than you did last week. That's still a successful workout.

And so you go into every workout with that intention, but you see how it goes based on how your body is feeling, based on how you are feeling. it goes based on how your body is feeling based on how you are feeling. And if you feel up to pushing for that extra rep or two reps on that exercise or on other exercises, you do it. However, if it's just not going to happen, then you don't do it and you don't progress that week. And if you do this for a while, what you will probably find is that you progress non-linearly, meaning that for a few weeks, you feel good in your workouts, strong, and you're gaining reps. And then you're turning that into gaining weight, you know, adding weight to the bar and then even moving up in reps from there. And then all of a

sudden you just kind of get stuck for no good reason. And for a few weeks, each week, you know, you're putting, you're putting the previous week's weight on the bar and you struggle to just get the same amount of reps. And sometimes for no good reason, this is how it's been going for me for the last few months. I've been sleeping better finally. So I have made good progress, but it's been a few weeks at a time stuck for a few weeks. And then all of a sudden, for no good reason, break through, start making progress again. And what you should know is that is totally normal. Do not be discouraged by it. Just keep going, keep training, keep hitting every workout with that goal of beating the previous workout. Even if it's just by one rep, one set on one exercise

and make sure your diet is right. Make sure your energy balance is right. Macro nutrient balance, you're eating nutritious foods. Make sure you are doing everything you can to sleep well, sleep enough, manage stress and so forth. And you will break through. All right. Well, that's it for this video. I hope you liked it. And if you did, please do click the like button down below the little thumbs up down there and feel free to drop a comment down below to let me know what you thought of the video. And also feel free to share your experiences with double progression, auto-regulation, linear progression, or anything else that you think might be relevant to the topic at hand.

And finally, if you want to give me a virtual high five, and if you want to be notified when my next video goes live, click the subscribe button over there somewhere, the big red button. It's free, of course, and then click the bell next to it and YouTube will let you know when I publish my next video. All right, well, that's it for now. See you in the next video. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search

visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So

instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for women, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger. Now, this book has sold over 150,000 copies in the last several years, and it has helped thousands of women build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 1,200 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that keep women from ever achieving the lean, sexy, strong, and healthy bodies they truly desire, and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate female body, then you want to read Thinner, Leaner, Stronger today, which you can find on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can actually get the audio book 100% free

when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audio books. I myself love them because they let me make the time that I spend doing things like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth into more valuable and productive activities. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, simply go to www.bitly.com slash free TLS book. And that will take you to Audible. And then you just have to click the sign up today and save button, create your account. And voila, you get to listen to Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for free.