How do I progress without heavier weight?

Question:

How do I progress without heavier weights?

Short Answer:

There are various lifting protocols that help promote strength that you can easily do, even if you do not have heavier weights or access to a gym. Read on for some of these great ideas!

Longer Answer:

To help promote strength and muscle building, we have to continuously overload our muscles so they can repair and grow, to help ensure they can handle the load placed upon them when faced with future stimuli. The easiest way is to continuously use heavier weights as your strength improves. However, without access to more and more weight or a gym membership, we may have to get a bit creative with how to produce similar results. Check out some ideas below:

  • Elongate your "negatives"- The negative portion of a movement is usually the easier portion of a movement. Take squats for example: The positive portion of the movement is standing upward while the negative is the lowering downward. If it normally takes you 1-2 seconds to lower your body, extend that to 3-5 seconds instead. This recruits more muscle fibers as heavier weight does.
  • Supersets- Supersets are when you pair movements back-to-back without resting. You can do it an antagonist version where you work two opposite muscles (i.e. chest and back) or agonist supersets where you pair two movements from the same muscle.
  • Dropsets- If you happen to have SOME additional weight, dropsets are a great protocol to try as long as you are doing it safely. Dropsets include dropping down to the next available weight, without resting, to complete additional reps of a movement. If you were doing shoulder press for example, you would complete all your reps for a given weight, immediately followed by using a lesser weight, to complete more.

These suggestions are more applicable to our FM30X strength routines. If doing a metabolic/pyramid-style routine and you need more weight, consider working on decreasing your rest or completion time of the routine instead. Additionally, if your primary goal is more about weight/fat-loss, focusing more on the metabolic/pyramid routines, along with HIIT exercise, is more of the preferred option anyway. 

Yours in Health & Friendship,

- The Fit Mother Project

Customer Success Team