The Best Way to Track Progressive Overload (With Examples)

Progressive overload means gradually increasing your training’s difficulty, typically by lifting heavier weights, doing more reps with the same load, or doing more sets for an exercise. This ensures that your workouts are challenging enough to continue forcing your body to build strength and muscle.

Adhering to this principle is the essence of ongoing muscle growth, strength gain, and improvements in cardio capacity. But how do you track your performance at the gym and ensure you’re doing better than before?

The answer is straightforward when you have the proper tool and know exactly what metrics to track. Let’s discuss.

Key Takeaways

1. Progressive overload means doing more challenging training over time to force your body to adapt to more physical stress and continue getting stronger and building muscle.
   
   
2. A progressive overload example is to lift a certain weight until you get 12 reps across all sets with proper form. Then, add 5 lbs and work up to sets of 12 reps again. Rinse and repeat.
   
   
3. Tracking your workouts is the most practical way to eliminate guesswork from the equation and stay objective when looking back to determine if you’re doing better than before.
   
   
4. The main ways to log workouts and track overload are to use a physical log, spreadsheets, a note-taking app, or a workout-logging app like Hevy.
   
   
5. With Hevy, you can easily reference previous workouts’ performance, track progress on a graph for each lift, monitor your volume load, examine all completed workouts, and more.

What is Progressive Overload?

The progressive overload principle states that you must continually subject your body to more physical stress to keep seeing improvements in strength, muscle mass, and overall athletic performance.

Doing so forces your body to continue adapting to handle the same stress in the future. In contrast, doing the same thing repeatedly only works to a certain point because your body doesn’t see a reason to keep adapting.

According to the SAID (specific adaptation to imposed demand) principle, the body adapts to the type and magnitude of stress it needs to overcome. For instance:

• If a person runs, they become more endurant
• If a person lifts heavy, they get stronger
• If a person practices explosive movement, they become faster and more agile

How much stress you place your body under impacts the rate of progression, so long as you can recover in time and perform well in each workout. Ways to improve your recovery include getting adequate sleep, maintaining low stress, and proper nutrition.

How to Progressive Overload

In weight training, one common way to create an overload is to lift a heavier weight, but it can also come from:

• Doing more reps with the same weight
• Doing the same sets and reps but with less rest in between
• Doing the same workout more often
• Maintaining performance while losing body fat and weight

These are the more popular and objective measures, making them the go-to options for most trainees. 

Other ways to create and monitor overload include:

• Lifting the same weight more explosively
• Lifting the same weight through a greater range of motion
• Lifting the same weight with better form and more control

Here’s a basic progressive overload example for one exercise over 8 weeks:

This is a basic linear progression scheme in which the trainee works up to 15 reps per set, increases the weight by 5 lbs, and works up to 15 reps again. The goal is to incrementally push your limit and expand your work capacity to continue forcing adaptation.

Why Tracking is Essential for Progressive Overload

Progressive overload is essential if you want to continue improving. Without it, you would only exercise (as opposed to train) and maintain what you currently have.

This is why you need to log your workouts––and yes, doing that can be tedious, especially compared to the alternative of getting to the gym and simply lifting. But think about it this way:

Logging training details like exercises, the number of sets, the reps per set, and even your RPE means you have concrete information on what you’re doing and if you’re improving. Even if you use a notebook, you can flip the pages a few months back, see how much you were lifting on a given exercise, and compare it to now. 

Without this, you would solely rely on memory. The problem is that there are a lot of details to remember. 

• What exercises do you do, and in what order?
• How many sets do you do per exercise?
• How much weight do you lift on each movement?
• How many reps did you do on each set?
• How long do you rest between sets?

For most people, this would mean thinking about each workout, exercise, and set, which is tedious and a waste of time and energy. 

But by logging your training, you can review last week’s progress and monitor your performance over a longer period to see if it’s trending up. More importantly, you can see if you’re plateauing and make changes to your training to kickstart progression.

How to Log Your Progressive Overload Training

As discussed, you must log your strength training to see what you’ve done before and create the necessary overload. Here are key metrics to log:

• Exercises – write the specific exercises and variations you’re doing.
  
  
• Sets – write the number of sets per exercise.
  
  
• Weight – log the load you lift on each set.
  
  
• Reps – write the number of reps per set, especially on bodyweight exercises like push-ups. Alternatively, log the duration for exercises like the plank.
  
  
• RPE – you don’t need to log RPE for every set; maybe just log it for the main lifts you want to improve: squats, bench press, deadlifts, and such.

It’s also nice to leave room for small notes to clarify different things, such as:

• Modifying or doing an exercise in a specific way
• Aches or discomfort you might have felt during an activity
• Life events that might have affected your performance on that day

That extra information can be helpful when reviewing your workouts later to better understand why you performed a certain way, better or worse. If you’re using a basic log, your entry for one exercise can look like this:

Decline push-ups: 5 sets x 18, 18, 17, 16, 14 @ RPE 8, 9, 9, 9, 8 (Used my push-up handles)

I can log all of that information when using Hevy. The app allows me to add any exercise I want, add as many sets as I need, mark my sets by type (say, warm-up), and log the load, reps, and RPE per set. 

As a bonus, I can see my previous workout’s performance on each exercise to set a goal for my current session and write a note for each exercise. When doing duration-based activities like static holds, I can track and log my duration per set and see how it improves over time.

The great thing is that I don’t need to write each workout from scratch. Instead, I’ve created routines (reusable templates), and I only need to update some of the numbers for each workout, which makes for a seamless and efficient logging experience.

How to Track Progressive Overload

Logging your workouts is only helpful if you also take the time to review your history and make changes when necessary. Let’s go over some simple ways to track your data, starting with the most straightforward option:

1. Simply try to do a bit better than before.

The simplest way to ‘implement’ progressive overload in your resistance training is to see your performance from the previous workout and aim to exceed it, even slightly. For example, did you do 3×8 with 155 lbs last workout? Try to get 3×9 with the same weight today. 

In Hevy, you can easily do that by seeing what you did before in the ‘Previous’ tab. The app lists your set-to-set performance, so you know how hard you need to train to match or exceed what you did before.

Linear progression can work for many people, and you’d be surprised at the improvements you can see in a year of serious training. 

For instance, you can go with the classic method of increasing the number of reps, then adding weight, and then increasing the reps again. Like so:

20 lbs x 15, 15, 15 ⇒ Increase to 25 lbs > 25 lbs x 13, 13, 12 ⇒ Don’t increase ⇒ 25 lbs x 15, 14, 14 ⇒ Don’t increase ⇒ 25 lbs x 15, 15, 15 ⇒ Increase to 30 lbs ⇒ And so on.

2. Track your volume load.

Tracking and increasing volume load (calculated by multiplying weight time reps times sets) is also a good way to see if you’re doing more over time. 

For instance, if you did three sets of 10 reps with 200 lbs last week, your volume load for the exercise was 6,000 lbs. If you do 3 sets of 11 reps with 200 lbs this week, your volume load will increase to 6,600 lbs. 

In Hevy, you can access your volume load for most exercises and display the data on a graph to see how your performance changes.

However, keep in mind that volume load can be misleading. For example, if you lift a lighter weight for more reps, this will cause the volume to go up:

5×6 with 225 lbs = 6,750 lbs

5×15 with 135 lbs = 10,125 lbs

In this example, the volume load is around 33% higher, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the training is more effective. So, when monitoring your volume load, consider the load per set and whether the rep and set scheme make sense for your goals.

3. Track the weight you’re lifting.

Monitoring the weight you lift on an exercise is the most straightforward way to track strength improvements. For example, if you’re doing a training cycle where you must do sets of five reps and you’re progressively lifting more, you’re doing good. 

Hevy allows you to track the weight you’re lifting on each exercise and display the data on a graph. You can also select any individual performance from the graph to see the whole workout for more data.

For instance, the above graph shows a decrease in the weight used, and I can click on that date to see why. In my case, it’s because this was part of a planned deload workout.

4. Track the total reps.

Another effective way to stimulate muscle growth is to do more reps over time. If you mostly do bodyweight exercises at home, this might be your primary method of creating overload.

Research suggests that high loads for fewer reps and lighter loads for more reps can promote growth, so long as you train close enough to failure. 

For instance, let’s say you’re doing incline push-ups at home. You can start with five sets of 10 reps and aim to do more over time. To get a complete picture, track your best set performance and the total number of reps per workout.

5. Review your old notes.

The numbers provide most of the information needed to make sound programming decisions. However, reviewing notes associated with specific workouts is also beneficial, as they might provide crucial information for future workouts. 

You should take notes for specific exercises or workouts when it makes sense and helps you better review your performance in the future. 

For example, let’s say you felt exhausted after a long workday and had an impromptu deload session instead of skipping the gym. Writing a note to go along with the workout would help explain that deviation in your performance when looking back. 

You can also write notes to list training details that might be relevant––for example, you modified an exercise in a specific way. 

With Hevy, you can write a note for any exercise of your workouts as well as a description for the entire session before saving it to your profile.

Workout Tracking Methods And Their Pros & Cons

1. Physical Log

Pen and paper is an old-school approach that’s still used today. Having a physical log and writing on paper can be satisfying and help you stay motivated to log workouts. Plus, pocket-sized logs are easy to carry around and use to record your gym sessions. 

That said, this method is not without its drawbacks. For one, you need to write every workout from scratch, whereas other methods allow you to use a template and simply fill in the day’s numbers. Second, making changes can be messy. 

Also, as discussed above, it’s not just about logging workouts. You must also review your performance and make changes when necessary. 

Using a physical log can be tedious and time-consuming because it often means flipping back and forth between the pages to try and spot a trend. You might even need to write performance numbers side by side for easier comparison.

2. Spreadsheet

A more modern approach is to use spreadsheets, such as Google Sheets. These are customizable, easier to edit, and accessible through your computer and phone. 

You can also create workout templates once and not have to write each session’s details from scratch. 

They are certainly a more modern solution but come with the same drawbacks:

1. Typing numbers into a spreadsheet on your phone mid-workout is clunky. You often need to zoom in and out, and it’s easy to get frustrated when you tap the wrong cell.
   
   
2. While you can set up spreadsheet columns to track week-to-week performance (which works better than a physical log), analyzing progress is still a manual process and takes time to access older data on specific exercises.

3. Note-Taking Apps

Note-taking apps like Evernote are another modern alternative with some distinct advantages. I used to be a fan of this approach because I could freely write the details for every workout, include notes, and store my data in one place.

However, these are still not the ideal solution because you don’t get a streamlined way to analyze your training data and look at long-term trends. Sure, all your numbers are there, but you must scroll up and down each note to see what you did before and how it compares to now. 

The advantage is that it’s easier to log workouts in a gym setting, but it’s still not the most practical way to go about it.

4. Workout Logging App

Workout logging apps are the most practical solution because you can:

• Create reusable templates and start each workout with a single tap
• Change any of the training variables to fit your needs
• Log your performance from set to set (weight, reps, and duration)
• Write exercise and workout notes for more information

A good workout logger like Hevy also allows you to:

• See your performance from the previous workout
• Log your RPE on each set
• Mark individual sets by type (like a warm-up or drop set)
• Set up and use an automatic rest timer

There’s a field for each variable to keep things clean, organized, and easy to review later. 

You can scroll through your past workouts to see all the details. Individual graphs display important workout data, such as reps, weight, duration, and overall training volume.

Common Mistakes When Tracking Progress

Before wrapping up, let’s review some common mistakes trainees make when logging workouts and tracking their progressive overload:

• Logging inconsistently – log inconsistently, and you’ll get incomplete data, making it hard to tell how you’re doing in the long run.
  
  
• Obsessing over the weight they lift – some people, particularly those who mainly care about getting stronger, may only focus on the numbers they lift, which misses important nuance.
  
  You should always examine this data in the overall context of your training and consider other factors, such as your technique, the number of reps you’re doing, how long you rest between sets, and how hard you’re pushing (RPE).
  
  
• Ignoring proper form – any type of progress, be it lifting more weight or doing more reps, is only valid if you can maintain proper form throughout. This means training through the same range of motion, using the same tempo, and maintaining a proper body position.
  
  For instance, you might be squatting more, but does it count if each 10-lb weight increase reduces your range of motion?
  
  
• Changing variables too often – while some people change the exercises, their order, and other details to ‘shock’ or ‘confuse’ their muscles, this often does more harm than good because it’s harder to tell if you’re doing better than before.

For example, if you constantly change the order of your exercises, how can you know if you’re doing better or worse on any of them? It’s far easier to get reliable performance data if you always do your exercises in a particular order.

Final Words

Progressive overload is a key training principle based on the idea that your body needs to overcome increasingly more training stress to continue adapting. So, you must train harder and do more to keep building strength and muscle.

Tracking your workouts is essential for providing an adequate overload because it helps you see what you’ve done in the past, how you’re doing now, and whether you’re stressing your body enough. 

However, an essential progressive overload rule is to focus on proper technique while striving to do more over time. One common mistake is to focus solely on the numbers, such as the weight on the bar or the number of reps.

Using Hevy allows you to build workouts and reusable templates, log your workouts on your phone or smartwatch, and analyze workout stats like your volume load, weight, and number of reps. You can also review old workout or exercise notes and easily refer to the previous session’s performance to set a goal for the current workout.

Click here to learn about Hevy’s features, or download and use the app for free.

Hevy – Workout Tracker

Create and log your workouts with Hevy and track your progress.

Create my workout

Hevy – Workout Tracker

Create and log your workout with Hevy and track your progress

Create my workout

FAQs

1. Should I increase weight, reps, or both?

You can leverage load or repetition progression to gradually increase the stress and force your body to adapt. For example, rep progression works great for bodyweight exercises, whereas adding more weight is ideal for strength gains.

2. How often should I try to increase the weight?

Most people work up to a specific rep target and increase the weight when they reach it on all working sets––for example, lift 135 lbs for four sets of 6 reps. Once you do it, add 5 lbs and work up to 6 reps again. 

Remember proper technique and be conservative rather than aggressive to avoid a situation where your form suffers, and you lift too much weight.

3. Can I progressively overload if I’m not lifting more weight?

Progressive overload can come in different forms, including lifting more weight, doing more reps, and even completing the same amount of training in less time. Rep progression is often the go-to method for creating an overload, especially when doing an isolation exercise for a small muscle group like the shoulders.