Hello, Readers!
Today was leg day. I know a lot of folks who absolutely dread leg day. Why? It is normally one of the more difficult workouts because you are working on the largest muscle group in your body. The beauty of leg day is the amount of stress you are putting on your body, which will FORCE it to adapt. This is the key to any workout. You have to stress your body’s systems to get it to react and react it will.
This is why some folks go to the gym and fail to see results. Bodybuilding is hard. This is why so many go and get ZERO results.
The key is a principle called progressive overload. Progressive overload requires that you increase the stress on your muscles when they have demonstrated they can handle the load you previously used. Here’s an example:
Let’s say you documented your bench press from last week. The sets you’ve assigned to yourself are 3 sets of 8-12 reps.
100lbs x 12; 100lbs x 12; 100lbs x 12
The above indicates it is time to move your weight up. Since you’ve given yourself a rep range, shoot for a 10lb increase and seek to hit 8 reps. If you can get more, do it. If you can’t get 8 reps with the 10lb increase, back it off 5 lbs and you should be okay.
One note I’d like to add about this is the necessity to continue using good form. You don’t want to jerk the weight, contort your body, or do any kind of cheating. The key to progressive overload is to make slight additions to the weight your muscles are moving while continuing to use good form. Good form will prevent injuries. When you make slight adjustments to your weight (5 or 10lbs), the changes will be mild enough where you shouldn’t see too much difficulty with the new weight.
I hope this makes sense. Here’s today’s workout below:
Squats warmup 95×6; 135×6
Working sets 185×6; 185×6; 185×6
Leg Press 298×6; 388×6; 478×6
Romanian Dead Lift 95×6; 115×6; 135×6
Leg Press Calf Raise 110×9; 130×8; 135×8; 140×8; 145×8; 150×8
Using what I’ve just explained here is what I’ll be doing on Leg day next week:
- Squats up to 195
- Leg Press up to 498
- Romanian Deadlift up to 145
- Leg Press Calf Raise up to 155
See how this works? Again, as stated before, if I am struggling too much with my new goal, I can always adjust back down. My rep range for this workout is 4-6 reps on the compound exercises I’m working for the next 8 weeks. The goal is to go as heavy as I can each week and increase each set by 5-10lbs per workout and continue to increase as I go. Some of my increases in this workout will move pretty quickly because I intentionally lift light at the beginning of every new routine.
Thanks for stopping by.
See you tomorrow for an Upper Body and Ab workout tomorrow.
Dave
