Progressive Overload: The Oldest Idea in Strength Training

As the legend goes, in Ancient Greece there was a boy named Milo of Croton. As a young man, his neighbour had a newborn calf, which Milo would carry around on his shoulders every day. As the calf grew, so did Milo's strength; the previous day's carry having already prepared him for today's slightly heavier one. By the time the calf was a full-grown bull, the story goes, Milo was strong enough to carry that too.

In 1945, as the Second World War drew to a close, Dr. Thomas DeLorme was in Chicago, working at the Gardiner General Hospital. There, he met Thaddeus Kawalek, a veteran with a knee injury. Both shared a love of weightlifting, and drawing on his own experience recovering from a childhood illness through strength training, DeLorme convinced Kawalek to give his new approach a go.

So what does a legendary Greek strongman carrying a cow about have in common with a WWII-era doctor? They're two of the earliest mentions of progressive overload on record. But what is progressive overload, and why should you care?

In strength training, we want to get more muscular (hypertrophy) and stronger. In general, you need to try hard to achieve this, and as you try hard, you get stronger, so you have to try harder, so you get strongerer, so you try harderer, and so on. It's a simple concept, really!

Progressive overload helps you get more muscular (hypertrophy) and provides a neuromuscular adaptation (your nerves get better at triggering your muscles, so the same muscle produces more force). Both of these help develop strength!

Change something over time to make it harder. It's that easy. Higher weights (periodization), higher sets or reps (volumization), training more often (frequency), or training with less rest between sets (rest interval). Basically, take a training variable and slowly turn the dial up. Plotkin et al. (2022) recently conducted a study comparing overloading by intensity to volume, and found no appreciable difference; so the evidence backs that you can't go wrong on this!

As a powerlifter, you might be programmed a set of bicep curls at RPE 9 for 10-12 reps. Over time, you should see either the reps or the weight increase: that's your progressive overload. It happens automatically in most autoregulated training styles (an approach where you adjust your workout's intensity, volume, or load in real time based on your capacity on the day), so as long as the numbers go up, it's automatic.

Auriga's training planner (The Star) and viewer (The Hermit) help you plan out which variable to change to achieve overload, and show you how it's going. It's easy to check in and see what you've been doing week to week and block to block, all in one place: no more scrolling through training logs in your notes or a spreadsheet.

Auriga also automatically tracks your lifting to provide insights into how quickly you're getting stronger, with our Hierophant tool.