How To Know If You're Progressing in the Gym

I hear this a lot.

You want to know if your progress is good. If you’re doing too much/little. Are you plateauing?

All of these questions are bound to pop up in your head at some point.

That’s great!

This is how you find out if you’re reaching your goals.

Speaking of goals. If you don’t have a clear one yet, or don’t really know what you should be aiming for weekly/monthly/yearly. Follow my lesson on putting together a good goal and plan here. 

Sometimes judgement begins with a simple question.

“Do I feel like I’m making good gains?”

This can be:

• Based in emotion

• Based in data

• With expectations so improbable that it makes more sense to start playing the lottery.

Emotional answers are easy, you just look in the mirror.

I want to avoid those…

I don’t know about you, but the way I look changes each day. Partly because of pumps, partly because it’s hugely EMOTION based.

If you’re happy you look good.

If you’re sad you look bad.

This is where data comes in. As you build more muscle, you get stronger. Easy, right?

Well. No.

You’ve probably noticed already it’s not PR every week territory anymore.

You might even have some bad sessions where you’re weaker. Some where you’re wildly stronger for no reason. The consistency isn’t great.

This is normal.

It doesn’t mean you’ve suddenly gained/lost muscle.

So to work out if you’re progressing well. Take a look at your progress across a few months. Then compare it to the chart I made you below.

How do you match up?

Odds are you’re making similar progress to my table.

If not, we have two potential obstacles:

• You’re not following proper training principles

• You’ve hit a plateau

If you’re reading this you probably train properly.

If you don’t go listen to me talk about weekly net stimulus, exercise selection, and goal setting.

However, if you’re actually plateaued.

What can you do?

Look I promise a plateau isn’t scary. It’s good to spot as it means something isn’t working. A good reason why you need to be tracking your workouts 😉

The fix:

1. Take an extra day off before the workout to clear fatigue and see what happens

2. Make the exercise more stable and see if you start progressing

3. Change the joint angle you’re training the muscle and see if you start progressing

4. If all else fails, add volume.

Now this 4 step plan spans across month.

Step 1 can be done almost instantly, and it’s usually the reason for a plateau.

Step 2 and 3. Welllll. They each require at least a month and a half to determine if it’s the fix.

See making an exercise stable causes some quick progression instantly.

We need to find out whether or not the progression STAYS.

The same goes for changing the joint angle. We’ll overcome that novel stimulus, but then what? Go find out.

So that’s all there is to it.

It’s easy to grow, it’s easy to track, it’s easy to fix a plateau.

If you’re doing those three things, you’ll get there in no time.

If I were you I’d bookmark this post.

At the very least take a screenshot of the progressive overload chart, that’ll come in very useful.

I have my own checklist I go through to debug my progress, if you want me to send that over reply to this email with any emoji of your choice.

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher

P.S. Just had to throw a quick rant at the end of this because I wrote this email for ONE reason and that was to point out what progressive overload was, then I couldn’t find a place to fit it in… PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD IS NOT ADDING RANDOM STUFF. It is not adding sets, messing with rest time, adding more frequency, changing form, all of this is just a way to alter stuff. Progressive overload is only reps or weight. Progressive overload is on a set, by set basis. It’s a way to determine adaptation by viewing the fact that the muscle is now capable of pushing heavier loads, or doing more repetitions.