How Do Weightlifters Increase Their Weight?

The key to successful weight training is progress. You can do as many bench presses and biceps curls as you like, but if you aren't making any gains, you’re wasting your time. Successfully building strength and establishing muscular endurance requires more than just slapping some iron around. To increase the weight you lift over time and realize true progress, you need to set up an effective routine that factors in several fundamental principles.

  1. Progressive Overload

    • The key principle of increasing the weight you lift is progressive overload. You need to lift enough weight through enough sets and repetitions to significantly break down your existing muscle tissue that it regrows stronger. You have two basic choices for pursuing progressive overload: Increase your workout volume or boost the intensity of your exercises. To increase volume, simply perform more repetitions of each exercise through more sets. To boost intensity, you can increase the speed of your reps, or you can adopt a progressive set structure.

    Sets and Reps

    • Progressive set structures are designed to supersede your body’s ability to adapt to external stress, and in most cases efficiently promote muscular hypertrophy. Hypertrophy is the breakdown of muscle tissue that then regenerates with increased volume and strength. Common progressive set structures include the pyramid set and the 5x5 set. The pyramid set begins with a particular weight with a certain number of reps, then you increase the weight and reduce the number of reps until you reach an apex. For example, you would start with eight reps of an exercise at 25 pounds. Immediately following those eight reps, you would add 5 pounds and do six reps, and so on. The 5x5 set is similar, and requires you to do five reps per set for five sets. The first two reps of each set begin with a weight that’s 85 percent of your max, while the final three require 95 to 100 percent of your max.

    Exercise Selection

    • The exercises you select also determine how effectively you can build muscle mass and endurance, which determine how quickly you’ll be able to increase the weight of your lifts. Whether you use free weights or machines, you want to select a balanced mix of routines that both engage a broad range of muscles, while also specifically isolating important muscles. For example, work large to small, targeting big muscle groups like the pectorals and the latissimus dorsi, then work your way down through the shoulders, triceps and biceps. Swap out exercises that target the same muscles every four to six weeks, because your body adapts to routines easily.

    Recovery Time

    • One important factor for increasing the weight you lift is allowing your muscles enough recovery time to sufficiently regenerating. A common mistake many novice weight lifters make is that they exercise too frequently without any rest time in between workouts. When the muscle fibers are broken down during a weight-lifting session, the new tissue needs between 24 and 48 hours to regrow, and the closer you lean to 48 hours, the more thorough the regeneration will be. If you forgo recovery time, you will severely inhibit your ability to lift more weight, because all you will accomplish is the repeated breakdown of muscle tissue, without any regrowth.