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Intensification Methods for Progressive Overload

This is an excerpt from Bodyweight Blueprint, The by Brad Kolowich & Jr..

Intensification Methods for Progressive Overload

Progressive overload is vital for results, whether that means an increase in sets, repetitions, or weight lifted or just finishing your workout sooner. Overload is more challenging when you’re using body weight than when you’re dealing with dumbbells, barbells, and weight machines. However, it is not impossible. This is where intensification methods come in.

These methods make bodyweight training more intense so that you can progressively overload your bodyweight exercises. Making bodyweight exercises more difficult has two central tenets. One is to increase the muscle’s time under tension (TUT) through methods such as lifting tempo, pauses, and rest–pause sets. The other is to structure a set to get more work done quickly or to focus on a particular muscle and overload it, such as by using giant sets, compound supersets, and tri-sets.

Increased Time Under Tension

The duration of muscle stress during an exercise influences the muscle’s growth and endurance. By increasing TUT through techniques such as adjusting the lifting tempo, incorporating isometric holds, and using rest–pause sets, you can get stronger, lose fat, and add muscle.

One way to increase TUT is by slowing down the lifting tempo, or the time spent during an exercise’s concentric (lifting) and eccentric (lowering) phases. For example, instead of performing a push-up by lowering for 1 second and lifting back up for 1 second, you might extend the lowering phase to 3 seconds and the lifting phase to 2 seconds. This slower tempo keeps the muscles engaged for longer, enhancing muscle fiber recruitment and metabolic stress.

Another effective TUT method is incorporating isometric holds, where you pause at the most challenging point of an exercise, such as holding the bottom position of a squat or the midpoint of a push-up. This static contraction significantly increases the muscles’ time under tension, promoting strength and endurance. Rest–pause sets, which involve taking brief rests within a single set to extend its duration, also help maintain muscle engagement and maximize hypertrophy.

The benefits of increasing muscle TUT are numerous. First, it leads to greater muscle hypertrophy by stimulating more muscle fibers and causing microtears, which repair and grow back stronger. Second, increasing metabolic stress through extended TUT can improve your muscles’ ability to store and use glycogen, which is essential for sustained energy during workouts. Third, this approach can lead to better muscle definition and overall strength, as the continuous tension challenges your muscles to adapt and grow. Incorporating techniques to increase time under tension in your bodyweight training routine is essential to improve your workout intensity, stimulate greater muscle growth, enhance endurance, and improve strength.
The following sections further explore the three key techniques to increase muscle TUT: tempo adjustments, isometrics, and rest–pause sets. Each method offers unique benefits and can be integrated into your training routine to maximize results.

Tempo
Each repetition you perform has four distinct parts: the eccentric contraction, bottom position, concentric contraction, and lockout. Manipulating how long each part of the repetition takes is referred to as tempo. When lifting with tempo, each part of the repetition is represented by the number of seconds it takes. Let’s use a 3-1-3-1 tempo push-up as an example: Take 3 seconds to lower your chest to the floor (eccentric contraction), pause for 1 second at the bottom, take 3 seconds to push back up (concentric contraction), and pause for 1 second at the top. Using tempo with your bodyweight exercises is a simple—but not easy—way to intensify your bodyweight exercises.

The main benefit of performing tempo lifting is that it increases the muscular TUT. When using external resistance, it’s easy to bump up the resistance to create more tension. However, with body weight, you don’t use external resistance, which makes tempo even more important. Increasing a muscle’s TUT is crucial for improved hypertrophy and relative strength. Using tempo encourages you to slow the exercise down and focus on form. If you have any technical glitches, it’s also much easier to identify them when you’re moving slowly rather than quickly.

Isometrics
There are three main types of muscle contractions: eccentric, concentric, and isometric. Eccentric contractions are where the muscle is overcome by force as it lengthens. In concentric contractions, the muscle overcomes a force as it shortens. An isometric contraction is when a muscle produces force, but there is no muscle movement. The most recognizable isometric exercises are front and side plank variations. Think of an isometric contraction like a tug of war between your muscles, with you being the winner.
There are two main types of isometric contractions: overcoming and yielding. Overcoming contractions push or pull—against pins in a squat rack, for example—at a specific point in the range of motion to break through sticking points. Yielding contractions involve holding an exercise at the halfway point of the most challenging position as you fight against gravity. Yielding contractions are the type we are most concerned with in bodyweight exercises. Classic examples are holding the bottom of a push-up after a controlled eccentric contraction or holding the bottom of a squat with your thighs parallel to the floor.

While isometrics are not fun, they do have benefits when it comes to bodyweight training. First, like tempo, they increase the difficulty of an exercise by increasing the muscle TUT. Second, yielding isometrics have been known to increase muscle force production by 10 to 15 percent when they are incorporated with a concentric contraction. Producing muscle force without movement also helps you to train around joint pain, if that is an issue.

Rest–Pause Sets
Rest–pause sets will quickly become a favorite if you like pushing yourself close to muscular failure and achieving a considerable muscle pump. Due to their intense nature, rest–pause sets are typically performed during the last set of the exercise, because you’re extending the set to technical failure. Start with a certain number of repetitions—say, anywhere from 8 to 15 as an example—until you reach a point where one more repetition is not possible with great form. Then rest for 10 to 20 seconds before doing as many more repetitions as possible with your body weight. Boom—instant flex appeal.

The most significant benefit of a rest–pause set is that it allows you to perform more work with the same load, increasing workout volume and muscular TUT for better potential hypertrophy and relative strength gains. Particularly with bodyweight training, this is a relatively safe intensification method.

Structure of Sets

Structuring sets in specific ways is another method for making bodyweight exercises more challenging, because it will influence TUT and progressive overload. By strategically organizing your exercises, you can maximize muscle engagement, prolong the duration of muscle activation, and continuously challenge your body, which is crucial for achieving progressive overload. Before we discuss different ways to structure sets, the following are three methods to change the effect of each set you perform.

Exercise Order
As we learned from the previous chapter, the order in which you perform exercises can significantly affect muscle fatigue, performance, and overall workout effectiveness. Starting with compound exercises and sets that engage multiple muscle groups ensures you use your maximum strength and energy when you are freshest. This approach increases the TUT on your muscles and enhances the overall intensity of the workout. For example, beginning with push-ups before moving on to more isolated triceps dips ensures that your larger muscle groups are worked to their full potential before fatigue sets in. This approach also ensures that smaller muscle groups, which might be secondary in compound movements, get fully fatigued when targeted directly afterward, promoting more significant hypertrophy.

Rest Periods
Having the control to adjust rest periods based on your goals can play a vital role in maintaining workout intensity. Shorter rest periods keep the muscles under continuous strain, increasing TUT and promoting metabolic stress. This approach is effective for hypertrophy, because it keeps the muscles working with less time to recover. Controlling your rest periods can help you better achieve progressive overload.

Repetition Manipulation
Varying the number of repetitions in your sets can also affect TUT and muscle adaptation. Higher numbers of repetitions with lighter resistance increase the duration your muscles are working, promoting endurance and metabolic stress. You can target different muscle fibers and energy systems by manipulating repetitions, ensuring improved muscle development and progressive overload.

By incorporating strategic set structures into your training routine, you can significantly increase muscle TUT and ensure progressive overload. This enhances muscle hypertrophy and strength, improves endurance, and maximizes workout efficiency. Strategic set structures ensure your muscles are continuously challenged, leading to greater strength gains, muscle hypertrophy, and improved endurance.

Structuring your sets in specific ways can significantly intensify your bodyweight workouts. By organizing your exercises strategically, you can maximize TUT and continuously challenge your body. In the following sections, we will explore different set structures—supersets, compound sets, tri-sets, giant sets, and circuits—that can help you increase TUT and enhance the overall intensity of your workouts.

SUPERSETS
Supersets are when you do two back-to-back exercises, with or without rest, usually followed by a 2- to 3-minute rest. Supersets are great when you want to improve your body composition and training efficiency. You can combine almost any exercise to build muscle, lose fat, or strengthen a weak body part. Supersets effectively double the work you do while improving your training efficiency. There are many types of supersets, but the two main types are agonist and antagonist. With agonist supersets, you perform two back-to-back exercises on the same body part. For example, you might do a self-resisted single-arm hammer biceps curl followed by a self-resisted single-arm reverse curl. Antagonist supersets are where you perform two back-to-back exercises for opposing muscle groups—say, biceps and triceps. For example, you might do a standard push-up and then a reverse-grip bar inverted row.

Both types of supersets—agonist and antagonist—increase the efficiency of your workouts, because you’re reducing the rest periods between exercises. This will increase the intensity of your training and improve your training efficiency. It may also lead to body composition improvement and better results due to the shorter rest periods, and back-to-back muscle contractions in supersets can help provide an additional stimulus for hypertrophy and fat loss as well.

COMPOUND SETS
A compound set often gets confused with a superset. Although both are done without rest, a superset consists of two back-to-back exercises for opposing muscle groups, while a compound set consists of two or more back-to-back exercises for the same muscle group. The thought behind a compound set is that doing two or more different exercises for the same muscle group will stimulate potential hypertrophy benefits to build up a lagging muscle group or increase its size. However, be warned that it is an intense method, and performance is often reduced with each compound set done. An example of a compound set for the back muscles would be a pull-up and then an inverted row, or for the lower body, performing a hip thrust then a step-up.

Compound sets allow for greater honing of a particular muscle group, because the muscle group is under constant tension. Performing compound sets builds a muscle group and can improve the conditioning and work capacity of a specific group of muscles. Plus, when you’re using two more exercises for the same muscle, changing the angle of resistance with another exercise for the same body part allows for better muscle development.

TRI-SETS
Tri-sets involve doing three exercises back to back with little or no rest in between, and much like supersets, the possibilities are endless. You can program three different exercises for the same muscle group to build up a lagging body area, perform an upper- and lower-body tri-set to maximize fat loss, or add a mobility exercise to two strength exercises to improve movement and assist with recovery. Tri-sets are ideal for people who want to maximize their workout efficiency. Doing a bodyweight tri-set will reduce transition time between exercises, because you only use one tool: your body. Another benefit of tri-sets is the great potential for gains in hypertrophy when focusing on three exercises for one muscle group, and combining three exercises that train separate muscle groups can also be effective for fat loss.

GIANT SETS
Giant sets are the beefed-up cousin of supersets: You perform four or more exercises consecutively without any rest between them. Once you have completed a giant set, rest for a specific time and then repeat it. You can perform a variety of giant sets with exercises that target different muscle groups or target a single muscle group for an extra challenge. You have many options to combine giant sets, depending on your fitness goals.

The most significant benefit of giant sets is workout efficiency, mainly if time is an issue. Picking two upper-body and two lower-body exercises and performing them three or four times will give you a great full-body workout quickly. Giant sets are also an excellent option to improve cardiovascular conditioning using strength exercises, because doing four exercises without rest will get your heart beating. If you like exercise variety and a physical challenge, then giant sets are right up your alley.

CIRCUITS
Circuit training involves performing one exercise after another with little to no rest between them, resting at the end of the circuit, and then going again. Circuits typically include between 5 and 10 exercises, depending on how much time you have. No two circuit trainings are alike, because there are multiple ways to do them and the possibilities are endless. If you like exercise variety, then circuit training is for you. Circuit training is an excellent method for all levels of exercisers and is an efficient way to reduce unwanted fat quickly.

With supersets, compound sets, tri-sets, and giant sets, there is limited rest between exercises, and fatigue may become a factor. When doing circuit training, such as with eight different exercises, by the time you return to the first exercise in the circuit, that particular muscle group or body part is well rested and ready to go again. Circuit training is practical because it’s a time-efficient way to perform a workout. After all, you’re resting a little between sets, and when a circuit is programmed intelligently, you are not too tired until the end of it.

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