More Intensity!
If you are working with weights, this is a no brainer. Need to make an exercise harder? Add more weight! Programmes like Starting Strength
Increasing intensity works best for strength training, as you are increasing the stress on your body from session to session. This is what makes you stronger.
The same principle also applies to body weight exercises. Fine control of the intensity of an exercise is still possible even though you cannot change your body weight – it is a question of changing the angle of your body, or your posture to create less favourable conditions – for example, bending your knees slightly while doing a leg raise makes it easier, while reducing the distance between your feet makes a squat harder.
While this is not difficult to do, doing it consistently and keeping track of the variation can be a bit of a hassle, so we usually follow a two step protocol where we first increase the number of repetitions, and then start over with a significantly more intense exercise once we are satisfied with the number of repetitions we can do.
More Reps!
Depending on what your training goals are, increasing repetitions may or may not be useful. For endurance training, more repetitions are of course better. For strength training, keeping the number of repetitions contained allows you to put more intensity into each individual repetition.
If you can easily control the intensity, as you can with weights, you can keep the number of repetitions fairly constant, and work with a high load that allows you to do few successive repetitions – say five repetitions in good form. Regardless of the exercise or the number of repetitions, always remember that we are always talking about good repetitions in good form!
For body weight exercises, there is a lot more variation; 25 at a time is a good target for most average exercises like regular push ups, while more challenging ones like a one armed push up will give you a good workout with 10 or less.
More Sets!
Breaking down exercises into sets of repetitions allows you to train longer at a higher intensity than you would be able to do otherwise. You might find it impossible to 25 weighted squats in one go, but break them down into 5 sets with a couple of minutes in between, and suddenly it becomes a lot easier!
Adding more sets is a good way to progress power exercises – anything where you are relying on sudden bursts of strength, like jumps or clapping push ups.
Keeping the number of repetitions per set low – 3 or so is fine – but repeating for a large number of sets allows you to recover between sets and put as much power as you can into the first repetition of each set.
More Speed!
Adding speed isn’t our favourite way of progressing, although if you’re into high intensity interval training building up your speed is a great goal!
If you go down this route, make sure you can maintain good form at speed, otherwise you will not be getting much out of your effort other than an increased risk of injury.
All the above can be mixed and matched depending on what you are doing and what you want to achieve. There’s a lot of scope for experimentation and fine tuning, so as always try, see what works for you, and adjust!
Photo credits
Cover image: Progress graph whiteboard from pdpics.com
“Daihatsu Mira Jet Car” – TurboDoman (CC BY-SA 3.0)
“Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery” – ClarkSui (CC BY-SA 3.0)
“A huge Russian doll set in a Portobello Road shop, Notting Hill, London, England.” – Arpingstone (Public domain)
“An instructor in the Freedom Hall athletic complex uses a stopwatch while recruits run a 1.5-mile track during a Physical Fitness Test” – U.S. Navy photo by Chief Photographer’s Mate Chris Desmond (Public domain)
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