Squats don't build booty! But This Does

If your goal is to build lean muscle, grow your booty, and get in the best shape of your life, then you’re going to want to know about progressive overload.

Progressive overload is the progressive increase in weight, repetitions, and intensity of your workouts. It makes it so that your muscles are under constant stress so that you can continuously see results without plateauing. 

When your body gets used to a certain weight, number of repetitions, or intensity of a workout, it stops being challenging for your muscles to execute that movement. 

And we all know that in order to continue to see results and improve yourself, you have to keep things challenging. 

How can I avoid plateauing? 

Your body is designed to adapt and your muscles are no exception. Simply put, if you want to continually make more gains in muscle size, strength, and endurance, you’re going to have to increase what you demand of your body. 

By making sure you continuously challenge yourself in the gym, you can guarantee that you not only get to see results, but that you see them much faster too.

3 Ways to Avoid Plateauing

Resistance

Probably the most obvious way to make your muscles work harder, increasing your weight by even 5 pounds can help you see long lasting results FAST! 

Say you’re squatting 45lbs for 8 reps without breaking a sweat. Well next time you squat, try bumping that number up to 50lbs for the same amount of reps. 

Increasing the weight will make them work harder which will make them get stronger, bigger, and endurant.

And if you don’t have the ability to increase for any reason, don't worry- it’s not the end of the world. In this case, you would maintain your resistance and instead, increase your endurance!

Endurance

Adding weight or increasing resistance isn’t the only way to make your muscles work harder, you can also play with your endurance!

If adding weight is a no-go or you simply don’t have access to weights, then working on increasing your number of reps per exercise is an easy way of keeping your muscles working and growing!

Ideally, for muscle growth and endurance, you’d want to rep a certain weight between 8-12 times. 

For progressive overload, simply increase your number of repetitions or sets for each exercise! This will make your muscles work harder, as they’re having to perform more, and grow bigger! 

Note that increasing resistance will decrease your endurance, and vice-versa. Resistance and endurance have a negative relationship, you can either lift more or do more. And if you’re able to do both, then you’re going to want to work on controlling the intensity of your workouts.

Tempo

Your tempo is the speed or the pace with which you execute movement. By slowing down your movement, you force your muscles to work harder without having to increase weight or repetitions. 

Working on your tempo during movement is the simplest and most overlooked way to implement progressive overload in your workouts and can be done in many ways. 

Let’s take squatting as an example to better understand how you can play with your tempo to build muscle.

Say you’re doing squats following a 3-0-3 tempo. All this means is you would lower yourself into a squat with a count of 3 seconds, pause for 0 seconds, and immediately push yourself up to standing with a count of 3 seconds. 

If that doesn’t bring the heat, try a 5-2-5 tempo where you lower yourself into a squat with a count of 5 seconds, hold at the bottom for 2, and push yourself up to standing with a count of 5 seconds. 

Keep it simple

The problem with so many of us is not knowing where to start. It’s like everywhere you look, you have an overwhelming amount of people telling you to do an overwhelming number of things just to see results.

The good thing is, however, that you don’t need to get too crazy with it. A simple set of resistance bands and a few core exercises are all you need to be able to see progress and result in the comfort of your own home- or even at the gym!

At Build-A-Booty, we believe in sticking to the basics to get you looking and feeling like your best self ASAP. That's why we set out to create the best, long lasting workout equipment designed to have you up your weight, and challenge your body whether you're at home or at the gym! From resistance bands to workout programs built by professional trainers to help you reach your goals, you can find everything you need to reach your dream body at Build-a-booty. 

Because life is too short not to love the body you’re in.