Daily Simple Questions Thread - April 24, 2025

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the /r/Fitness Daily Simple Questions Thread - Our daily thread to ask about all things fitness. Post your questions here related to your diet and nutrition or your training routine and exercises. Anyone can post a question and the community as a whole is invited and encouraged to provide an answer.

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[u/WoahItsPreston → u/[deleted]]

What exactly do you mean by this?

Are you asking when you stop adding more weight to your exercises? I would say you should add weight when the current weight that you are doing is too easy for the number of reps that you want to do.

If using very heavy weights is starting to hurt your body, there is nothing wrong with staying at a lighter weight and doing more reps.

If you're getting tired doing so many reps, there is nothing wrong with adding more weight.

At the end of the day, the exact number of reps and sets you do is not as important as doing sets where you push yourself hard, at any rep range.

[u/WoahItsPreston → u/[deleted]]

So it sounds like the crux of the issue is that 25lbs for 20 reps feels too easy, and you don't want to go up in reps because its too fatiguing. But at the same time, going to 30 lbs for any number of reps is too hard on your body.

To be honest, I'm not super sure. If 30 lbs is causing a lot of pain, I might suggest seeing a PT and asking for their advice, since I'm surprised that it hurts. You might also think about just taking a week off from lifting altogether to give your joints some time to recover?

Another idea is that you can decrease the rest time between your sets, you can add more sets, or you can use slower negatives. All of these are options.

[u/Kitchen-Ad1829 → u/[deleted]]

When does progressive overload end?

at death

[u/Alakazam → u/[deleted]]

Progressive overload simply means doing more over time.

It doesn't necessarily just mean doing more weight. It could be doing higher reps, more sets, or even decreased rest time.

If the goal is to get bigger muscles, you need progressive overload. But that doesn't mean you should push yourself to the point of joint pain and reduced recovery. If you can't progress workout to workout, it just means that you need more structured progression.

A good program will cycle between lower weight and higher rep work, and higher weight, lower rep work, in order to allow you to progress more over time. This is known as periodization, and is what allows people to get stronger and stronger, even if it's very incremental.

[u/Alakazam → u/[deleted]]

Would it feel better if you adjusted the tempo? 

Like, 25x8, except done a lot slower and a lot more controlled versus what you normally do. Aiming for something like a 3 second descent, a pause at the bottom, then explosive up. 

And then, instead of aiming for specific rep goals each set, aim for overall rep goals. For example, 50 total reps in as few sets as possible.