Are you making strength gains with your workouts?

You should strive to constantly improve your strength on a regular basis by either getting an extra rep on your sets, or adding an extra 5 pounds (or a couple kilos) to the bar.

This is what we refer to as "progressive overload". Now obviously it's not always going to happen each and every workout, but you should be seeing some noticeable progress in your strength as the weeks go by, especially if you have been tracking your workouts in a log book.

For your major lifts like bench presses, squats, deadlifts, rows, leg presses, etc. it should be fairly easy to make 5 pound jumps in weight on a regular basis. For the smaller isolation type of exercises like bicep curls, lateral raises, flys, etc. the gains will come slower.

There is a BIG difference between adding 5 pounds to a 200 pound squat compared to adding 5 pounds to a 20 pound dumbbell curl. So keep that in mind when striving to increase the weight that you're lifting.

Right now do a quick self evaluation…

Have you been making noticeable strength gains over the past several weeks?

Have you been able to set some new personal records with your major compound lifts?

If so then chances are you are NOT overtraining.

However, if you have been lifting the same weights for months on end, or if you had to reduce some of your weights on certain lifts, then you may very well be overtraining.

Gaining strength is one of the easiest ways to measure progress with your workouts. A bigger muscle is a stronger muscle (and vice versa) so if you are not getting stronger and moving forwards, then eventually you're going to start to back track.

In tomorrow's e-mail I'm going share the 2nd Key Element that you NEED to monitor in order to know if you are overtraining with your workouts.