The Importance of Progressive Overload For Skinny Fat People

Making consistent progress in your training is one of the most important things you need to do on your road from skinny fat to muscular.

Too many people start training with enthusiasm but fall into a comfort zone and stop pushing themselves after a while.

To that end, I’ve put together this guide. We’ll go over what it means to progress, how to apply the principles in your training, and much more.

Let’s dive in.

What Does It Mean to Progress With Your Training?

Progressing with your training means doing more work over the weeks and months. When looking back at your workouts from months ago, you should see improvements in some measures.

The most obvious sign of progress is being able to lift heavier weights. Or, in the case of resistance band training, using thicker bands. But progress can also come in other forms. You need to know and spot them to make progress tracking much more effective. Examples include:

• Doing more reps with the same resistance (band, free weight, gym machine, or other). For example, if you could bench press 135 pounds for five reps two months ago, and you can do ten reps today, you’ve made progress.
  
  
• Doing more reps on a bodyweight exercise variation. For example, doing more reps on exercises like push-ups and pull-ups is a sign of progress.
  
  
• Doing the movement with a smoother form and longer range of motion. For example, squatting the same weight but with better form and by reaching greater depth.
  
  
• Doing more challenging exercises. For example, starting with knee push-ups and slowly working up to decline push-ups.
  
  
• Doing the same workout but in less time. For example, it might have taken you 50-55 minutes to finish a workout before. But if you can do it quicker with the same level of exertion now, you’ve improved.
  
  
• Doing the same training while losing fat. For example, if you maintain your performance but drop ten pounds of fat, you’ve improved your relative strength.
  
  
• Doing repetitions with more speed and explosiveness. For example, if you can lift a specific weight with much more speed and explosiveness than before, you’ve gotten better.
  
  
• Using the same load and doing the same number of reps, but for more sets. For example, if you can do five sets of five reps with 135 pounds where you could only do three sets of five before, you’ve improved.

And yes, the above recommendations also apply to women. If you’re a girl looking to fix the skinny fat look, your training program should include elements of progression for you to see good results.

The Importance of Seeing Improvements

You might be wondering after reading the previous point, “Why do I need to push myself so hard? Can’t I be consistent and fix the skinny fat look with less effort?”

Yes, I get it. Pushing for improvements might seem daunting. But progress is necessary for achieving a fitness transformation. The principle of overload states that to build muscle, get stronger, or see other athletic improvements, we must push ourselves above and beyond what we’ve done before. In other words, our training needs to be difficult and uncomfortable, which is one good reason why home training can work. As long as you keep pushing yourself, you will see positive results.

The only exception is straight fat loss, which primarily depends on a calorie deficit. So long as you train consistently and eat fewer calories than you burn, you will get leaner. But we could also make the argument that not training hard enough will lead to more significant muscle loss. So, we circle back to the importance of getting uncomfortable and pushing to improve.

Your body doesn’t care about your aspirations for guns of steel, washboard abs, or an armor plate chest. Its primary goal is to keep you alive, so it does everything to achieve the objective.

Training adaptations (muscle growth, strength gain, etc.) occur because your body perceives training as stressful. So it adapts to that stress to better handle it in the future. But for your body to keep adapting, training stress needs to increase. If it doesn’t, you will adapt fully, the training will stop being disruptive, and you won’t make any new progress.

Still, remember that proper form always comes before any other improvement. If you’re lifting more weight or doing extra reps, but your technique worsens, you’re not improving. Too many people start following gym routines and train hard but never make progress because of poor technique.

Is Training to Failure Good For The Skinny Fat Look?

Training to failure refers to the act of doing repetitions until your muscles cannot produce enough force to keep going. For example, if you grab a pair of dumbbells and start curling them, failure will occur when you can no longer lift the weights through a full range of motion and with good form. If you have to cut the range of motion short or start using momentum, you’ve hit failure.

The question is, should you train to failure? On the one hand, it makes sense. Pushing yourself hard is the foundation of ongoing progress, which is essential. But on the other hand, training to failure can lead you down a slippery slope.

For one, training to failure can prolong your recovery and hinder your performance on subsequent sets and in following workouts. Sure, you might squeeze out a bit more work now. But that extra effort might lead to fewer reps later, leading to poor training results.

Second, training to failure often leads to technique breakdown, which can lead to an injury, especially in less experienced lifters.

I only recommend training to failure near the end of your workouts. For example, if you’re doing the last couple of sets of bicep curls or a similar exercise, push yourself hard. But be mindful of your technique and avoid excessive swinging and momentum to do more repetitions. Other than that, train within a repetition or two away from failure. Doing so will challenge you a lot, but you won’t get too tired to keep training productively.

How to Track Your Training Progress

Tracking your training progress is essential. Too many trainees hit the gym consistently but never record their training, which only leads to confusion. How will you know if you’re improving if you don’t know where you were a month ago?

I recommend tracking your skinny fat training progress with a simple workout log. Write each workout as it happens, and take time to review your performance every two to three weeks. Here is how it might look like:

October 5, 2021 (date)

Flat barbell bench press (exercise) – 5 sets x 5, 5, 5, 5, 4 (reps) w/ 50 kg (load)

Do the same for all the exercises you do. Sure, it takes some time, and it can be tedious. But recording your workouts as they happen is a great habit to establish. Doing so will provide you with actionable data throughout your training career. If things are going well, you can keep doing the same thing. In contrast, if your performance stagnates (or goes down), you can take actionable steps to fix the bottleneck.

If you don’t want to use a workout log and prefer a digital solution, a simple note-taking app like Evernote will get the job done. I’ve used that option for a long time and found it to be helpful. It also works for bodyweight training and calisthenics workouts. Here is how I did it:

5. Once I finished my training week, I would sit down for 15 minutes and write each workout in a notebook.

6. I would then go back to the app, change the dates, and possibly add new weight targets on some movements for the upcoming week.

The above process was beneficial for two reasons. First, I got to record my workouts and include all the relevant data. Second, I forced myself to see my previous week’s performance before each exercise, which immediately gave me a goal for that current workout.