Posting this under the heading it deserves: Progressive overload when the scale is falling Everything below is what sits behind that.
Trying to establish the boundary conditions on progressive overload. The general claim is fine; I want to know where it stops holding, because that is where I am operating.
Three edge cases below, in increasing order of how far outside the usual range they sit.
Anybody returning after a break should expect to start lower than they left, and expecting otherwise is where injuries come from.
It is a small point and it changes the answer, which is an awkward combination.
Post #3 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
Two claims get bundled together under progressive overload and they need separating. The descriptive one — this is what was observed — is usually well supported. The causal one — this is why — usually is not.
Almost every disagreement in threads like this one dissolves once you say which of the two you are making.
I changed my mind about progressive overload after someone here asked me for the source and I could not produce one. That is worth saying out loud because it is the ordinary way it happens.
The reports here that state the programme, the load and the timeframe are useful. The ones that state an outcome are not.
Adding a source would improve this post and I do not have one to hand.
Two things can be true about progressive overload at once: the mechanism is plausible and the evidence for the size of the effect is thin. Most of the argument here is people defending the first against attacks on the second.
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