Setting the right level of your resistance training is crucial to getting the most out of your strength workouts.

Here’s a quick guide for progressing through different levels of difficulty and resistance during your strength training.

There are generally three phases that I progress my clients through when they first begin to work with me. These phases are also the same I suggest for people who are either new to resistance training, or who are reconditioned (meaning, they haven’t been exercising regularly for the last 6 months).

Phase I: Technique

In the first phase of your training, when you try a new workout or a new exercise for the first few times, you want to focus on getting down the technique of the exercises using little to no resistance. 

Your goal in Phase I is to master the movement with good form before you ever add more resistance.

On a scale of one to ten, (with one being no effort and ten being maximum effort), during Phase I, you want the exercises to be a difficulty and effort level of between four and six in every set. 

As I tell my clients—technique is king! It’s truly the foundation of all training.

If you don’t take the time to establish good technique using light or no resistance, you are just setting yourself up for injury and ineffective workouts later on down the road!

How long your Technique Phase lasts will likely vary from exercise to exercise. Some exercises you’ll master more quickly, meanwhile others might take more time. The hardest movements to master are the compound lifts like deadlifts and squats. While these exercises take more time to master than others (say bicep curls or seated cable rows), compound lifts are well worth the time it takes to learn, because they are the most rewarding exercises for total body engagement and overall strength gains.

Phase II: Technique + Strength

Once you’ve mastered the technique of an exercise, you can begin to challenge yourself with heavier resistance or with slightly more difficult variations of the exercises.

When you enter into the Phase II of challenging your strength, your focus should still continue to be on technique and form.

If you are lifting weights, a good set and rep range to practice in Phase II is between 3 and 5 sets of between 8-12 reps. Rest for between 1 and 3 minutes between each set and exercise. During this phase, you want to gradually increase the level of difficulty of the exercises by adding more weight or repetitions.

On that same scale of one to ten of difficulty, during Phase II, you want sets 1 and 2 to be about a four or five. By the end of sets 3, 4, and 5, you should feel challenged at about a six or seven, but no more than an eight. The last 2 or 3 reps of your last set should feel hard—but not so much that you have to sacrifice good form or technique.

As you get stronger, the same weight or reps will begin to feel easier—by the end of set 3, 4, or 5 the exercise may feel like a level four or five in difficulty. At that point you know it’s time to increase the number of reps or the amount of weight.

When this happens, make sure to increase only gradually the amount of resistance or the number of reps that you practice your exercises with. Many professionals recommend increasing by no more than 20% of the total volume at a time.

So if you’re ready to challenge yourself in your squats, for example, and you’ve been practicing 5 sets of 8 squats with two 10lb dumbbells (a total of 20 lb), you don’t want to jump immediately into squatting with a loaded Olympic barbell with the same number of sets and reps. Try first to increase your number of repetitions until you can do 12 reps easily, then increase the weight until 8 repetitions of each set gives you the right amount of challenge.

It may take a few sessions of practice before you find that “Goldilocks weight” that gives you the right balance of challenging your strength while allowing you to maintain form. 

Once you find your “Goldilocks weight” and number of reps, you want to see a gradual improvement in your performance every time you repeat that exercise or workout. You want to see improvement either in form, the number of reps you perform in each set, or in the amount of resistance you use in each set. 

But remember, improvement in number of reps per set or in the amount of weight only counts for reps in which you keep perfect technique.

Form is everything!

As soon as you feel your form begin to suffer, end your set immediately. Actually—it’s even better if you end the set 2 or 3 reps before you feel your form will start to slip. 

If you do find yourself losing form in an earlier set or early in the last set, it may be a sign that the amount of resistance that you’re practicing with is too much for your current level of strength. Bump the amount of resistance back down to a lighter resistance (or bump back down to a lower level version of the exercise) and try again. 

Make sure that you record what weight you use and how many reps you do in each set—as well as how long you rested. Tracking your performance in your workouts is an important way to monitor your progress as you get stronger. 

Your goal during Phase II is to learn how it feels to achieve that just right amount of resistance to use to trigger the strength-building adaptation in the body. You want to learn how to maintain proper technique of the exercises while challenging your muscles at the same time.

Phase III: Advanced Phasing

Once you’ve learned how to perform your exercises with heavier resistance (or with slightly more challenging variations) safely and effectively, then you can begin to tweak your workouts by changing up the amount of sets, repetitions, weight, and rest time that you use to achieve more nuanced adaptations in the muscles. You can also increase the difficulty of the exercises by changing up your stances and add an element of balancing to the challenge.

Advanced Phasing allows you to focus on developing one of four main areas of muscuar fitness—muscular strength, muscular power, hypertrophy, or muscular endurance.

It takes several weeks or even months for most people to reach this more advanced stage of exercising.

While all effective resistance training improves your muscular fitness—certain styles of training lend themselves to emphasizing different aspects of muscular fitness over others. I go more into detail on some of the more advanced phases of training in my post “Advanced Training Phases.”

Take Your Time

Once again, it’s really important to take your time in the first two phases of weight training and establish good technique.

Good technique will allow you to get the most benefit out of the later, more advanced phases of weight lifting. It will also help you to avoid injury!

Don’t be in a rush to get through Phase I and Phase II, and know that you may have to continue to work on technique in some exercises even when you’re ready to move on to more advanced phasing in others! That’s totally normal, just make sure to listen to your body.

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References:

Haff, Gregory G. and N. Travis Triplett. Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning. Fourth Edition. 2016: National Strength and Conditioning Association.

Yoke, Mary and Laura A. Gladwin. Personal Fitness Training: Theory & Practice. 2011: Aerobics and Fitness Association of America.

About the Author

Jayd Harrison is an online personal trainer and health coach in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina.

She helps clients to find their strength and work towards healthier lifestyles through personal training, group classes, and health coaching.