Besides consistency within your routine, increasing your weights is the other most important factor to your success. If you’re always lifting the same weight, you’ll never get stronger. And getting stronger is an important piece to being more confident, feeling less fragile, being able to do everyday tasks easier (like shovelling snow), and living life to the fullest without feeling limited.
A common question we get is “when and how do I increase my weights”…
There are many ways to do this, but at The Vault, we love these two simple approaches:
- Work through a rep range
- Rate of perceived exertion (RPE)
Here is how each one works:
Increasing your weights: Working Through a Rep Range
Step 1: Choose your rep range, for example, you may want to do 12-15 reps
Step 2: For each exercise, find a weight that is challenging, but manageable, for 12 reps
Step 3: As 12 reps starts to get easier, then complete 13 reps, then 14, then 15
Step 4: Once you can complete said weight for 15 reps, slightly increase the weight and aim for 12 reps again
Step 5: Keep repeating this process
Increasing your weights: Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE)
This is a scale of 1-10 used to determine how hard the exercise is, where ‘1’ represents hardly working and ‘10’ represents maximal effort (read more about how RPE works here).
If we recommend that you work at an RPE of 8 for 12 reps, you need to use a weight that makes that particular exercise feel like an intensity of 8/10 when you do your 12th rep.
Eventually, this weight will start feeling easier for 12 reps and your RPE of 8 will start to feel like an RPE of 6 or 7.
At this time, you can slightly increase the weight so that the exercise feels an RPE of 8 for 12 reps. And then keep repeating this process.
Summary
Strength training is the fountain of youth. And increasing your weights is an integral piece to get stronger and reap the benefits. These two simple strategies are a great way to help you accomplish this.
Programming at The Vault is specially curated to help you get the most value out of your time and see results. If you need support, our team would love to connect with you. Book a free ‘No Sweat’ Intro today to unlock your potential!
