Linear progression
Linear progression is the scheme where load rises by a fixed amount every session or every week, with sets and reps held constant. It works while the client adapts session to session, which is a beginner's situation for some months, and it stops working once adaptation starts taking longer than the gap between sessions.
Linear progression is the scheme where load rises by a fixed amount every session or every week, with sets and reps held constant. It works while the client adapts session to session, which is a beginner's situation for some months, and it stops working once adaptation starts taking longer than the gap between sessions.
In practice
It is the best first programme there is precisely because it is boring: there is nothing to interpret, and a beginner adding 2.5 kg a week for four months ends up with a change no sophisticated scheme would have delivered faster.
The common mistake
Stretching it past its useful life. When a client misses reps two weeks running, the answer is not a smaller increment but a different scheme; insisting turns the programme into a run of failed sessions.
