What is your determining factor to increase your sets/reps ? How about with weights, how much would you change and does the sets/reps decrease to adjust to the new weight while gradually increasing ?
I was thinking others might share their approach to it.
There are many different philosophies on this, and it will depend on your goals (strength, hypertrophy, etc) and also just your own preferences.
My basic strategy is to train something like 3-4 sets of a given exercise, and aim for each set to be in the 8-15 reps range. So I’ll start with a weight where I can do say 4 sets of 8. Next time I do that exercise, I’ll aim to increase reps to 4 sets of 10 or 12. Then when I do maybe 4 sets of 15, the following session i would increase the weight and go back to 4 sets of 8 reps at the now higher weight. And so on.
It’s not exact, I make sure I’m paying attention to form, and listening to feedback from my body, and sometimes I’ll progress faster, other times I plateau for ages in a given exercise.
It’s also not the only way I try to fit in progressive overload. I may add a finisher exercise for the same muscle, or do certain exercises to failure, add another set to an exercise and so on. The overall aim is to keep challenging my body in different ways.
Solid advise, I appreciate it. Great to read others approach to this. Many thanks!