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Principles of Weight Training | Fitness and Exercise Glossary

There are four basic principles of weight training:

1. Overload
2. Progression
3. Specificity
4. Rest and Recovery

These principles work together to ensure that a person meets their weight training goals.

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Rest and Recovery (Principles of Weight Training) | Fitness and Exercise Glossary

Rest and recovery is the fourth principle of weight training. It says that each muscle requires adequate time to rest and recover between workouts.

The actual duration of the rest and recovery period may vary from individual-to-individual based on factors like their current physical condition, prior weight training experience, diet, and the intensity and volume of their training.

A good rule of thumb is to provide 48 hours of rest and recovery time before working the same muscle again. 

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Specificity (Principles of Weight Training) | Fitness and Exercise Glossary

Specificity is one of the four principles of weight training.  Specificity means that you train your muscles and choose your exercises, weight, reps and sets with a specific goal in mind.

These goals typically fall into one of four groups:

1. strength
2. size (hypertrophy)
3. endurance
4. power

Depending on the goal, the nature of the exercise you choose, the weight, the amount of reps and sets, and the pace at which you perform them will vary.

For example, training for strength typically involves using a heavier weight that causes the muscle to fail at between one and four reps, while endurance training uses a lighter weight that causes failure at 15 to 20 reps.

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Progression (Principles of Weight Training) | Fitness and Exercise Glossary

One of the four principals of weight training, progression is the act of gradually adding to the amount or type of stimulus applied to the muscle during each exercise.  

Without consistent progression in your workouts, you won’t overload your muscles sufficiently to promote optimum increases in hypertrophy (muscle size), strength and endurance. Progression can be achieved by continuously changing the stimulus applied to the muscle.

These changes can include progressively increasing the weight used during an exercise, the total amount of work performed (volume and reps), time that the muscle is under tension (tempo), frequency of training, and the introduction of additional exercises or variations on the exercise performed.

Also see: overload; principles of weight training

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