Progressive overload is pivotal for increasing performance, whether it's increasing the weights, the sets, or the reps - you need to increase the stress to progress over time.
Developing a stronger work capacity in the gym can help lay the foundation of hypertrophy, strength and power to follow. The underlying principle of increasing your work capacity is to allow yourself to tolerate and recover from more work, session to session and week to week.
Volume, or amount of training, is thought to determine the magnitude of a physical adaptation. The more work you do, the bigger the results you get, quite simple, and applies to more than just lifting weights. Progressing volume, and allowing your body to be conditioned to higher workloads will result in larger responses to training, in whatever direction you are going in.
There are a number of ways to progress from week to week in the gym. Generally speaking, any linear progressive program usually increases the load each week, and possibly decreases the reps. For example Week 1, 4x10 @ 100kg; Week 2, 4x8 @ 110kg. This would be considered an incredibly “normal” approach to strength training.
While intensity does go up, the total workload decreases, thus potentially decreasing total volume and also your work capacity. Instead of this typical approach, what I’m suggesting is maintaining or very gradually increasing intensity, while challenging yourself through volume and your ability to tolerate it. While also challenging your recovery ability through setting a time limit. Setting a time limit on the work you’re doing is important as simply increasing sets week to week will not guarantee that you are improving, just staying in the gym longer and putting up with more.
Work Capacity Training Examples
Here is an example of what I'm talking about, set a timer for a set amount of time, say 30 mins for this example. Select 2 exercises that are agonist / antagonist like a push and pull, OR If this is used for the lower body then potentially 1 exercise may be enough such as front squats. Go as hard as you can, and get as many sets as possible in the time frame, hitting your target reps each time. Record your results.
Time: 30 mins Weight Reps Total Sets?
A1: Incline DB Press 40kg 10 5
A2: Chin Ups BW+5kg 6 5
Lets say, for example, the target number of sets was 5, in the example above the athlete has achieved 5 total sets of both exercises in 30 mins - great! However as he has not surpassed this, with 6 or more sets, then he has to keep the same weight for next session and try again. Once the athlete can achieve 6+sets in the time frame, then the load can be increased, usually by around 2.5%, or whatever gym maths makes sense.
If the athlete was to only achieve 4 or less sets, then they would have to reduce the load by around 2.5% and try again again next session.
By no means are these strict rules, just general guidelines. You may want to increase the time frame to 45 mins, and use something like 10 sets of 4 as a target. Or possibly decrease the time frame to 10 minutes and try to achieve 4 sets of 12 for some accessory work. These are just some other examples that may work, depending on the goals.
After completing a work capacity block of 4-8 weeks, you should hopefully be able to tolerate a higher workload, in a shorter period of time. From here, moving to a more traditional intensity increasing program, or an intensification phase will reap the rewards of your previous block of training.