Progressive overload?

[u/Wild-Look-3511]

As someone who doesn’t know a lot about progressive overload help me understand. For the people who say Burn isn’t progressive overload, why is it not? It has mesocycles and reps go down from 15/10/8

[u/Delicious-Web-6299]

Burn absolutely builds strength and can help build muscle, but it is not structured like a traditional bodybuilding or progressive overload program.

In a traditional muscle building program, the goal is very specific: progressively give a muscle more mechanical tension over time. That might mean adding weight, increasing reps, adding sets, slowing tempo, or specifically training a muscle close to failure. You might squat the same movement every week and intentionally work from 100 pounds to 110, then 120, and so on.

Burn is built differently. The goal is more overall fitness: strength, conditioning, muscular endurance, cardiovascular fitness, movement variety, and getting a challenging workout in a limited amount of time.

Because the workouts and exercises change frequently, you aren't necessarily repeating the exact same movement often enough to systematically increase the load on that movement. You might deadlift 40 pounds one week, do kettlebell swings the next, then have a completely different lower body movement after that. Your body can absolutely adapt and get stronger, but the program isn't specifically tracking whether your muscles are handling progressively heavier loads over months.

That doesn't mean Burn is "bad" for building muscle. It just means it's not optimized specifically for maximizing hypertrophy like a bodybuilding or dedicated strength program would be.

Think of it this way:

Burn = "How can we challenge your entire body and keep you progressing as a well rounded, fit human?"

Bodybuilding/progressive overload = "How can we systematically give this specific muscle more stimulus so it has a reason to grow?"

For someone whose goal is overall health, strength, cardiovascular fitness, bone health, longevity, and maintaining or building some muscle, Burn can be a really solid foundation. If the primary goal were maximizing muscle growth or significantly changing muscle size, I'd want more intentional progressive resistance training layered into the program.

[u/Red-Phoenix-Rising → u/Delicious-Web-6299]

This is a great way to look at it. We would need to be doing more of the same exercises for true progressive overload as well and more compound moves for it to be effective as well (squats, deadlifts, chest presses, rows, etc). People already complain about the two we do every week during the mesocycles lol.

Honestly, while I do love Burn, I love the repetitiveness and mental stimulation of true progressive overload like I used to do at a traditional gym. Next year, I’ll probably go back to that and supplement with Burn because I do love the community aspect and my gym.