Breaking the 10% rule of exercise

Here’s a good rule that will help you prevent injuries from exercise: Never increase the weight you lift or the number of reps by more than 10% per week. For example, if you were able to lift 100 pounds for three sets of 10, then next week you should only increase to 11 reps.

Many people will feel the need to increase the weight or reps radically. One week they will lift 100 pounds for 3 sets of 10, and the following week they will increase the weight to 130 pounds and force the same number of reps and sets. We do this thinking that the increased weight will stimulate better health or muscle, but it doesn’t.

The body can only adapt at a particular rate. If you try to overload what the body can handle, the tendons and muscles will fail. Usually this ends up as a tendonitis or muscle strain.

The interesting thing is that you may not feel the results of the injury until the next day. In many cases the body develops the injury over time. In this case it’s hard to pinpoint which workout caused the injury.

As a preventative measure I would recommend not breaking the 10% rule and build up slowly.