How muscle actually grows: progressive overload, effort and recovery

An evergreen guide to the handful of things that genuinely build muscle — and the many that don't. Progressive overload, training close enough to failure, full range of motion, weekly volume, tempo and the planned step back of a deload. Practical, honest, and grounded in well-established exercise science, with a worked week-by-week overload log you can copy.

Here's the whole thing in one sentence: muscle grows when you repeatedly ask it to do a little more than it's used to, with real effort, and then give it what it needs to recover. Everything below is detail on those three words — more, effort and recover. Strip away the supplements, the "muscle confusion", the special rep ranges and the soreness worship, and that sentence is what's left. The good news is that it's simple. The catch is that simple isn't the same as easy — it asks for patience and consistency, which is exactly where most people come unstuck.

A framing note before the detail. The mechanics of muscle growth are among the best-established ideas in exercise physiology, but people differ enormously — training experience, age, sex, sleep, genetics, nutrition, stress and health status all shift how quickly and how much anyone responds. So this is written as can, tends to and is associated with, never as a guarantee. It's general education, not medical advice, and it isn't a personalised program.

Progressive overload — what it is, and how much it matters

Progressive overload is the practice of gradually increasing the demand you place on a muscle over time, so it always has a reason to adapt. It's worth being precise about how strong that claim is, because it gets routinely overstated. The American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 resistance-training position stand (ACSM, United States) treats progressive overload as a foundational programming idea, but is explicit that progression is not necessary to achieve beneficial outcomes; increasing the stimulus in some way — load, volume, training frequency, exercise selection or duration — is, in its wording, likely a requirement only for those seeking continued, longer-term progress.^[1] So overload isn't the price of admission: training hard and consistently at a fixed weight still does you real good. It's what you need once you want the gains to keep coming. Everything else on this page — effort, range, volume, tempo, recovery — exists to serve progressive overload or to let you keep doing it sustainably.

The logic is a stress → recover → adapt cycle. Training is a stress that disturbs the muscle slightly. During recovery, the body rebuilds a touch stronger or larger than before — an idea often called supercompensation. But your body only adapts to what you actually ask of it (the overload principle). Give it the same weight, reps and effort forever and it has no reason to change once it's comfortable — so progress stalls. To keep adapting, the demand has to keep creeping upward.

Crucially, "more" does not only mean "more weight." You can progressively overload by:

• Adding reps at the same weight (e.g. 3×8 becomes 3×9, then 3×10).
• Adding weight once the reps are there (the classic small jump).
• Adding a set — more total working volume for that muscle.
• Improving the quality — fuller range of motion, more control, a bit less rest between sets, or getting closer to true effort at the same load.

Those levers matter because you can't add weight to the bar forever. Adding reps and quality is how you keep overloading in the long stretches when the load won't budge. A useful mental model is "double progression": hold the weight and build the reps up to the top of a range, then add a small amount of weight and let the reps reset toward the bottom of the range — and repeat. That's exactly the pattern in the worked log below. This isn't a consolation prize: when trained lifters were randomised to progress by adding load or by adding reps over eight weeks, both groups gained similar muscle size and strength.^[2]

A worked overload log, week by week

The principle is abstract until you see it on a page. Here's a realistic run on a single exercise — say a dumbbell goblet squat or a machine chest press — using double progression in a target range of roughly 8–10 reps, with every set kept at a hard-but-honest effort (RIR 1–2, meaning you stop with about one to two good reps left in the tank). Read the log, then the plain-English walk-through underneath it.

Read it as a loop. You hold the weight and add reps until you hit the top of your range (here, 10), then add a small amount of weight and let the reps drop back toward the bottom (here, 8), and climb again. Notice that the load only moved once across six weeks — from 20 kg to 22.5 kg — yet every single week was a genuine overload, because either the reps or the weight went up while the effort stayed honest. That's the engine. Repeat it for months and the small steps compound into a much stronger, more muscular version of the same lift.

A few honest caveats so you use this well:

• The exact numbers are illustrative, not a prescription. Your starting weight, your rep range and your jump size depend on the exercise, your equipment and you. A 2.5 kg step suits many dumbbell and machine movements; some lifts step in smaller increments, and micro-plates exist precisely so the jump doesn't have to be big.
• Real logs aren't this tidy. Some weeks you'll add a rep on only two of three sets, or a bad night's sleep will cost you a rep. That's fine. Progress is the trend over weeks, not a clean staircase every session. Don't force a jump you haven't earned.
• The higher up you go, the slower it gets. A beginner might run this loop every week or two; a trained lifter might take several weeks to add reps and far longer to add load. Slowing down is expected, not a sign anything's wrong.

Effort and reps-in-reserve (RIR)

Overload only works if the sets are actually hard. The leading explanation for why muscle grows is mechanical tension — the mechanical loading experienced by the muscle fibres themselves is the prime candidate for the signal that switches growth on.^[3] Cruise a set well short of a genuine effort and you've done work, but not the kind that drives much adaptation.

The most practical way to gauge effort is reps in reserve (RIR): the number of good reps you think you could still do when you stop. Stopping at RIR 2 means you had about two clean reps left; RIR 0 means you went to the point of true failure, where another full rep wasn't happening. Pooling the training studies as a continuous dose-response, muscle growth does improve as sets are ended closer to failure, while strength gains look similar across a wide span of RIR.^[4] But you don't have to reach failure itself: a meta-analysis of failure versus non-failure training found no evidence that going to momentary failure is superior for hypertrophy.^[5] The ACSM position stand lands on "near-failure" — a target of about 2–3 reps in reserve — and notes that taking sets all the way to fatigue does not improve gains in strength, size or power.^[1] That's why so many thoughtful programs park most working sets somewhere in the RIR 1–3 band — the worked log above sits at the harder end of it.

Judging RIR takes practice, and the error runs in a consistent direction — but not the one most people assume. Pooled across studies, lifters underpredict how many reps they have left, by about one rep on average: a set that felt like RIR 1 was often really RIR 2, and there was more in the tank than it seemed.^[6] Training background doesn't appear to change that, but predictions get more accurate the closer you already are to failure — which is exactly why occasionally taking a set to genuine failure is a useful way to recalibrate what "hard" really feels like.^[6]

Full range of motion

Range of motion is how far the muscle travels through a rep — a squat sunk to depth versus a shallow dip, a full stretch and squeeze on a curl versus a short mid-range pump. As a general rule, training a muscle through a fuller range — especially loading it well in its lengthened (stretched) position — tends to be at least as good as, and often better than, a partial range for building muscle. A meta-analysis of range-of-motion trials found full-range training produced significantly greater strength gains and greater lower-limb hypertrophy than partial-range training^[7], and the ACSM position stand lists full range of motion as the recommended technique.^[1] The stretched portion looks like a particularly potent part of the stimulus: a systematic review found that full range and partials performed in the lengthened part of the movement both produced more growth in the quadriceps and biceps than partials done in the shortened part, and recommended combining lengthened partials with full-range work.^[8]

There's a real quality-versus-ego trade-off here. Shortening the range usually lets you handle a heavier weight, which feels like progress and looks better in a log — but if the extra load comes from chopping the reps in half, you may be trading away stimulus for a bigger number. A full, controlled rep at a lighter weight is frequently the better muscle-building choice. "Full range" means full for your body and the exercise, done with control — not forcing a joint into a painful or unstable end position for its own sake.

Volume — how much is enough

Volume — usually counted as the number of hard working sets per muscle per week — is a primary dial for how much muscle you build. A meta-analysis of volume trials found a graded dose-response: each additional weekly set was associated with a small further gain in muscle size — about 0.37% per set.^[9] But it's a curve that rises and then flattens, not a line that climbs forever. Newer meta-regressions of the same literature show clear diminishing returns as volume climbs, and the ACSM position stand puts the plateau at roughly 18–20 sets per muscle per week.^[1][10] Past the amount you can recover from, extra sets stop paying their way — you can't adapt to work you can't recover from.

As a starting benchmark, the ACSM's recommendation for muscle growth is 10 or more hard sets per muscle per week.^[1] A review of volume trials in young trained men landed on 12–20 weekly sets per muscle group as a reasonable standard recommendation.^[11] Treat those as population-level guides with wide individual variation, not targets everyone must hit: beginners tend to grow on less, advanced lifters often need more for smaller further gains, and the right number for you is the most you can recover from while still progressing. Note this is set-count volume; Strathlon's volume-load tile measures a related but different thing (total weight × reps), which the training-volume guide unpacks in full.

Two practical notes. First, only hard sets count — sets taken to a challenging effort, as in the RIR section above. Padding your week with easy sets inflates the number without adding much stimulus; that's the origin of the phrase "junk volume." Second, how you spread those sets across the week matters far less than the weekly total: once weekly volume is matched, training frequency doesn't appear to change muscle growth — anywhere from one session a week to more than five.^[1][10] Splitting a big weekly total across two or more sessions is still the sensible default, simply because it keeps each session shorter and more manageable; it also matches the World Health Organization's global guidance (international) that adults do muscle-strengthening work covering all major muscle groups on two or more days a week.^[12]

Tempo and the lowering phase

Tempo is how fast you move through a rep — in particular, how you handle the eccentric (lowering) phase, when the muscle lengthens under load: the descent of a squat, the way down on a curl, lowering yourself in a push-up. Controlling the lowering phase, rather than letting the weight drop, keeps the muscle under meaningful tension for the whole rep, which is part of what makes the set count.

A sensible default is a controlled lowering of roughly two to three seconds, with the lifting (concentric) phase driven with intent — you don't need to make it artificially slow. That sits comfortably inside the range that works: a meta-analysis found similar muscle growth across repetition durations from about 0.5 to 8 seconds, while deliberately very slow reps — over roughly 10 seconds each — came out worse.^[14] The point isn't grinding every rep to a crawl; it's control. Bouncing out of the bottom, using momentum, or dumping the weight down shortens the tension and often robs the stretched position of load — the very position that tends to matter most. Deliberately controlled reps also let you own a fuller range, which ties tempo straight back to the range-of-motion section above.

Deloads — the planned step back

A deload is a planned, temporary reduction in training stress — typically cutting volume and/or the loads for roughly a week — to let accumulated fatigue clear while your retained fitness "surfaces." It's supercompensation applied at the block level: you take a deliberate step back so the next block starts fresh, instead of piling new work on top of buried fatigue. That is broadly how coaches in strength and physique sports describe it too — as fatigue management, a reset that lets an athlete feel ready to push again — though it's worth saying that this is coaching practice rather than settled trial evidence, and not every coach thinks deloads are necessary.^[15]

A common, sensible rhythm is a lighter week roughly every four to eight weeks of hard training. That's what competitors actually report doing: in a survey of 246 strength and physique athletes, deloads came around every 5.6 weeks on average (standard deviation 2.3) and lasted about six days.^[16] Go sooner if you're older, life stress is high, or the block was brutal; later if training has been lighter. In practice a deload keeps you training the movements so patterns stay grooved, but reduces sets, drops the loads, and stops well short of failure. It can also be auto-regulated — taken when fatigue signs appear rather than strictly by the calendar. The case coaches make for them is that a step back is what lets the next rise in your overload happen — that periodic reductions enable progression rather than interrupting it.^[15]

Recovery, protein and patience

Overload is the signal; the actual building happens between sessions. Three things protect that window, and none of them are exotic:

• Sleep. The single largest daily recovery window. Five nights of restricted sleep (four hours in bed) lowered the rate at which healthy young men built new muscle protein, by roughly a fifth.^[18] Sleep loss also drags down physical performance broadly — across 227 outcomes from 69 studies, exercise performance fell by about 7.6% on average.^[19] Quietly working against everything above.
• Protein and enough total energy. Muscle is built from protein, and building it is far easier when you're eating enough overall. The most-cited figure is about 1.6 g of protein per kg of body weight per day: a meta-analysis of 49 supplementation trials found that gains in lean mass stopped improving beyond roughly 1.62 g/kg/day, with the confidence interval reaching about 2.2 g/kg/day.^[20] The British Dietetic Association (United Kingdom) gives much the same picture from a different angle — around 1.6–1.7 g/kg/day for muscle gain, and 1.4–2.0 g/kg/day for strength and endurance athletes generally.^[21] Treat it as a guide, not a magic threshold, and spread it across the day. You can build muscle in a calorie deficit — in one randomised trial, men training hard on a high-protein deficit diet gained lean mass while losing fat^[22] — and that's most likely in people newer to training or carrying more body fat; a modest surplus makes it easier.^[23] The eating-for-results guide covers the nutrition side properly.
• Rest and patience. Muscle is built slowly. Visible change tends to be a matter of months, not weeks, and the rate is heavily individual. Strength often improves noticeably before size does — classically attributed to neural factors accounting for most of the early gain, with muscle growth taking over as the main driver after roughly the first three to five weeks.^[24] That early strength is real progress even when the mirror hasn't caught up.

For the full picture on the recovery half of the equation — sleep, rest days, stress, deloads and the signs of doing too much — the recovery-and-rest guide goes deep.

The big myths, corrected

Most muscle-building confusion comes from a handful of sticky myths. Each section above corrected its own; here are the broad ones, gathered in one place:

• "No pain, no gain — soreness means it worked." Soreness is a poor gauge of a session's quality and shouldn't be used to predict growth.^[13] Judge progress by whether you're doing more over time (the overload log), not by how sore you are.
• "High reps tone, low reps bulk." Physiologically unfounded. "Tone" is just muscle plus lower body fat. A meta-analysis of low- versus high-load training found muscle growth was similar across the loading spectrum, with heavier loads mattering for maximal strength^[26], and the ACSM position stand likewise reports that hypertrophy wasn't affected by load.^[1] The rep range mostly changes the flavour of the adaptation, not whether you build muscle at all.
• "You need to constantly confuse the muscle with new exercises." "Muscle confusion" isn't a real mechanism. When trained men were randomised to a fixed exercise selection or to exercises randomly varied every session, muscle thickness and strength gains were much the same — though the varied group did report better motivation to train.^[27] So some variety is fine and can help you keep turning up; randomness for its own sake just makes it harder to tell whether you're doing more than last time.
• "Lifting makes you bulky by accident." Building substantial muscle is slow and deliberate — months and years of consistent, progressive effort and adequate food. You won't wake up accidentally huge. This is especially worth stating for anyone (women in particular) put off strength training by this fear. Trained the same way, men and women show similar relative gains in muscle size, and women gain relative upper-body strength at least as fast — from a smaller absolute starting point, so change is gradual either way.^[28] The far more likely outcome is getting stronger, more capable and holding on to muscle while losing fat.
• "You have to feel a big pump / the muscle burning to grow." The pump and the burn are real sensations, but they're feedback on the set you just did, not a measure of what it built. They can accompany a good set; chasing them isn't the goal — progressive overload with real effort is.

Takeaways

• Progressive overload is what keeps progress coming. Gradually do more over time — more reps, then more weight, plus better range and control. The ACSM position stand is two-sided about it: progression isn't necessary to get real benefits from training, but increasing the stimulus in some way is likely a requirement only for those seeking continued, longer-term progress.^[1]
• Use double progression. Hold the weight and build reps to the top of a range, then add a small load and let reps reset — exactly the six-week log above. Adding reps counts as much as adding load.^[2]
• Train hard, near failure. Most working sets around RIR 1–3 (a couple of reps left) capture the bulk of the stimulus; you don't need to hit failure.^[1][5] Most people undershoot effort more than they overshoot it.^[6]
• Use a full, controlled range. Load the muscle through its full range — especially the stretched position — rather than chasing a heavier half-rep.^[7][8]
• Do enough hard volume, not endless volume. At least 10 hard sets per muscle per week, with 12–20 a reasonable band for trained lifters; the curve flattens around 18–20, and only hard sets count.^[1][11]
• Control the lowering phase. A ~2–3 second eccentric with an intentful lift beats both super-slow reps and free-falling the weight.^[14]
• Deload every four to eight weeks. Competitive lifters take a lighter week roughly every 5–6 weeks; it clears fatigue and doesn't cost you your gains.^[16][17]
• Protect recovery. Sleep, enough protein (about 1.6 g/kg/day) and total energy, and patience are where the building actually happens.^[20][21]
• Ignore the myths. Soreness, muscle confusion, tone-vs-bulk rep ranges and pump-chasing are distractions. Overload with effort, recover, repeat.

If you take one thing away, make it the worked log: hold the weight, add a rep; hit the top of the range, add a little weight; keep the effort honest; repeat for months. That single loop, done consistently, is most of muscle building. Strathlon's role is to remember your last performance and show the trend, so "am I doing more than last time?" is always answerable at a glance.

References

The figures and findings in this guide come from the sources below. Where a number reflects established guidance rather than a single trial, the citation is to the position stand of the professional body that issued it, with the country it belongs to named — guidance differs a little between nations, and no one country's advice is the last word.

1. Currier BS, D'Souza AC, Fiatarone Singh MA, Lowisz CV, Rawson ES, Schoenfeld BJ, et al. American College of Sports Medicine Position Stand. Resistance Training Prescription for Muscle Function, Hypertrophy, and Physical Performance in Healthy Adults: An Overview of Reviews. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2026;58(4):851–872. Issued by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM, United States). PubMed 41843416 · PMC12965823
2. Plotkin D, Coleman M, Van Every D, Maldonado J, Oberlin D, Israetel M, et al. Progressive overload without progressing load? The effects of load or repetition progression on muscular adaptations. PeerJ. 2022;10:e14142. PubMed 36199287 · PMC9528903
3. Wackerhage H, Schoenfeld BJ, Hamilton DL, Lehti M, Hulmi JJ. Stimuli and sensors that initiate skeletal muscle hypertrophy following resistance exercise. Journal of Applied Physiology. 2019;126(1):30–43. PubMed 30335577
4. Robinson ZP, Pelland JC, Remmert JF, Refalo MC, Jukic I, Steele J, Zourdos MC. Exploring the dose–response relationship between estimated resistance training proximity to failure, strength gain, and muscle hypertrophy: a series of meta-regressions. Sports Medicine. 2024;54(9):2209–2231. PubMed 38970765
5. Refalo MC, Helms ER, Trexler ET, Hamilton DL, Fyfe JJ. Influence of resistance training proximity-to-failure on skeletal muscle hypertrophy: a systematic review with meta-analysis. Sports Medicine. 2023;53(3):649–665. PubMed 36334240 · PMC9935748
6. Halperin I, Malleron T, Har-Nir I, Androulakis-Korakakis P, Wolf M, Fisher J, Steele J. Accuracy in predicting repetitions to task failure in resistance exercise: a scoping review and exploratory meta-analysis. Sports Medicine. 2022;52(2):377–390. PubMed 34542869
7. Pallarés JG, Hernández-Belmonte A, Martínez-Cava A, Vetrovsky T, Steffl M, Courel-Ibáñez J. Effects of range of motion on resistance training adaptations: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports. 2021;31(10):1866–1881. PubMed 34170576
8. Kassiano W, Costa B, Nunes JP, Ribeiro AS, Schoenfeld BJ, Cyrino ES. Which ROMs lead to Rome? A systematic review of the effects of range of motion on muscle hypertrophy. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2023;37(5):1135–1144. PubMed 36662126
9. Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Sports Sciences. 2017;35(11):1073–1082. PubMed 27433992
10. Pelland JC, Remmert JF, Robinson ZP, Hinson SR, Zourdos MC. The resistance training dose response: meta-regressions exploring the effects of weekly volume and frequency on muscle hypertrophy and strength gains. Sports Medicine. 2026;56(2):481–505. PubMed 41343037
11. Baz-Valle E, Balsalobre-Fernández C, Alix-Fages C, Santos-Concejero J. A systematic review of the effects of different resistance training volumes on muscle hypertrophy. Journal of Human Kinetics. 2022;81:199–210. PubMed 35291645 · PMC8884877
12. Bull FC, Al-Ansari SS, Biddle S, et al. World Health Organization 2020 guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2020;54(24):1451–1462. Issued by the World Health Organization (WHO, international). PMC7719906
13. Schoenfeld BJ, Contreras B. Is postexercise muscle soreness a valid indicator of muscular adaptations? Strength and Conditioning Journal. 2013;35(5):16–21. doi:10.1519/SSC.0b013e3182a61820 · full text (author copy, PDF)
14. Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn DI, Krieger JW. Effect of repetition duration during resistance training on muscle hypertrophy: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Medicine. 2015;45(4):577–585. PubMed 25601394
15. Bell L, Nolan D, Immonen V, Helms E, Dallamore J, Wolf M, Androulakis Korakakis P. "You can't shoot another bullet until you've reloaded the gun": coaches' perceptions, practices and experiences of deloading in strength and physique sports. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living. 2022;4:1073223. frontiersin.org (full text)
16. Rogerson D, Nolan D, Androulakis Korakakis P, Immonen V, Wolf M, Bell L. Deloading practices in strength and physique sports: a cross-sectional survey. Sports Medicine – Open. 2024;10(1):26. PubMed 38499934 · PMC10948666
17. Bickel CS, Cross JM, Bamman MM. Exercise dosing to retain resistance training adaptations in young and older adults. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2011;43(7):1177–1187. PubMed 21131862
18. Saner NJ, Lee MJ, Pitchford NW, Kuang J, Roach GD, Garnham A, et al. The effect of sleep restriction, with or without high-intensity interval exercise, on myofibrillar protein synthesis in healthy young men. The Journal of Physiology. 2020;598(8):1523–1536. PMC7217042
19. Craven J, McCartney D, Desbrow B, Sabapathy S, Bellinger P, Roberts L, Irwin C. Effects of acute sleep loss on physical performance: a systematic and meta-analytical review. Sports Medicine. 2022;52(11):2669–2690. PubMed 35708888 · PMC9584849
20. Morton RW, Murphy KT, McKellar SR, Schoenfeld BJ, Henselmans M, Helms E, et al. A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of the effect of protein supplementation on resistance training-induced gains in muscle mass and strength in healthy adults. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2018;52(6):376–384. PubMed 28698222
21. British Dietetic Association (BDA, United Kingdom). Sport and exercise nutrition — Food Fact Sheet. BDA, May 2026 (review date May 2029). bda.uk.com/resource/sport-exercise-nutrition.html
22. Longland TM, Oikawa SY, Mitchell CJ, Devries MC, Phillips SM. Higher compared with lower dietary protein during an energy deficit combined with intense exercise promotes greater lean mass gain and fat mass loss: a randomized trial. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2016;103(3):738–746. PubMed 26817506
23. Slater GJ, Dieter BP, Marsh DJ, Helms ER, Shaw G, Iraki J. Is an energy surplus required to maximize skeletal muscle hypertrophy associated with resistance training? Frontiers in Nutrition. 2019;6:131. PMC6710320
24. Moritani T, deVries HA. Neural factors versus hypertrophy in the time course of muscle strength gain. American Journal of Physical Medicine. 1979;58(3):115–130. PubMed 453338
25. Kreider RB, Kalman DS, Antonio J, Ziegenfuss TN, Wildman R, Collins R, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2017;14:18. Issued by the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN, a United States-based body). PMC5469049
26. Schoenfeld BJ, Grgic J, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. Strength and hypertrophy adaptations between low- vs. high-load resistance training: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2017;31(12):3508–3523. PubMed 28834797
27. Baz-Valle E, Schoenfeld BJ, Torres-Unda J, Santos-Concejero J, Balsalobre-Fernández C. The effects of exercise variation in muscle thickness, maximal strength and motivation in resistance trained men. PLOS ONE. 2019;14(12):e0226989. PubMed 31881066 · PMC6934277
28. Roberts BM, Nuckols G, Krieger JW. Sex differences in resistance training: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2020;34(5):1448–1460. PubMed 32218059

This is general educational information, not medical or coaching advice. The physiology described here is well-established in broad terms, but individual variation is large, and mechanisms are framed as tendencies and associations rather than certainties — any figures or ranges are general guides, not promises. Anyone with pain, an injury, a health condition, or who is pregnant or postpartum, should consult a qualified professional before starting or changing an exercise or nutrition programme. See our Terms for more.

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