The 2% Rule of Progress

How do you know if you are progressing at a decent rate or when it is time to change your program?

You can use the 2% Rule of Progress.

As Charles Poliquin taught us, the 2% rule of progress states that you should be able to add 2% more weight to the bar or add 1 rep per set for a given exercise.

For example, if you squatted 100kg for 5 reps in your first workout, then you should be able to either do 102kg for 5 reps or 100kg for 6 reps in your second workout. Once you can no longer progress at this rate then it is time to change program as you have adapted to it.

Now this is assuming that recovery is optimized. If nutrition, sleep, hydration, etc aren’t in order, you can’t use the 2% rule of progress as effectively.

As a trainee becomes more experienced it drops from 2% to 1% of progress. This generally takes 5-6 years of training properly.