Understanding the Progressive Overload Principle for Yoga Teachers
As a yoga teacher or therapist, have you ever found yourself repeating the same poses in class, week after week, without seeing much change in your students' progress? You follow the cues you learned in teacher training, adjust alignment, and even introduce props, but somehow, the students seem stuck. They've hit a plateau, and you may be left wondering how to help them move forward in their practice.
You’re not alone in feeling this way. Many yoga teachers encounter similar challenges.
If you’ve ever felt can use strength work within the asana, it’s time to introduce them—and yourself—to a key concept in building physical capacity: the Progressive Overload Principle.
What is Progressive Overload?
Progressive overload is a foundational principle in exercise science that explains how the body adapts and becomes stronger over time. Essentially, it means placing muscles under increasing demand, which causes them to adapt and grow stronger. This gradual increase in load, applied consistently over time, is what helps the body to improve its ability to endure stress.
When applied to yoga, this principle can be a game-changer for helping students progress in poses that challenge them. Rather than staying in a static routine, progressive overload invites you to continuously challenge the body’s limits—within safe and gradual boundaries. If taught with mindful breathing, the student can learn to meet challenges with equanimity.
Why are Your Students Struggling?
Before diving into how progressive overload works in yoga, let’s address a fundamental issue: why are your students struggling with certain poses?
Yoga asana practice demands strength, flexibility, and endurance in different muscles and joints. If your students aren’t progressing, it may not just be a matter of alignment or practice time. It could be that their bodies haven’t been given enough stimulus to grow stronger or more flexible. Without consistently increasing the challenge, their bodies adapt to the current load and plateau.
This is where the progressive overload principle can help yoga students move beyond their sticking points.
How Progressive Overload Can Help in Postural Yoga
The key to applying progressive overload in yoga is to gradually increase the demands placed on the body in terms of strength, flexibility, and endurance. In Prema Yoga’s Functional Anatomy course, we explore how this concept integrates with yoga practice.
There are two major ways to approach progressive overload:
Load Magnitude: By increasing the intensity of a pose or movement, such as lowering your arms closer to the ground in a wall-supported chaturanga, you're adding a greater load on the muscles.
Load Volume: By increasing the duration or number of repetitions of a pose, you are challenging the muscles’ endurance. For example, holding Warrior II longer each time or repeating it multiple times in a sequence can increase the load volume.
When it comes to intensity, two common ways to assess a student's capability for increasing load are:
1 Rep Max: The maximum amount of weight or resistance someone can manage for a single repetition.
Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE): A subjective measure of how hard someone feels they are working, usually on a scale of 6 (no effort) to 20 (maximum effort).
While these concepts are more common in strength training, they can be adapted to yoga. For instance, in a challenging pose like chaturanga, you can experiment with varying arm positions or modifying other elements of the pose.
Applying Progressive Overload in Asana
To help your students build strength and confidence, you can start applying progressive overload in specific poses.
Let’s look at chaturanga as an example. Here are three ways to increase the load gradually:
Lower the Arms on the Wall: Start by practicing chaturanga against a wall. Gradually lower the angle, so the arms bear more weight.
Raise the Arms Higher: By raising the arms on blocks or a bench, students can ease into the full chaturanga pose, reducing strain on the shoulders and wrists.
Bend the Elbows: For students who aren’t ready for a full chaturanga, having them bend their elbows only partway can help build strength in a controlled manner.
The goal is to encourage small, consistent changes that allow the body to adapt and grow stronger.
Moving Forward with Your Students
Applying the progressive overload principle can significantly enhance your teaching and help your students break through their plateaus. Rather than sticking to the same routine or getting discouraged when progress slows, this approach allows both you and your students to take incremental steps toward improvement.
Are you a yoga teacher or wellness practitioner looking to incorporate yoga and mindfulness into your practice? Are you interested in learning more about Functional Anatomy? Please check out our annual online Functional Anatomy Training - as well as our comprehensive yoga therapy certification at Prema Yoga Institute.
Please be advised that the content of this blog is not to be used as a substitution for the opinions and services of your licensed healthcare professional.
