A little more than last week

The first month's body letters asked for numbers. The second month's ask for load.

In 1945 an Army physician named Thomas DeLorme was treating soldiers coming home with wasted muscles from long hospital stays, and the standard advice was rest and light movement. He tried the opposite. He had them lift weights, and he added weight as they got stronger. He called it progressive resistance exercise, and he wrote the first prescription for it: three sets of ten, with the weight rising week by week. The soldiers recovered faster than anyone had seen. Every strength program written since, every one, is built on that one idea.

The idea is this. A muscle grows when it's asked to do a little more than it did last time. Not a lot more. A little. Five more pounds. One more repetition. One more set. Then it adapts, and you ask again. That's the whole secret, and it's eighty years old.

Why it's the first body letter of the second month: the gate is Breathing, and strength is where breath meets the body under load. You will learn more about your breath in one heavy set than in a month of thinking about it.

I want to say something to the people who have never lifted and feel like this letter isn't for them. It is for you most of all. Progressive overload doesn't care where you start. A woman of seventy who can stand from a chair without her hands and next week does it holding a water jug is doing exactly what DeLorme's soldiers did. The starting weight is yours. The direction is the key.

Nothing in this letter is a program. The program comes with a coach. The key is the principle, and the principle is one more than last time.