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What Is The Best Way To Break A Plateau?

Having your training stagnate leads to frustration, a feeling that undercuts the fulfillment you hope to enjoy from lifting. When frustration mounts, it will ultimately overwhelm you. Becoming overwhelmed is the main reason many lifters quit training altogether.

Plateaus occur because as your body continually compensates for the work load, by repairing old muscle fibres and building new ones, it is also ADAPTING to the work load.

The most common statement coming from a frustrated lifter who is going through a plateau is: "my routine for (enter bodypart) is exercises X, Y, and Z for 3 sets each, 6-8 reps, and I'm not gaining anymore". Well, there's plenty you can do to tweak things. Newer lifters will think there’ll be a single right right answer to this dilemna, but that is definitely not the case. There is no one right answer, everyone will have different answers to breaking their plateau. Here are some ideas you can take into account, and areas you can assess if you are going through a plateau:

Big Changes:

- Take a week off after every 2 months of intense training. Two months of constant training likely will take a toll on your muscles' ability to recover, so you must allow them to recover by giving them a break. Eat right and get plenty of rest so you are able to hit the weights again next week.

- When you stop seeing results change your entire routine. Say you’ve been doing a 3x/week split, hitting each bodypart 1x/week, give higher frequency 4x/week split a go, hitting each bodypart 2x/week, perhaps using push/pull, light/heavy or strength/hypertrophy days. Do your research and try some more popular types of training e.g. HST, Max-OT, GVT etc.

- If you have been previously training for hypertrophy, try out a strength routine, for a while as a change (e.g. 5x5), before changing back.

- Take a long hard look at your diet. Are you eating a good breakfast? Are you taking in enough nutrients pre and post workout? Are you keeping hydrated throughout the day? Are you getting your requirement of good fats in for the day? Are you eating too much simple carbs? Or are you carb depeleted? Are you getting in enough calories to put on mass? Are you eating regularly throughout the day to

- If you're on a supplement, go on an off cycle for a little while before using it again, try switching brands or try new supplements altogether e.g. if you've been using Creatine Monohydrate and you're not seeing great results, drop it and give CEE (http://www.bodybuilding.com/store/cee.html) or Kre-Alkalyn (http://www.bodybuilding.com/store/kre.html) a shot. If you want to target specific brands that are working for people, a great place to go is the "Product Reviews" forum (http://forum.bodybuilding.com/forumdisplay.php?f=30). The search facility (http://forum.bodybuilding.com/search.php?) on the forums is also great for this.

Moderate Changes:

- Change your exercise selection. Rotate exercises in and out of your routine every 2-3 weeks. For example, you may be doing Barbell rows for your lats, after 3 weeks you’d want to change this to maybe Wide Grip Chins.

- Try variations of the same exercise by varying your grip or foot positioning for leg exercises e.g instead of doing back squats all the time, try front squats, hack squats, sumo squats or low box squats.

- Change the volume per muscle group e.g. if you do 3 exercises 4 sets each, switch it up and try 4 exercises for 3 sets each.

- Change the structure of your sets, e.g. instead of doing 3 heavy sets of 5, try doing 2 warm up sets and 1 very heavy set.

- Alter your rest periods e.g. Try both longer rest periods when working close or at your max and shorter rest periods when using a lower percentage of your max

- Don’t neglect muscle groups. Take squats, which we hear about often as training abs indirectly. This is true, but misleading. If your abs get trained by squats, then having strong abs and obliques will only help your squats. Same reason strong forearms help your deadlift and strong biceps help your pull ups. Those muscles are involved, so training them will only be of assistance to you in those lifts.

Small Changes:

- Change your rep tempo e.g. if you are normally keeping your concentric phase equal to your eccentric phase, try doing slower eccentrics and more explosive concentrics.

- Alter your volume and intensity e.g. increase volume and decrease intensity (or vice versa)

- Change from dumbbells to barbells or vice versa, on exercises where possible

- If you normally train at home, go to a public gym for some sessions, or workout with a friend at home, you will normally find your strength will increase a little due to obvious reasons.

- Change your workout times e.g. if you always work out at night, try doing some morning routines.

So keep your heads up ‘plateauers’ and make the necessary changes to your diet/routine, so you can get back on track and start making some nice gains. However keep in mind that you shouldn’t change a winning combination, so please don’t get obsessed with changing absolutely everything every week, give things time to work, and if something is working for you don’t change it till it no longer gives you results.