Breaking Through Plateaus

When you first start out, it will be easy, and you'll make a progress every workout and it will be easy. This can last months. If you train long enough eventually, progress will slow, and you'll stall. 

How do you break through plateaus? 
First of all, lets go through the obvious stuff before going into programming. While this stuff is simple and obvious, it is the first thing you should look at if you're not making progress as it's stuff most people don't do.

• Make sure you're training hard enough

​​The most obvious one, but people tend to be very bad at being honest with themselves about how hard they are training. Are you spending ages between sets because you're talking? Are you focused during your sets, or are you thinking about other things? Are you on your phone for most of it? Are you sandbagging your lifts, and not giving your all? These are all very common. 

• Make sure you're eating enough.

​Unless you're a beginner, your lifts will often go down, or at least not go up as fast when you're losing weight. Being on a calorie deficit isn't the time to be focusing on strength gains. If you need to lose weight, do that and try and maintain your strength. Any strength increase is a bonus. If making strength gains is your priority, make sure you're eating for that goal.

• You're in need of a de-load. 

​If you've been pushing training hard for a long time without any periods of backing off, you might be just in need of a de-load week. Fatigue can mask fitness and result in reduced performance. If this is the case, you'll find that you'll start progress again after deloading. 

• Are you doing enough to recover outside the gym? 

​Are you sleeping enough? Are you managing stress well? How is your mental health? All of these things will affect your recovery and then how you perform in the gym. Don't expect to be hitting PR's if you're not managing these things.

How to program to break through a plateaus

• Reduce the load a bit and do more volume

If you're stalling on a lift, reduce the weight, and build back up with a bit more volume. You can do this by adding reps, or sets to what you were doing.

For example, lets say your squat has stalled at 200kg 3 x 3. Instead of trying to keep going with 200kg 3 sets of 3, drop the weight to 170kg or 180kg and do 4 x 3, or 3 x 4 and build up again. 

It could look like this

1. 200kg 3 x 3
2. 180kg 4 x 3
3. 185kg 4 x 3
4. 190kg 4 x 3
5. 195kg 3-3-3-2 ( I wasn't able to get 3 reps on all 4 sets)
6. 200kg 3-3-3-2
7. 205kg 3 x 3
8. 207.5kg 3 x 3 (This was tough, so I reduce the weight again)
9. 170kg 5 x 3 (Build up again with even more volume than before)

​This is a very simple way to progress, and will work for a while, especially if you're a beginner. Ideally, you want to plan your training over a longer period to reduce how often you stall.

• Periodization 

In simple terms, it planning your training in advance, and having defined times in your training where you emphasize different goals. There can be loads of ways to periodize your training, but that is beyond the scope of this article. The easiest way to periodize your training without having much knowledge of it is by changing the set and reps scheme you're using.

For example,
Start with 3 x 10.  When you start to struggle to add weight or reps...
Switched to 3 x 8. When you start to struggle to add weight or reps...
Switch t0 3 x 6 When you start to struggle to add weight or reps...
Switch to 3 x 4.  Repeat the process.
Then 3×3.
You then go back to 3 x 10, and repeat the process starting with heavier weights than before.

This linear loading is a very simple way to plan your training. Step loading and wave loading is also good way to plan progression. Step loading keeps you working at a certain weight while increasing volume. Linear, Wave and Step Loading  

You can also add another day you do the exercise and use different rep ranges, or use a close variation while using the same principles. For example, Do squats for 4 x 8 one day, and then 4 x 4 the other day.

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