In this post we discuss why you’re not getting stronger in the gym and give you some ideas to move past a training plateau.
If you’ve been resistance training for some time you may have noticed your progress has stalled.
Gone are the days when you seemed to be adding weight with every session. You’ve hit what many people call a plateau.
First of all congratulations, you’ve been going to the gym long enough your body has adapted to the regular stimulus of resistance training.
Many people give up before they get to this stage so hats off.
That said, you’re no doubt wondering what you can do to stimulate further progress.
Here are a few ideas to move past a plateau.
Revise your technique to overcome a training plateau
The first step to overcoming a plateau, particularly if you’re new to resistance training, is to assess your technique.
Start by slowing down your repetition speed. This will often illuminate compensations and areas of weakness for you to focus on.
You may have to reduce the weight your working with to achieve this. This is a good sign and will stimulate further progress.
Alter the joint angles you are challenging
Your body will only adapt to the joint angles you challenge. Even a small change in those angles will represent a different stimulus and can bring about further strength gains.
Tweek your current exercises before you add new ones. You may be surprised at what you find.
Move from compound exercises to single joint exercises
If you’ve been using a multi joint exercise like a squat or a leg press for a while, think about breaking that exercise down to its constituent parts.
Train the muscles that move your ankles, knees and hips separately for a period and then come back to the compound exercises you’ve plateaued in. You’ll often see improvements.
Assess the volume of your activity
Resistance training doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You may be applying it to improve your sport’s performance for example. It’s normal to find your gains in the gym plateau as the volume of your sport increases.
The same goes for stressful periods of life such as work issues or relationship problems.
Think of your overall energy availability as a pie chart. If one area of that chart increases, another is affected.
Prioritise sleep and protein intake
Improvements in strength don’t occur in the gym but in the time between training sessions. Fundamental to successful recovery are sleep, protein intake and overall calorie balance.
Deficits in any one of these areas will reduce your ability to recover and adapt.
Is it even normal to expect continuous improvement?
Let’s say you were trying to improve your marathon time. Would you expect to see continuous progress, or would it be normal to hit a limit as some point?
The latter right? The same applies to resistance training. At some stage you will push up against the limits of your genetics.
Be happy that you’re stronger than most people your age and hopefully have relatively few aches and pains.
By all means explore what you might be missing, and for many people that’s a fair amount, but don’t get hung up on it. Enjoy where you are.
Leave a Reply