Breaking a Plateau

Hitting a plateau can be one of the most frustrating things in training. As a beginner, the gains come so fast. You’ll become accustomed to constant progress, but as you become more advanced those PRs are fewer and further between. So, how can we smash through these plateaus? First, we need to identify why are we stuck. Is it a strength, technical, mental, or program issue? For a strength issue, it’s simple. As we become more advanced, we require more training to advance. We need more volume to build the muscle to lift more. This is typically done in a hypertrophy block of training – essentially building our potential for the next block of training. Next up, if there is a technical issue, we can address it with variations of the main lift to specifically target that weak spot. For example, if we get stuck in the bottom of the squat, we can do pause squats to make that position stronger. We could also do quad work to target the muscle responsible for that part of the lift. We wouldn’t want to drastically change technique hoping to see a huge improvement. It’s about small improvements over time. Having a mental block can cause a plateau, usually around a milestone lift (200, 225, 315, 405). My first suggestion here is to treat all reps, regardless of weight, as if it were a max. This will take out the thought of needing to change something to get a PR. You’ll have done it a thousand times. It will also be a great way to get more out of your warm ups by training that speed aspect. Another way to get past mental barriers is to start lifting different weights. This could mean lifting in kilos or just small changes to take away expectations of how the weight should feel. If you always work with 45s and 25s try lifting 390 instead of 405 or 230 instead of 225. For the programming issue, one problem in particular is managing fatigue. As we become more advanced, our training will put a lot more stress on our body. So, we need to dissipate the fatigue before testing. It becomes more important that we are fresh to be able to make a PR, so if you go to test and are stuck at a plateau, look back at your previous week and see if you were fresh going into it.