A strength plateau is when you can no longer increase your strength. It’s not just a dodgy session. But an extended period of time with no progress in the reps that you can perform at a certain weight. They are usually caused by issues in your training, diet, or recovery 99% of the time. So to break a strength plateau, review these aspects and see if any of them are weak. A strength plateau is rarely caused because an individuals training, diet, and recovery are all on point for a long time. However, this most likely does not apply to you (sorry).
How Do You Know If You’ve Hit a Strength Plateau?
You only know if your strength progress has come to a halt if you’re tracking all aspects of your training. This includes sets and reps, macronutrient intake, calorie intake, and sleep. If you don’t know how many reps you’re achieving for each exercise, or whether you’re letting your body recover, then you have no way of knowing whether you’re progressing or not. To know if you’ve hit a strength plateau, you need to be meticulous with tracking your training and recovery.
What Training Techniques Can You Use To Break a Strength Plateau?
Change The Exercises In Your Routine
You can change exercises to create a new stimulus for your muscles, and strengthen areas that were previously neglected. If you’ve hit a plateau with your squat strength. Adding paused squats into your routine as an exercise variation can help. This is because paused squats make you stronger at the bottom of the movement. Which is often where people are at their weakest. This would enable you to become more explosive at the bottom of the movement and get that extra rep.
You could also strengthen the smaller stabiliser muscles involved in the squat which may be overlooked in your current routine. For example, strengthening your adductors by using an adductor machine also helps generate strength at the bottom of the squat. As well as keeping your knees in line with your toes for better technique. By mastering all the stages of an exercise, and strengthening all the muscles involved in it, you will become much stronger and break your strength plateau.
Change The Order of Your Exercises
Prioritise the exercises that you want to be stronger on for the start of your workout. This is because you have more energy in the beginning of your workout. Meaning you can push yourself harder for the first few exercises that you perform. However, this also means that as your muscles fatigue, the threshold that you can reach for pushing yourself decreases. So the exercises that you perform at the end of your workout receive less attention.
Compound movements usually come to mind when we think of the exercises that are done at the start of a workout. However this doesn’t have to be a hard and fast rule if you’re trying to focus on a specific muscle. If you have hit a strength plateau with lateral raises, but you only throw them in at the end of your workout, try starting off with them in your next session. As you’ll have more energy when you execute the movement. I personally like to mix up the exercise order for my own routine occasionally. This is to make sure that I’m not neglecting any muscle groups.
Nunes et al carried out a meta-analysis that looked at the effects of exercise order on strength. They looked at multiple studies that explored the effects of exercise order on strength gains and muscle hypertrophy. They concluded that ‘increases in muscular strength are the largest in exercises performed at the beginning of an exercise session’. This means you can break a strength plateau for those exercises that are left until the end of your workouts. Just by rotating your exercise order.
Increase Your Training Volume
You could increase the number of reps that you do for a set. If you are bench pressing 80kg for 6 reps but cannot progress any further, you could reduce the weight to 70kg for 8 or 9 reps. And just progress your 70kg bench press to 11 or 12. When you come back to bench pressing 80kg, you’ll be more likely to squeeze out a few extra reps to break your plateau. This is due to the new stimulus that you’re introducing to your muscles. As a result of training with a new rate of volume.
You could also increase the number of sets that you do for an exercise. For example, powerlifters need to do high amounts of volume. This is for the neurological adaptations needed to recruit the prime movers for a specific movement. However, it’s generally accepted that you need to perform 1-6 reps for strength training. So to get around this, a lot of strength programmes include 3-6 sets for an exercise.
Increasing the number of sets that you perform for a movement, is useful for the exercises that you perform for a low number of reps. I wouldn’t recommend doing lots and lots of higher rep sets geared towards hypertrophy training. But you could add in an extra set and see how it affects your strength progress.
Decrease Your Training Volume
On the contrary to the previous section, you could also decrease your training volume to break a strength plateau. If you’ve been training with high volume sets of 11 or 12. You could try performing sets of 6 or 7 with more weight. This is due to the same principle. Changing your training volume presents a new stimulus. So when you decrease the weight again, having progressed for a few weeks with a higher weight, you’ll break your plateau of 11 or 12 and hit the same weight for 13 or 14.
The general advice on the internet is that 10-20 weekly sets per muscle group is the sweet spot for muscle and strength gain. If you’re in the upper threshold of weekly sets or going over the threshold entirely, you may be doing ‘junk volume’. Junk volume is a weightlifting term that applies to when you’re doing too many sets.
This is because there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to volume. If you do too much, then you’re putting your muscles in a position where they can’t recover sufficiently enough for the next workout. This is a bad thing for muscle and strength growth. If you’re doing 4-5 sets per exercise 2x a week. Try doing 2-3 and you may find that you break your strength plateau by letting your muscles recover properly.
Increase Time Under Tension
You can also increase intensity by training with more time under tension (TUT). Time under tension is the amount of time that your muscles spend under load during an exercise. You can increase your time under tension by slowing down the tempo at which you perform your reps for an exercise. If it takes 2 seconds for you to lift the weight up, 1 second to hold it, and 2 seconds on the way back down, you could add 1 second to each portion of the movement.
Just by increasing the time that you’re spending on each portion of the movement by 1 second, you can place your muscles under more metabolic stress and increase the ‘burn’. Which Increases the intensity of your workout. It also helps you to break your strength plateau by implementing another form of progressive overload.
What Recovery Techniques Can You Use To Break a Strength Plateau?
Take a De-load Week
You could also take a deload week. A deload week is a week that involves either not training or training with much lighter weight than you’re used to. This is because a number of rest days can give your body the time to recover from an extended period of intense training. Which can lead to plateaus. Occasional deloads are important for muscle recovery. Especially if you’ve been unable to keep up with protein, calorie intake, or sleep.
However, it’s not just your muscles that benefit from a week off. Your central nervous system also needs a break. As it’s your CNS that helps to generate the force needed to lift heavy weights. It does this by recruiting larger motor units and the muscle fibres needed to complete an exercise. By lifting at 100% effort for an extended period of time, you create fatigue for your CNS which decreases central drive and strength levels. Therefore, taking deloads every now and then is essential for consistent growth and to break a strength plateau.
Get More Sleep
Get your beauty sleep. Sleep is one of the most crucial components for recovery. As this is when protein building amino acids are released into the bloodstream for muscle growth. Growth hormone is also released for muscle repair and recovery during deep sleep. Essentially, it’s only when you’re sleeping that your muscles are getting bigger. The recommended amount of sleep for most adults is between 7-9 hours. So if you want to ensure consistent progress then go to bed earlier.
Increase Your Rest Times Between Sets
A common mistake that people make in the gym, is giving themselves too little time to rest between sets. This sounds counter intuitive at first because it sounds as though you’re not working as hard by doing this. However, if you’re working with the right intensity, you need enough time to recover between sets in order to progressively overload. Else, you’ll be too fatigued to get stronger.
A review by de Salles et al showed that ‘3-5 minutes of rest between sets produced greater increases in absolute strength’. Which was due to higher intensities and volumes of training. Or in other words, strength increases at a faster rate with more rest between sets.I personally think that giving yourself a set rest time between sets is too arbitrary. As the amount of rest that you’ll need between sets will vary based on the intensity of them.
I would recommend starting your next set when you feel ready to push yourself. If it takes 2 minutes to rest it takes 2 minutes, if it takes 4 it takes 4. Starting your next set while your muscles are still fatigued, just because your 2 minute timer is over, is a bad idea. Your body already has a built in timer between sets. Its called ‘starting your next set when your fatigue has gone away’. If you listen to your body, you will be able to approach your next set with maximum intensity and get stronger.
How Can Your Diet Help You Break a Strength Plateau?
Change Your Diet
It can be difficult to progressively overload in a calorie deficit. As the lack of calories causes fatigue. And this is before you’ve done any exercise. To see significant increases in strength you need to lean bulk. So verify that you’re in a calorie surplus by tracking the calories that you’re eating more closely.
Verify your macronutrients too. Protein is critical for muscle recovery, as its muscle protein synthesis that repairs the muscle fibres that get broken down during your workout. Unrecovered muscles cannot lift more weight. You also may not be eating enough carbohydrates. As these are what give you the energy to push yourself when you’re working out. This is due to the glucose in the carbohydrates which is the main source of energy for your body’s cells. And don’t neglect your veggies either. A balanced diet will help you get the vitamins and nutrients that your body needs to perform optimally and get stronger.
Increase Your Water Intake
Dehydration is the enemy of progress. As it causes low energy levels and fatigue. So to prevent dehydration and promote strength gains, you should drink at least 3-4 litres of water a day. Water also contains electrolytes which are needed for all kinds of sports performance. This is because electrolytes support muscle contraction. Which obviously, is a fundamental part of weightlifting. And as you sweat, you lose electrolytes. So it’s crucial to not only drink water throughout the day, but ensure that you’re hydrated throughout your entire workout for optimal performance and strength.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many ways to overcome a strength plateau so don’t panic if you encounter one. The worst case scenario when you hit a plateau, is that you just have to take a week off the gym to let your body rest. Which is infinitely better than just spinning your wheels and not getting any stronger, just because you’re concerned about taking the time off. Remember, track everything in and out of the gym. Try to spot any holes in your training and recovery, and fix them. Its as simple as that.
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