There is nothing more frustrating when your making amazing progress in the gym week by week and then suddenly you hit a plateau and you cannot seem to make any more progress, I have been there personally, and I can guarantee 99% of people pursuing a strength/fitness goal will get to that point eventually, some sooner than others. The question you are probably thinking now is when we reach a plateau what can we do or change with our routine to hopefully smash through it? Here are a couple things that you can make changes to so that you can smash through your plateaus and achieve your goals.
Switching up an exercise
Switching up an exercise can provide a different stimulus to your muscles which could in turn benefit you overall in breaking through your plateau for example switching from doing a bench press to doing a dumbbell bench press they both might be similar movement but fundamentally can work your muscle in a different way by incorporating different smaller muscle group that you might not be stimulating while doing the other movement.
Changing up rep ranges
Changing up rep ranges is another uncomplicated way that you can switch up the stimulus that you get from an exercise without changing or learning a different exercise completely. So if your used to doing low reps all the time, try switching it up to higher reps and Vice versa if your used to doing high reps all the time, try lowering your rep ranges. I can guarantee that you will feel it in the morning if you just do this one simple thing.
Nutrition
Nutrition is vital if you want to see consistent progress in the gym. There are a lot of people out there just training without dialling in their nutrition and there isn’t anything wrong with that. But if you hit a plateau whether that be strength plateau or even a body composition plateau it is always important to self-evaluate, and if you find that you aren’t paying attention to the foods you’re eating, then that will be a great place to start if you want to see result come in quickly.
Managing Fatigue
Managing Fatigue is an important aspect of training that a lot of people don’t pay attention too and that is best way for you to hit a plateau. Some people don’t know this but over time especially if you train hard your body can build up fatigue and if excessive fatigue is built up in your body that can easily lead to a halt in progress. So, if you find that you are dragging yourself to the gym and you feel excessively tired that is your bodies way of telling you that you have a lot of built-up fatigue, and you need a rest.
To conclude there are many different strategies that you can employ to break through a plateau, and I’ve listed a couple good ones that have helped me personally, but the biggest thing that I want people to take away from this is that it’s important to self-evaluate your training and ask yourself “why am I hitting a plateau.” Hopefully the points that I’ve mentioned earlier are helping in reaching your fitness goals for 2023.