When You're Still Plateaued
If you follow us with any regularity you are probably sick of hearing us talk ad nauseam about the importance of focusing on the big rocks. Hell, we tried to do a podcast episode on it and ended up going on and on for 5 episodes (listen to the majoring in the minor series here) If you haven’t listened yet I would encourage you to do so. In these episodes, we outline the major keys to success in the weight room. If you feel stuck or plateaued these areas are where your energy will be best spent.
You’ve been listening and you’ve been training more days than you haven’t for an extended period of time, you put in the effort, follow your program to a T, you sleep 7-9 hours a night, manage your life stressors, and eat like an adult. If you are truly doing all of these things by now you are pretty damn strong and have been hitting PRs left and right. But as you get stronger and stronger things start to slow down and you begin to wonder what is next. Do I need to rub CBD all over my body? Maybe I need *insert your favorite lifters* program or perhaps a shiny new theragun to blast away all the bad juju?
Not so fast! Before you go looking for some magic fix let’s look at what will actually make a difference and move you towards your goals.
An individualized program
Increased awareness and effort in the setup and execution of your lifts
Mindset
In order to truly get the most out of your time in the gym you will want to get on a program that is individualized for you. When first starting to train, hitting the big rocks will get you extremely far along your health and fitness journey, but as you start to push the limits of your genetics and start to get more specialized goals getting on a program that reflects that will do wonders.
Each and every person is different and will respond to training differently. Everyone has a different training history, injury history, training preference, and goals. All of these factors play a role in a good program. A great coach will look at you as an individual and work with you to come up with a plan that will get you to your goals as quickly and efficiently as possible.
For example, in a 2005 training study of almost 600 untrained individuals, Hubal et al found a mean 1RM curl improvement of ~54% and a mean increase in biceps size of ~19% after 12 weeks of arm training. However, when you look at the individual data, the 1RM gains ranged from 0 to +250% (0 to +10.2 kg), and the individual changes in biceps cross-sectional area ranged from −2 to +59% (−0.4 to +13.6 cm2 ). That is quite the range of responses! When you start to work with a coach on an individualized program together you can start to figure out what you respond to best and slowly tweak your programming to give you the best response rate possible. This program should be able to track your progress and start to make connections about what type of training leads you closer to your goals in the most efficient way possible. There should be a form of feedback and adjustments to that program should be based on that feedback. Together you and your coach working collaboratively will take you to new heights.
On top of getting on an individualized program, an increased awareness and effort in the setup and execution of your lifts is key. There are two parts here: the setup to the lift and the lift itself. With both parts, the key is to make things as repeatable as possible. There is no one best technique or way to set-up you will have to find what works best for you. The key to this is repeatability! When your setup and technique are repeatable you can make small tweaks and actually know if it made the lift easier or harder. When your setup and technique are repeatable it’s easier to do.
The last piece of this is mindset. I won’t spend a lot of time here because there are literally whole books written on this topic and I have already gone on long enough. But having a growth mindset and finding ways to grow out of every situation that comes your way is key to being successful in the weight room. There will be “setbacks” but these events won’t define our success or lack thereof; our response to those events will be. Lifting, especially at higher levels, becomes an extremely mental game and one must believe in themselves, their program, and their ability to execute in order to be successful. Your beliefs and expectations shape your reality!
Now keep crushing those big rocks and start to tighten up the things we talked about today and you’ll blast through that plateau.