Anyone who has been training for a long time knows about plateaus. This is when your strength levels in the gym seem to level out. No matter what you do, it seems that you can’t get over the hump of a certain weight and continue to add more weight to the bar.
The key to consistent strength gains in the gym and continued muscle growth is through progressive overload. This involves many methods. The most common is the method of slightly increasing the poundage’s you use in the gym on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. The truth is the longer you have been training, the smaller the increments you must use. Forget about moving up from 25’s to 35’s to 45lb plates just for convenience. Remember, the smaller the better.
Lets use the barbell bench press for an example. Let’s say you’ve been stuck at 250lbs pounds for 6 reps for quite a while. Now, make a consistent effort to add only one of those tiny 2.5 pound plates to each side of your barbell, every week, and perform a concentrated 8-10 week training cycle.
Adding 5lbs a week to the bar might not seem like much mentally, but physically it is just what your muscles are looking for continued growth. The increase will be so gradual on your body, it will have plenty of time to adapt to the increase in resistance and overload. After 10 weeks your will be cracking the 300lb pound mark! How many people in your gym consistently bench press 300lbs or more, not many.
This is the basic principle of resistance training, progressive overload. By gradually increasing the weight increments each week you give your body a reason to grow but not enough to fall into a strength plateau. Slapping on larger plates because it looks heavier or is easier to add up sets will eventually bring your gains to a screeching halt.
By adding tiny weight increases every week, you will be on the road to consistent and long-term gains in the gym.
Other methods also involve progressive overload by manipulating the other variables in your routine. You can keep the weight the same for all sets and increase the total volume by adding extra sets.
You can also keep the reps the same, but try to complete an extra rep each workout.
Another method is by increasing the density of your workout. Basically you set an specific amount of time and try to complete more total work load each and every workout.
One method to help increase your conditioning would be to shorten your rest periods between sets. Or you could cut them out all together and do a superset (two exercises back to back with no rest).
These are just a few different training techniques that you can use to prevent plateaus in your weight training. Remember, variety is the spice of life, inside AND outside the gym…
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