Breaking Through Plateaus: Strategies to Overcome Strength Stalls

You stick to your routine, do everything right, and maintain the needed discipline, yet you don't see any improvements in your strength, muscle growth, or performance. This is a very familiar experience called the strength training plateau. 

It often occurs because your muscles have gotten used to your current workout routine. Hence, the routine is not as effective as it used to be. This may be because of an imbalanced training routine, insufficient recovery, poor nutrition, or a lack of progressive overload.  

Let’s look at the various symptoms of a plateau and proven strategies to help you break through.

How to know you’ve Hit a Plateau

It’s easy to know when you’ve hit a plateau. The most common sign is feeling more tired than usual during and after workouts—despite getting enough rest. This is then accompanied by unnoticeable changes in muscle tone or size, an inability to increase reps, and, in some instances, a loss of motivation to hit the gym.

Some symptoms may include:

• Prolonged Soreness or Pain
• Inconsistent Performance
• Increased Injuries

Let’s go into more detail about the symptoms that indicate you may be experiencing a strength plateau. It is important to note that these symptoms are only indicative of a plateau if they last for weeks rather than just a few days.

Prolonged Soreness or Pain

Soreness may be a normal feeling after a workout, but if the feeling is lingering more than usual, you’ve likely hit a plateau. This can prevent your muscles from fully recovering and impede your progress.

Inconsistent Performance

An inconsistent performance indicates that your routine needs to become more varied or you need to get more recovery time. On some days, you can lift more reps; on other days, you struggle with lifting the same weight. 

Increased Injuries

Injuries occur when your body is not adapting to training as it should. If you are experiencing more injuries than usual, it may result from a strength plateau.

Different Types of Plateaus

The forms in which plateaus occur can vary widely. However, they can be grouped into these four categories:

Full-Body Plateau

A full-body plateau occurs when you experience a complete stall in overall progress. Maybe you have been cycling, doing steady-state cardio for months, and seeing sufficient progress. Then, somewhere down the line, progress stalls.

This is usually due to issues with your training regimen, such as a lack of progression or variety. Studies have shown that the body adapts to a routine over time, making it ineffective. As a result, it can no longer respond the same way to the stimuli, leading to stagnation in strength, endurance, or muscle mass. 

Isolated Muscle Plateau

A plateau is considered isolated when a growth pause is limited to a muscle group or exercise. In this situation, you may experience challenges with increasing weights or reps for a particular muscle. You may also not see muscle size or strength changes in that area. 

This is due to muscle-specific adaptation that occurs when your training is not challenging enough or lacks variation.

Performance Plateau

Have you been trying to increase your bench press weight for several weeks but find yourself struggling to lift the same amount? Or are you still stuck on your 5K time despite your efforts?

Performance plateaus are characterized by a lack of improvement in performance metrics, such as strength, speed, or endurance. They may result from inadequate recovery or improperly paced progression.

Progress Plateau

Progress plateaus are often linked to training regimens or nutrition plans. Here, you do all the work, stick to your meal plan, and consume the right calories, yet there’s no visible reward for all that discipline. 

It is safe to conclude your approach may not be working if, after months of consistent effort, you see no noticeable changes in muscle size or body fat percentage. 

Proven Strategies to Break Through Strength Plateaus

Strength plateau is very common, but it can be very frustrating. Fortunately, with the right strategies, you can overcome them and continue progressing in your sessions.

Here’s a detailed guide on how to break through strength plateaus:

Assess Your Program

Your training program determines your progress to a large extent. When stalls happen, this is the first thing you should evaluate. Have a professional assess if your current routine is aligned with your goals. 

Studies emphasize the need for constant routine evaluation, which creates room to identify and correct exercises that may no longer fit. So, if you have been doing the same exercise without increasing the difficulty, your program can be adjusted to increase intensity and include a mix of other movements. 

Shift Your Focus To Eccentrics

Doing eccentrics allows your muscles to stretch—an essential technique for eliminating plateaus. Research has shown that eccentric contractions, where muscle stretches while working, can increase muscle gains and strength. 

To incorporate this, you only have to focus on the lowering phase. This can be slowing down your movement when squatting or delaying the descent when doing deadlifts. This helps to improve muscle tension and initiate new adaptations in your body. 

Restructure Your Routine

For the best results, routines must be reviewed periodically. This can be alternating between phases of high intensity with lower volume and high volume with lower intensity. 

This approach gives your muscles the right level of challenge to maintain steady progress. According to a study published in the International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy, you can structure your routine into 4-6 weeks, focusing on different goals like hypertrophy in one phase and endurance in another. 

Adjust Reps and Sets

Once your body adapts to specific reps and sets, it cannot produce new muscle growth and strength stimuli. Research findings suggest varying rep ranges and set structures to help overcome plateaus. 

This can mix low-rep weight, high-weight sets with high-rep, and moderate-weight sets to engage different muscles and improve strength. Additionally, you can add drop sets or supersets to make your routine more challenging.

Have a Deload Week

Deload weeks are weeks where you reduce the intensity and volume of your workouts to give your body more time to recover from the accumulated fatigue. Planning ‘deload weeks’ can significantly reduce the occurrence of plateaus and improve long-term progress. 

A good range for reducing intensity during deload weeks is 30-40%, with a corresponding reduction in volume. This period allows your body to repair muscles and r

Do Mobility Work

Mobility work is a crucial strategy to improve joint health and strength performance. Joint mobility levels have been associated with lifting balance and injury risk. You can improve your motion range and lifting mechanics by doing exercises such as mobility drills and dynamic stretches and reduce your risk of injury and plateaus.

Manage Associated Mental Fatigue

Strength training is physically and mentally demanding. Correctly managing the associated mental fatigue can help prevent a loss of motivation, which can make breaking through a plateau much harder. 

Mindfulness and stress reduction techniques, such as meditation, visualization, and relaxation techniques, can help you stay focused and improve your performance. 

Goal Setting

Setting unrealistic goals can increase the occurrence of plateaus and make it challenging to break free from them. You must focus on setting clear, trackable, and achievable goals. 

For instance, you can set a goal to increase your bench presses by 20 pounds in six weeks while reviewing and making adjustments based on your progress and challenges encountered. 

Other Influences That Stall Progress

Aside from gym-related factors, other factors can contribute to strength stalls. Let’s look at these often-overlooked factors that can hold you back. 

Sleep

The role of sleep goes beyond rejuvenation. Studies have consistently shown that inadequate sleep can affect performance and muscle recovery. Growth hormones are released during sleep that facilitate tissue growth and muscle repair.

This vital process is disrupted when you do not get enough sleep. To ensure your body recovers optimally, try to establish and maintain a consistent sleep schedule where you get to sleep for 7-9 hours every night. 

Nutrition

If you are not getting the right amount of calories, macronutrients, and hydration, no amount of training will give you the desired build. Your body needs fuel to recover and grow fully.

Ensure you take the right amount of protein, carbs, and other nutrients at every meal. You must also stay hydrated all day, as mild dehydration can affect your performance. 

Lifestyle

Your life outside of training, such as work, relationships, or hobbies, can also affect your progress in the gym. Personal commitments that drain your energy can make a full recovery from workouts impossible.

If you also have too many high-priority activities to meet up with, you may have inconsistent training schedules, skipped meals, and poor sleep. Therefore, you must ensure your workout schedule aligns with your lifestyle and set boundaries between work, training, and personal time. 

Wrapping Up

Breaking through a plateau requires time, effort, and dedication. It also requires a comprehensive approach that goes beyond merely changing or adjusting your routine.

You can map out the right plan to overcome a progress break by evaluating all the potential gym-related and non-gym-related factors contributing to a strength stall. 

Consider working with a professional trainer to get a fresh, holistic perspective that aligns well with your fitness goals.

References

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