Breaking through platues

Breaking through plateaus can be difficult. A plateau is basically where your muscles stops growing or changing because it has adapted to the exercises/sets/reps/weight you are training with. You have to think about it logically. We were not always in this time of plentiful food and nourishment. There was a time where we would have to hunt for food straining day to day life. You're body still carries these instincts and your body still constantly strives to find the easiest way of doing something so you do not have to expend much energy.

It does this by adapting to what you do. You see that all athletes have different kinds of bodies due to the different sports they do - a marathon runner is an ectomorph so they don't have much weight to carry for the long distance events where as a 100m sprinter is heavily muscled as they are built for power and quick acceleration. With this in mind you'll be able to see if you do the same thing day in day out your body will adapt and you will no longer make any progress. So it's easy; we have to keep the muscles guessing in order for them to grow. Below are my top tips to avoiding plateaus or smashing out of them.

Up the Intensity

So this is the first thing you can do. It's a very easy one, it costs you no money and changes nothing in your schedule during the day. It's only going to cost you a lot more sweat and pain. There is no easy way about it but who needs the easy way, I personally think earning your dream body or performance is just as satisfying as actually having it. How do we exactly up the intensity though?

Reduce the Rest

You could start by reducing your rest. This is a simple step forward. Most people do not time their rests and they just sit around for a while until they feel comfortable. I'm sorry to burst your bubble but exercising isn't supposed to be comfortable. Start bringing a stop watch or using your phone to time rest periods. You can start with maybe a minute rest in-between sets and then gradually reduce it. If you go with a partner and he/she is wasting time after the times up give them a slap and tell them to work. By reducing the rest you are giving your muscle less time to recover. By doing this you are adding greater stress to the muscle in a shorter period of time which will promote it to grow/tighten up.

Change Your Reps & Sets / Upping or Lowering the Weight

This is easy once you have the knowledge to back you. You have to realise there will come a point where you can't lift anymore weight. There will always be a limit. You can't just keep going up and up and up or you're going to hurt yourself. I see people all the time who just constantly lift heavy weights and cannot move up any more because they have dug themselves into a plateau. It is important to change it up. To some extent it is right that heavy lifting = more muscle, and light lifting = more toning - but many people don't do it right.

So I'm trying to gain muscle but you do not see me lifting heavy all of the time. I change my sets between 4 and 6. Usually the higher the sets will be the lower my reps will be. I will start by lifting heavy weights so 6 reps for 5 sets and then after weeks of doing this I will up the reps and decrease the sets. By doing this I'm constantly keeping the muscle guessing while keeping the intensity high.

By changing reps/sets I don't just mean the numbers and weight. Start adding drop sets in, this will get that little bit more out of your muscle at the end of an exercise. Super sets are also a good way to go, take a chest workout for example; if you super set incline press (compound exercise) with an incline fly (stretch exercise) you will be putting a greater deal of stress on the muscle promoting it to grow. This is because you will be doing two exercises for one basically, which will cut your rest time.

You can also slow down the speed of you reps, little pulses can actually promote the muscle to grow as you are stimulating fast twitch muscle fibres. As you are pulsing your muscles power increases. Another way to change would be going slow down and powering back up. By doing this you are getting a full stretch which will tear the muscle fibres but when you power up contracting the muscle you are forcing it to work harder. The last thing you can do to change your reps is by doing negatives. This is one of my favourite things to do as it gets that last little bit out of you on your last rep.

Eating more food

By eating more food you are giving yourself more energy and by having more energy you are allowing yourself to up you intensity in the gym. It's quite simple, if your intake is not high your intensity won't be either, you have to fuel your body! So by eating more food and having more energy we will be able to lift more weight as our levels would have increased, we would also be able to get one more rep out which will promote muscle growth. Don't get me wrong though, I don't mean eat anything in sight or junk food. You have to have a well-balanced diet. A well balanced diet is the key thing towards unleashing what you are actually capable of.

This will hurt to do but it will be worth it in the long run. Remember to always change things up so you don't get yourself into the plateau in the first place. This way you will always be motivated to carry on as yourself and other will constantly seeing you getting in better shape.