How to break your plateau & start growing again
If you’ve been lifting for a while you’ve probably hit a plateau. After you’ve surpassed your newbie gains stage it’s tough to see your progress slow down. But there are ways to implement new strategies to help get past this and I am going to list some of them below🤗
1. ROM- Focus on your range of motion, if you’ve been performing an exercise for so long with limited range of motion then you’re missing out on that margin of growth.
2. TUT- This pretty much means adding extra time to the eccentric and concentric phases of your lift. Example: when you’re squatting take four seconds to lower yourself to the bottom, pause for two seconds, explode to the top, hold and squeeze at the top for three seconds. Adding this extra time under tension is going to add up over time & lead to growth.
3. PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD- If you haven’t been tracking your progressive overload that is a great place to start, make sure you are actually progressing. Whether that be with increasing frequency or intensity.
4. DROP SETS- Drop sets are adding a final set with lower weight by a certain percentage at the end of a lift and performing a higher amount of reps. This creates greater stress on the muscle, which stimulates growth.
5. DELOAD- You might need to let your body chill. If you’ve exhausted volume for so long but you’re still looking for growth maybe it’s time to take a de-load week. At this point you probably pushed yourself into overreaching which is going to decrease your performance, increase chance of injury etc. This is going to be more ideal for someone who’s been lifting for a long time. Say you’ve lifted progressively for three weeks, then take one week to de-load and allow your body to recover. One strategy is to lower the volume of your lifts by half that week.
There’s lots of different ways to get over your plateau and these are just a few. When utilizing these techniques properly, you can start to see growth again. I hope this helps.
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