You hit the gym several times a week, you drink your protein shake, you watch what you eat, but your progress has plateaued. You’re not alone, one of the biggest training mistakes observed is the fact that people will find the perfect routine, the perfect exercises they love, the perfect amount of sets and reps for each exercise then they’ll stick to that and only that. In the beginning, you can do pretty much anything in the gym and obtain muscle growth from it, but as you get stronger and stronger it only gets harder and harder.
The problem lies in the pesky fact that our bodies will constantly adapt to the changes and amount of stress placed on the muscles everyday. The workout that once left your legs wobbling is now performed easily. Your muscles grew and gained strength to adjust to what you put it through- now they’re used to it and there is no real amount of stress being placed on your muscles.
So the solution? It can vary- but a great way to test yourself and ensure that you’re constantly improving is to use the 2-for-2 rule. When you can do two more reps with a given amount of weight for two consecutive weeks, it’s time to increase your weight by 5-10%.
For example if you start out bench pressing 115 lbs for 10 reps, your strength will start to increase. When you are able to bench press 115lbs for 12 reps every time for two weeks in a row, it’s time to increase the weight. The weight increase in this example would be to add 5.75-11.5 lbs, or about 120-125lbs total and go back to 10 reps.
An additional way is to make sure that you’re constantly varying your workout in order to work your muscles in slightly different ways each time. This could look like finding a good workout split if you are currently doing full body training each time, some examples include-
- Lower body days and upper body days
- Push days and pull days
This could also look like changing up each exercise you do, whether that’s each day or every couple weeks. When you go through the same exercise for a long time not only do your muscles adjust but so does your brain and going through your workout can feel like just mindlessly going through the motions. That’s not to say you should replace squatting forever- just switch it up with another movement that generally works the same muscles but in a slightly different way such as a Bulgarian split squat instead. Changing things up every so often will mean your muscles are less likely to get “too good” with any one exercise-promoting easier muscle growth. There are endless variations of many exercises just waiting to be tried- so don’t be afraid to branch out and do something new, you’ll end up thanking yourself.
As you become more advanced and your muscles become harder to stress you may want to experiment with some advanced training techniques to stimulate muscle growth. Make sure to do your research and/or consult a trainer before experimenting. Find what works best for you, but always be careful to avoid over-training and injury. Some examples of more advanced techniques include-
- Drop sets : after reaching failure in your set reduce the weight and complete a few more reps
- Pyramid training : Increasing/ decreasing weight with each set, i.e. 15 reps of 20lbs, then 12 reps of 30 lbs, then 8-10 reps of 35 lbs.
- Supersets : moving from one exercise right to another with no break, could be an exercise for the same or different muscle groups
- Tempo training : drawing out certain phases of the movement for a specific amount of time
- Eccentric training : drawing out the eccentric contraction (“lowering”/ “yielding”) phase of the movement
If we want to keep making progress in the gym, it’s a simple concept- our bodies adapt so we have to continue to challenge them. Easier said than done of course, but worth the effort. Here’ at OTAC we’re chock full of fitness professionals more than happy to give advice- so please ask away!