Break the Training Plateau

By Pete Sisco - Developer of Static Contraction Training

I've hit a plateau in my training and haven't made any progress for weeks, what can I do?

Some plateaus in training are inevitable but they should be very short lived. That's because there are things you can do to get your progress moving again. If you are training very efficiently and effectively you should spot a plateau the first day it occurs. In fact, the slow down in progress will likely show up in one or two exercises out of an entire workout.

These yellow flags indicate it's time to make an adjustment in your training before full-blown stagnation sets in. This is a simple concept, yet I've known guys who've trained three days a week and never noticed they had five months of no progress whatsoever!

Here are three things that will bust any weight training plateau.

1) Take time off. The number one cause of lack of progress is overtraining. By simply not lifting weights for a week or three you allow your body to fully recover and to add that new muscle growth you've already stimulated so you can return to the gym and resume training effectively.

2) Space your workouts further apart. This keeps you from falling into the same trap over and over. A fixed training frequency will not work for building new muscle mass. It works for aerobics and for martial arts techniques and kayak padding skills and many other things but it won't work for building new muscle. As you get stronger your weightlifting workouts need to be spaced further apart.

3) Do heavy leg training. By far, the best exercise you can do to increase your body's anabolic activity is heavy leg presses. Surprised I didn't say squats? Squats are a great all around exercise but they are limited by how much weight you can comfortably support on your shoulders. Many people I work with do 3,000-pound leg presses. Accounting for the 45-degree angle of most leg presses, that's equivalent to a 2,100 pound squat and nobody in the world does that. The legs contain the largest muscles in the human body and when those muscles are forced to operate at the limits of their capacity the systemic anabolic effect spills into every muscle group in the body. It is literally true that heavy leg training gives you bigger arms!

All the best,

Pete

About the author:

Peter Sisco is co-author of Power Factor Training, Static Contraction Training and other books. He is also the editor of the five-book "Ironman's Ultimate Bodybuilding" series.

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