Overcoming a training plateau

A training plateau, albeit frustrating, is a completely normal part of the process when aiming to improve strength in the gym. In most cases, there will be many factors causing this stall in progress, so to address the issue, there will be many factors to be considered.

It’s important to evaluate life stressors that may be negatively impacting training in the gym.

- Are you getting enough sleep?

- Has nutrition and hydration been on point lately?

- Are there any notable life events that may be robbing focus from your training sessions?

- Is your motivation to train slipping for some reason?

It can be useful to perform a self-assessment of your training quality.

- Are you executing your sets as effectively as you could be?

- Are you giving your training sessions adequate focus?

- Are you adhering to the correct intensity (i.e. level of effort exerted relative to your max, be that %/1RM, RPE, RIR, etc)?

If all of this seems to be in order, it may be time to make some programming adjustments to overcome this halt in progression. Consider:

Volume (i.e. sets x reps):

Is there too little volume that adaptations are not occurring, or is there too much volume that you are not recovered enough for each session?

Intensity:

Are you not getting the chance to push yourself in the gym and hence, have no reason to adapt, or are you lifting too heavy, too often, and are in a constant state of fatigue?

Frequency:

Are you hitting each movement/muscle group enough times during the week, or too much?

Weekly layout

This is the organization of your training sessions across the week). Are your main squat day and main deadlift day too close together? Are you not giving your heaviest session of the week adequate focus as it falls on a day when life stress is higher than usual (e.g. your busiest day of the week)?