Get Fit Faster

Get Over Your Weight Training Plateaus And Keep Climbing!

February 23rd, 2010 |

Author: admin

Sooner or later, anybody who’s been training hard for a while will hit a plateau. Everything’s going great for a while; you’re gaining strength, burning fat, looking great, and then it suddenly stops. You may find yourself weaker than before on your lifts, or you find that you’ve gained back a couple of pounds. It happens to virtually everyone eventually…

Generally, these plateaus happen because people don’t change their training routines over time. Many people do the same exercises, following the same sets, reps and rest periods, to the point that their body stops responding to the exercise because they are no longer pushing their body to grow stronger muscle. Your muscles don’t have to get any stronger, they can already do what you’re asking them to do! Well, hopefully this article will open your mind and bring some creativity to your workouts…

There are many strategies you can follow in modifying your training to assure that you maximize your fat loss and/or muscle building response to the exercises you do. Most people only think about changing their sets and reps performed, if they even think about changing their routine at all.

Other variables that can dramatically affect your results are changing the order of exercises, grouping exercises together in different ways (super-setting, circuit training, tri-sets, etc.), or changing the types of exercises you do (multi-joint or single joint, free-weight or machine based).

You can change the number of exercises per workout, the amount of resistance, the base of stability (standing, seated, on stability ball, one-legged, etc.), the volume of work (sets x reps x distance moved), rest periods between sets, rep speed, range of motion, exercise angle (inclined, flat, declined, bent over, upright, etc), the length of your workout, and training frequency per week. Whew!

Sounds like a lot to consider, doesn’t it? Well, that’s where a knowledgeable personal trainer can make sense of all of this for you to make sure that your training doesn’t get stale. Below are a few examples to get your mind working to come up with more creative and result-producing workouts…

Try 10 sets of 3 with a medium weight, resting only 20 seconds between sets.
Try using a heavier weight and complete 6 sets of 6 reps, doing a 3 minute treadmill sprint between each weight lifting set.
Try using a near maximum weight and do 10 sets of 1 rep, with 30 seconds rest between sets.
Try using a lighter than normal weight and do 1 set of 50 reps for each exercise.
Try a workout based on only one full body exercise, such as barbell clean & presses or dumbbell squat & presses, and do nothing but that exercise for an intense 20 minutes.
Try a circuit of 12 different exercises covering the entire body without any rest between exercises.
Try that same 12 exercise circuit on your subsequent workout, but do the entire circuit in the reverse order.
Try your usual exercises at a faster repetition speed on one workout and then at a super-slow speed on your next workout.
Try completing five 30 minute workouts one week, followed by three 1-hr workouts the next week.
Try doing drop sets of all of your exercises, where you drop the weight between each set and keep doing repetitions without any rest until complete muscular fatigue (usually about 5-6 sets in a row).