All athletes need to learn how to break through fitness plateaus. At some point in your training you will stop gaining strength, or your running times will stop decreasing. This is perfectly normal, but it’s important to learn a reasonable method to diagnose the problem so you can keep improving. In this article I’m going to give you some research based methods to increase your strength and conditioning performance. Keep reading for more.
Readers of this website will know that I write a lot of different programs, but I tend to specialize in functional fitness, and hybrid style plans. As a result of training many different types of athletes, I’ve done a lot of training trouble shooting over the years.
Because of this I’ve done quite a bit of research to help athletes continue to make progress along their fitness journey. Most of these methods are similar in principle but they require different implementation, when it comes to specific fitness goals, and training programs. Check out an overview of these 5 methods to break through fitness plateaus below.
5 Proven Methods to Break Through Fitness Plateaus Overview
- Proper diagnoses is the best way to break plateaus
- Strength athletes often need muscle mass to increase lifts
- Endurance athletes most commonly need more easy aerobic work
- Hybrid athletes often fail to eat sufficiently to increase performance
- Important to differentiate between short term gains and long term solutions
I’m going to be honest here. Proper diagnosis is the most difficult part. It requires a deep understanding, and a lot of experience to get correct. In this article, I will try to give you some resources, and links to research that will help you take a closer look at the relevant factors causing your problems.
However, I might also encourage you to train with a knowledgeable strength and conditioning coach, for a faster more accurate diagnosis. A good coach, or personal trainer, can often help you quickly identify the issue, implementing new ways of training. It could be something as simple as not eating enough calories, or using proper form in your exercise routine.
The good news is that this is possible to do online. If you’re interested in having me help you break through your plateaus, shoot me and email and we can discuss your issues.
Now let’s get to the first, and most important step in diagnosing the root cause of your workout plateau. On a side note, I will provide some programs later on that can help you break through fitness plateaus as well.
Step 1: Diagnose Your Fitness Plateau
I’m going to break down the diagnosis section into three broad categories: strength gain, muscle growth, and endurance. In each section I will review the most common issues that cause your workout routine to stagnate. Let’s get to the first section, strength.
Before we get there I recommend downloading this calculator. It will show you how much muscle and strength you have left to build, based off of your specific training measurements.
Strength Training Plateau Diagnosis
For strength athletes the most common training plateau is the transition from beginner to intermediate athlete. Beginner gains are real, and they represent your body rapidly acclimatizing to your training style. That is why a good fitness plan, that implements progressive overload is key.
I am commonly contacted by athletes that want a weight lifting program recommendation. I’m always happy to help them out. Quite often they want the biggest, baddest, most difficult strength program I have. That is actually the cause of their training plateau!
No matter your specific strength training goals, you should only do the minimum effective dose that allows for steady progress. The human body inevitably returns to homeostasis. If you have nothing more difficult to progressively overload with, then you have official stopped the gainz train.
This is why it’s important to try new challenges, and train in different ways. You must vary your exercise program to avoid acclimatizing to the stimulus!
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Break Through Fitness Plateaus: Muscle Mass for Strength
For athletes who need to continue gaining strength, it’s important to note that there are only two best strategies to focus on. You can work on neural efficiency, or you can build muscle mass. Neural efficiency is simply working with heavier weights, for low reps, gradually increasing the load, week over week. If you think this sounds like a regular strength program, you’d be right. It works, but only in the short term.
The only other method you have to increase your strength is to build muscle mass. Please read that again. You’ll notice the strongest weight lifters, or power athletes, tend to have the most muscle mass for their height. That is because increases in muscle gain are strongly correlated with increased strength.
In order to build more muscle mass, you will need to build up your training volume in a reasonable manner, using the minimum effective dose to do so. We will discuss this in more detail in the next section on building lean muscle mass.
If you want an awesome functional fitness plan to build mass and strength then this is for you.
Muscle Hypertrophy Diagnosis
If you need to build muscle mass you’re in luck. Research confirms that there are three primary drivers of hypertrophy. First is mechanical tension. This is simply the tension your muscles experience from lifting heavy weights.
Next, we have muscle damage. This is the physical damage that is caused from a training session. It is often correlated with muscle soreness, but isn’t necessarily the same thing.
Lastly we have metabolic stress. This is the stress your muscle cells experience when you do a big workout. It can be correlated with that burning you often feel when working close to failure.
When looking for the cause of your muscle building plateau, you need to examine these three areas first. If you find that you never touch heavy weights, say above 80% of 1RM, then thats something that can help jump start your growth.
Similarly, if you never experience soreness, and shy away from sets close to momentary muscular failure, that is also a likely cause of your stagnation. All of these issues really require that you get your training volume right.
Break Through Fitness Plateaus: Training Volume for Hypertrophy
The vast majority of muscle building research shows that increases in overall training volume, for each major muscle group, strongly correlates to increases in muscle size. In my experience, most athletes actually do way too much volume in any given workout session, and not enough over a training week.
Research shows that most intermediate athletes can best recover from 40-60 hard training reps. That is much lower than many training programs you find online. For my athletes, I often have them stick to this range in any given session. This keeps them from getting so sore that they can’t train again quickly.
I then have them repeat the muscle group after a few rest days. This allows you to recover from the minimum effective dose, two or three times per week. It increases overall training volume, increasing hypertrophy. If you’ve been training with big sessions, hitting your body parts once per week, you’re likely leaving gains on the table.
This is the most effective method to increase training volume, that you can actually recover from. In the next section we’ll review the most common issues that affect endurance athletes.
Endurance Athlete Plateau Diagnosis
Endurance athletes are often a little easier to diagnose. This is because there are really only two types of training, aerobic and anaerobic. It doesn’t matter if you’re a runner, cyclist, CrossFit athlete, or professional rollerblader. All your endurance training falls into those two broad categories.
Most newer athletes actually spend way too much time training anaerobically. I’m looking at you CrossFitters. I know this because I did it myself for about a decade, and I still see athletes going hard in the paint all day every day, when it comes to their conditioning work.
While this is necessary, it completely neglects what is arguably the most important energy system for endurance performance, the aerobic energy system.
Aerobic Energy System is King to Break Through Fitness Plateaus
The reason why this energy system matters so much is because the vast majority of your exercise movement is powered by this system. Contrary to popular belief, your body uses all energy systems all the time. They are like dimmer switches that your body moves up and down, depending on your workout intensity.
Even when you are squarely anaerobic, think 800m run, or 50 cal assault bike for time, your body is producing about 70% of the energy via your aerobic system. The balance comes from anaerobic energy production. If you don’t believe me check out this graph below.
If you only train the energy system that produces the smaller portion of energy for endurance work, it’s clear you are leaving gains on the table.
The other common problem with aerobic base work, or Zone 2 exercise, is that it isn’t hard, but it does takes a long time. You should be able to speak easily during this training, at a lowish heart rate. Many athletes feel like it must be a waste of time to train at easier intensities. To that I would say that the best endurance athletes in the world spend 70-90% of their training time on their aerobic base, so you should work on it too.
Now that we’ve covered how to diagnose the most common problems, let’s review some common solutions to these problems that you now know how to diagnose.
If you want to work on your cardio and strength then this program is for you.
5 Proven Methods to Break Through Fitness Plateaus
Now that we’ve identified the cause of our fitness plateau, we need to discuss the most effective ways to remedy these problems. Smart readers will notice that the diagnosis section was the longest part of this whole article, because knowing is half the battle.
In this sections we’ll break down these 5 methods for the most common strength and conditioning issues. I will also recommend some training strategies and programs to help you move in the right direction.
Method 1: Increasing Strength Via Neural Efficiency
Recall that neural efficiency is simply teaching your body to use the currently available muscle mass in a more efficient manner. Research shows that novice lifters are often only able to use 60% of their available muscle mass at any one time. Expert lifters can use up to 90%. This demonstrates the importance of neural efficiency.
First you need a solid, percentage based strength program, that incorporates progressive overload. Second, you need to practice lifting each rep with maximum speed, on the upwards portion of the lift. Your intent to move the weight quickly is key to activating the most muscle fiber you can.
As you spend more time lifting in this manner, you’ll find that your muscles are able to recruit larger fibers more quickly. This helps you lift heavy weights more efficiently. Linear periodization programs like this can be effective in as little as a few weeks. Check out the training programs below.
Method 2: Increasing Strength Via Muscle Growth
This is the best way to increase your strength in the long term. However, I don’t recommend training like a bodybuilder for years, if strength is your primary goal. For most strength and power athletes, you should cycle through different training programs each year.
Newer athletes, with more mass to gain, should spend about half of the year trying to focus on gaining muscle mass. More experienced athletes, who are closer to their genetic potential for muscle mass, can spend more time working on becoming more efficient with the lifts.
I recommend the programs below for strength athletes who need to gain muscle mass. While they are focused on hypertrophy, that doesn’t mean there aren’t heavy weights. The two training styles aren’t mutually exclusive!
Method 3: Increasing Muscle Size Via Volume
For athletes that are primarily interested in gaining size, the most direct method is to increase overall training volume. Most commonly you’ll move from hitting different muscle groups once per week, to twice per week, with the appropriate amount of sets and reps for adequate muscle recovery.
I want to point out that many athletes feel like they aren’t working hard enough in each session, because they were overtraining perviously. You don’t have to be super sore for days afterwards to get a good workout. That is actually counterproductive, as it delays your next training session with that muscle.
Increasing training volume, with a twice per week split, is a scientifically proven method of building muscle. However, there are other methods you can employ to build training volume. Those are things like supersets, or increasing the rep range on each set.
Because we are less concerned about building strength, you can actually use techniques like very short rest periods, and lighter free weights, to build muscle mass as well. The important thing to remember is that no single training method will work forever. Your body is smart and will acclimatize to whatever your are doing. Check out these muscle building programs below.
Method 4: Increasing Endurance Via Aerobic Work
Aerobic base work is commonly called Zone 2 training. This training Zone falls within a 5 Zone system that differentiates training intensity. Zone 1 is equivalent to easy walking. Zone 2 is the Zone where you can maintain a conversation easily, or breath through your nose. Zone 3 is the start of anaerobic training, with Zones 4 and 5 being increasingly difficult anaerobic work.
Physiologically, Zone 2 is the training intensity that uses fat to provide the substrate to create ATP for movement. This is the “fat burning zone” you see on treadmills. Surprisingly enough, it is accurately labelled, but the goal for this training isn’t just to burn fat for for weight loss.
Zone 2 training teaches your body to create more ATP at sustainable intensities. As an example, a fit endurance athlete might be able to produce 200 watts of energy within Zone 2. A Tour de France rider can produce over 300 watts within Zone 2.
Even if you’re a hybrid athlete or CrossFit athlete, it’s clear that the ability to produce more energy from your aerobic energy system will benefit you in the gym, as well as in your endurance work. Check out these programs to work on endurance.
Method 5: Increasing Endurance Via Anaerobic Work
As a coach of many years, I most commonly see athletes indulging in too much anaerobic work. However, I do still see those that tend to just jog everywhere, or only cycle at low intensities.
If that describes your endurance training style, then you need to focus on your anaerobic conditioning. Research shows us that interval training with 30 sec up to 4 min intervals will be your best choice. Check out the programs below.
Recovery and Proper Nutrition to Break Through Fitness Plateaus
We’ve covered a lot of information on identifying common causes of fitness training plateaus. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention recovery and nutrition. These are the two most important aspects of your overall training plan.
It doesn’t matter how much info I give you on training volume or cardiovascular endurance zones, if you can’t recover from the workouts, then you’re training sub optimally.
I would recommend checking out this nutrition calculator to make sure that you’re around the area you should be to make gains. Quite often I find an athlete is training well, but not making progress. The quickest fix is to bump up their carbs.
If you feel like you’re training appropriately, and still suffering from a lack of progress, then I would try a few weeks with 50-100 grams more carbs per day, with no other changes. See what that does for your progress and energy levels. Now let’s talk about the other elephant in the room, recovery.
Recovery and Plateaus
The biggest part of your recovery plan is getting enough sleep. While it is possible to make progress sleep deprived, that is a recipe for long term training plateaus. Research shows that lack of sleep causes excess fat gain, and I’ve personally found that it increases risk of injury.
If you find time for the gym, then you can find an extra 30-45 min to sleep a night. Poor sleep is an anchor slowing your progress.
Lastly, I do not recommend any cold therapies, including ice baths. Research is very clear that it limits muscle growth, and doesn’t help you train any harder. There are certain benefits to using ice for acute injuries, but you need to use it for those purposes, according to a competent medical professional.
Make sure you’re sleeping and eating enough protein and carbs. Commonly you’ll see your performance increase drastically. Now let’s finish this article up.
Final Thoughts to Break Through Fitness Plateaus
For athletes that only need muscle mass or strength, breaking through plateaus is fairly straight forward. For hybrid athletes, and CrossFitters, it can require you to be patient. Don’t try to increase your endurance performance, strength, and muscle mass all at once. Prioritize your improvement!
I recommend picking the area that is holding you back the most, and working on it until you start to plateau. You would then move into maintenance mode on that area of your training, while working on your next biggest weakness. Continue in this fashion, hammering your weaknesses.
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