I hope your week is going well.

 

Recently, I (Gary) was answering questions on my instagram story, and one of the questions asked was related to overcoming a "strength plateau". In response to this question, one of the points I brought up was related to the difficulty of defining what exactly that means...

 

For some, a plateau might mean not being able to add weight to the bar in that session. For others, it might mean seeing zero progress on the bar for a year. How you solve the problem, and whether or not there is even a problem, depends on how you define it.

 

One of the key concepts to grasp is the difference between building strength and testing it. Yesterday, we posted a video of Triage Client Anita hitting a personal best on the squat. Is this "new" strength? Or, is it strength that was "hidden"?

 

The answer is likely the latter, in her case. You see, when you are training for strength, one of the barriers to knowing whether or not you have really hit a plateau is the fact that fatigue can sometimes "mask" your strength. You may be at the end of 8 weeks of hard training, and your assumption may be that all of that hard training should leave you feeling stronger than ever. But, you may simply be very fatigued, leaving you feeling like you aren't getting as strong as you deserve to be at this point.

 

If we refer back to Anita's case, she is currently preparing for a powerlifting meet in a few weeks. So, over the past couple of months, we have been making her training more and more specific to that goal. As we have increased the specificity (more work in lower rep ranges, on the specific lifts to be performed) and reduced her training volume, she has been hitting some personal bests. However, these performance increases do not stem solely from the previous weeks' training. They are the result of months and months of training aimed at building strength. Multiple sets of 5-8 with a couple of reps in the tank probably don't seem as sexy as going for a 1RM, 3RM, or 5RM, and they don't tend to carry the same instant gratification, but they can certainly be a valuable part of the process.

 

So, the message I want to get across to you is not that you shouldn't be looking to see increases on the bar every now and then. Rather, I simply want you to grasp the idea that building strength does not mean you have to keep on testing to see where it is at. You don't need to perform as many reps as possible each week, and it could, in fact, be holding you back. Performing multiple sets with reps in the tank, even with the same load as last week, can be a valuable strength-building stimulus. As you improve your skill and lay down more muscle tissue, you improve your chances of expressing more strength in the future.

 

Finally, if you have been training for a few years, adding weight to the bar weekly (i.e. personal bests) is unlikely. It could be the case that you perform a "test set" every few months on your priority exercise (e.g. squat). For example, you could decide that every quarter, you are going to test your 1RM, 3RM, or 5RM (it can be a 10RM, it doesn't matter, as long as you are not actually training for powerlifting), and during each 12 week period in the interim, you don't stress quite as much about the weekly increases, provided the training stress is sufficient to keep you moving forward. What that means for you is an individual question, but hopefully, you now have some things worth thinking about.

 

If you have any questions, please do let us know. If you'd like to get involved in our one to one or group coaching services, then click here, or here, for more information.

 

Kind Regards,