How To Overcome The Dreaded Plateau

Do you sometimes feel like you’re stuck? Things aren’t progressing like they used to, and you don’t know why? “Weight loss plateaus” are pretty common, but in the world of weightlifting we see this differently, and we also have 2 other types of plateaus that don't get talked about enough among female weightlifters.

First of all, if you’re wondering why plateaus happen, when you’ve been seeing great results with whatever you’re doing, how come it suddenly stopped working? What changed?

You changed!

You got stronger, you started eating better, you made movement a prominent part of your everyday life, and your body did what it is designed to do - it adapted to the circumstances you created for it and now what you’re doing is “no big deal”.

That’s why you plateaued. It got easier.

How To Overcome The Dreaded Plateau Contents

Different Types Of Plateau

No Weight Loss Plateau

Know What You Want

First Thing To Do When You’ve Stopped Losing Fat

First Thing To Do When You’ve Stopped Gaining Muscle

First Thing To Do If You’ve Stopped Getting Stronger

Remember Why Plateaus Happen

No Holding Back

You’re Not Alone

Different Types Of Plateau

Everyone will experience a plateau at some point in their journey. The power is in knowing how to overcome it. And you’re about to find out this life changing information…

First, you need to establish the type of plateau you’re experiencing. The most common are:

Stopped losing fat

Stopped gaining muscle

Stopped getting stronger

No Weight Loss Plateau

Notice I didn’t list “weight loss plateau”, while this is the most commonly referred to plateau, it’s not an accurate statement. This is a little bit of semantics, but while we are here I want you to understand that losing “weight” and losing “fat” are not one and the same.

Weight loss is a loss in overall body weight, this means it can come from your fat reserve, your water reserve, your lean muscle reserves and even as a result of reduced bone density.

When women go on very low calorie diets and start doing excessive cardio, they are usually unaware that they are massively eating into their lean muscle reserve and affecting their bone density. And so while the scale may look victorious, you’re actually on your way to being smaller, weaker and potentially “softer”, this is what is known as “skinny fat”.

Know What You Want

Just get clear about what you want to achieve here, usually, when people say they want to “lose weight”, what they actually want is to lose body fat. If that’s you, you’re in the right place, we have everything you need to prime your body for efficient fat loss. You can start with the free workout plans available in our Members Zone portal, create your free account here >>>.

Now, back to those pesky plateaus…

As mentioned above, there are different types of plateau, the first one we will cover is the dreaded fat loss plateau, then we will look at what to do if you have hit a plateau in building muscle and/or physical strength.

First Thing To Do When You’ve Stopped Losing Fat

Change your approach to training - get a new plan, try new exercises or switch to a different style of training for a while. You can always come back to what you’re doing now if you like it, you just need to switch things up since it’s likely your body is no longer challenged by what you are doing.

Look at your diet. Are you eating too many calories? Not enough calories? How are your daily marcos? Are you eating enough satiating and muscle building foods? I.e protein. Have you been in an extreme calorie deficit for too long? Do you need to consider a reverse diet?

If you can’t relate to any of the above, track your daily habits on paper for a couple of weeks. Write down what you’re eating, how you’re training, how you’re recovering… Then, take a look at it from that perspective. If you need help, you might want to consider the 7 day food fact find which is part of our member bonuses.

First Thing To Do When You’ve Stopped Gaining Muscle

Change your approach to training - get a new plan, try new exercises or switch to a different style of training for a while. Again, you can always come back to what you’re doing now if you like it, you just need to switch things up since it’s likely your body is no longer being challenged enough.

Lift more. Try lifting heavier if you can (if you’re comfortably performing 10 reps, you can increase the weight). Or increase the reps and slow down the movement. Consider time under tension.

Eat more, get more protein in and more calories in general - try adding a mass gainer if you’re really struggling.

If you’re still stuck, track everything you’re doing, training and nutrition wise and analyse it on paper, you will be surprised how easy it is to miss the small things, like not getting enough calories in.

First Thing To Do If You’ve Stopped Getting Stronger

Change your plan, don’t keep doing the same exercises, try different variations of exercises.

Try a new rep/set method. Perhaps you can try 5x5 or volume training.

Try lighter weight for more reps.

Consider time under tension and a fuller range of motion.

Prioritise compound exercises, but also don’t neglect isolation exercises that target the areas you want to build strength in.

Remember Why Plateaus Happen

Remember that plateaus happen because your body became accustomed to what you were doing. It’s not to say that what you were doing is bad or wrong, and it’s not to say that you shouldn’t go back to it at some point. You just need to keep switching things up so your body doesn’t get comfortable.

This is why it’s so important to familiarise yourself with a wide range of weightlifting exercises and training methods. We can help you do this through Members Zone, so that you can switch things up as and when you need to.

We have such a wide range of workout categories and training methods for this very reason, we can’t give everyone the same plans forever, you absolutely must switch things up. There are no exceptions, pros are pros because they understand this.

No Holding Back

We don’t want to hold you back, we want you to have everything you need to push through these plateaus yourself. The thing that caused your plateau is not going to be the same as the thing that caused somebody else's plateau. So if you take anything away from this, let it be that you need to find the thing that is most appropriate for you as an individual.

When you subscribe to Members Zone, we unlock everything for you immediately, so that you can work through it at your own pace, and seek out the thing that’s going to help you now.

You’re Not Alone

Not sure if you can do this by yourself? That’s fine, you are not alone, our team is here to support you for as long as you need. You can share some basic information with us and we will help guide you in terms of what to do next. With experience, and the information + workouts we provide through Members Zone, you will gradually build your confidence towards becoming completely gym independent.