Reasons Why Our Strength Sometimes Plateaus
Solving problems in our lives sometimes require us to think outside of the box, but we often rely on old methods that just never seem to work.
Finding new strategies to confront your biggest problems can greatly increase the odds of getting the results you’re looking for.
Using the same exercises without any type of variation involved is a linear method of working out that creates growth very slowly over time (see Effects of Muscle Memory on Your Physique).
To break this cycle of slow growth, we can add a period of detraining into a workout program to exponentially increase our strength over time.
A short break from the weight room is overall better for us in the long run but is only one of the many factors that hold our strength back in the gym.
What’s Holding Back Your Strength in the Gym
A plateau in strength generally indicates your weight training progress has some kind of flaw that needs to be corrected. Without correcting any these mistakes, you could waste months of your time on exercise strategies that don’t work for you anymore.
Flaws in weight training execution originate from bad habits we picked up earlier when we first started at the gym.
It’s naïve to copy what someone else is doing in the gym without first studying how to do it, but we frequently do this anyway and create problems for ourselves later on.
Here are the top flaws in a training program:
Improper Control of Breath
Proper breathing technique greatly increases oxygen intake into the muscles, making this very important for weight training. This is because breathing patterns greatly affect the eccentric and concentric movement of the exercise. You should take deep breaths lowering the weight and exhale when lifting against gravity.
Poor Grip/Weak Forearms
Muscle tension near the wrist when performing any of the major lifts (squat, deadlift, bench press) may indicate weaker muscle fibers near the forearms or the wrist. New weightlifters have a limit lifting heavy because the major muscle of the forearm hasn’t been strengthened (brachioradialis, forearm extensors & flexors).
Weak grip and forearms can be developed with continuous heavy weight training or using isometric devices that can slowly increase strength over time.
Lifting Too Heavy
Lifting heavy can be both good and bad. You should be lifting heavy, but only up to 70-85% of 1RM. Whenever you lift too heavy, the target muscle doesn’t fully contract and you waste the exercise on smaller, accessory muscles. This happens when the prime mover in the exercise loses action potential and relies on these muscles to finish the lift.
Working out this way stagnates progress and greatly increases the likelihood of injury.
The Wrap Up
Slowdowns in strength can be identified early on before wasting months doing asinine workouts that lead nowhere. If your tracked progress stagnates long enough, identify these three variables that are holding you back. Make sure you get plenty of rest while testing these changes over several weeks.
