Summary: Weight lifting plateau is bound to occur to you, and it probably has happened if you are reading this article. This article explains some common ways to overcome this condition.
Keep A Journal
Record what you do in the gym. Record how many sets and the weight you use. You may think you can keep it in your head, but you are not likely to remember long-term progress. Recording your workouts in a type of journal will help you see patterns.
Rest
Make sure you are getting plenty of sleep. Your muscles grow while they are sleeping. 8 hours of sleep is the recommended norm, some recommend as much as 10 hours of sleep. Take a break from weight lifting. Take a full seven days off from any kind of workouts. Let your body completely renew itself. Another approach is to rest for longer than seven days, maybe a month or so but you still workout but not nearly as hard. You focus mostly on cardio at this time or if you decide to weight lift use light weights and do many repetitions.
Diet
Much of the research out there says you most likely are getting enough protein in your diet naturally. The volumes of information about increasing protein intake for heavy weight lifters cannot be ignored. Those who are not hard-core weight lifters do not need as much protein. Since you are concerned about reaching a plateau you might want to increase your protein intake. Focus on the healthiest kinds of protein such as egg whites. Some doctors also advise not to avoid eating the egg yoke. The cholesterol in the egg yoke has important nutrients.
Change Up Your Workout
Change up your routine. Try doing it in a different way. Maybe try doing a full body workout. Use a different machine than what you normally use. If you have mostly been using machines start using free-weights and vice versa.
Focus on the negative. The negative is when you are releasing or lowering the weight. Do this extremely slow and hold it in the middle. There are at least two ways of doing this. Use your normal weight and lower down as slow as you can stand. The other method is to increase the weight 10 or 15 pounds and lower it slowly. You will not be able to lower it as slowly with the heavier weight but it will shock your muscles more.
You are trying to shock your body. Make it do something that it has not done before. Try doing supersets. Supersets are different exercises combined one after another without rest.
For example if you are accustomed to doing biceps and triceps on the same workout day. Do a bicep rep and instead of resting immediately do a triceps rep.
Another method is to start heavy and after each rep take the weight down without resting. For example do a chest press set using 100 pounds of about 8 reps, instead of resting decrease the weight to say 50 pounds and pump out a few more reps. This helps insure that you truly did reach muscle failure.
You will find that with the lower weight you can still push out a few more reps. After you rested put the 100 pounds back on and do your 8 reps, then drop the weight down to 50 pounds and knock out some more reps. If you manage 8 reps with 50 pounds try it with 75 pounds. You shouldn't be able to do too many reps with the lower weight because you should have already brought your muscles to failure. The lower weight is that extra insurance that you will reach muscle failure. If you are getting 8 reps with the lower weight your higher weight is not high enough. Increase the 100 pounds 10 or 15 pounds.
Conclusion
Weight lifting plateau is caused by doing the same thing over and over again. It is overcome by shocking your body by doing something different. Other factors such as sleep, rest and diet play a factor.
Author Resource:-
Bret Bradshaw owns a virtual celebrity professional training business. Go to www.Fit-In-Exercise.com for more information.
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