When you start going to the gym and working out your muscle gains come very quickly. Practically every single exercise you do provides brand new muscle stimulation that your body hasn’t experienced before.
At the beginning all you have to do is be consistent with your workouts and you’ll make steady gains from week to week. Even if you screw things up and make mistakes with your workouts, you’ll still make muscle building gains as long as you’re consistent. All that matters is that you are providing unique muscle stimulation, and your body will respond by growing bigger and stronger.
This usually keeps up for a few months or so, but then all of a sudden…
BAM! Your workout progress comes to a screeching halt!
Your body just stops growing. What’s happening here is that your muscles have adapted to the level of stress you’ve been providing them through those basic workouts. When this happens you can keep going through the motions, doing the same routines over and over again, but all you’ll do is maintain your current level of muscular development. You won’t build any new muscle.
You’ve hit a PLATEAU…
This is very frustrating because it can seem like you are doing everything “right” in terms of being consistent with your workouts, eating properly, taking nutritional supplements, etc. But you are not making any progress to show for your efforts.
Most of the regular gym members that you see day after day, are stuck in one HUGE long-term plateau.
How can you tell?
Just watch their progress. Most of the regulars at a typical “fitness gym” will do the same type of workouts, lift the same weights, and basically just stay the same physically week after week, month after month, and year after year.
They are caught up in the habit of working out consistently (not a bad habit mind you) but they are not making any substantial progress forward in terms of getting bigger and stronger.
Now fortunately for you, I’ve got a solution to this problem. You see my friend Joey Vaillancourt has a FREE Report that shows 7 killer tricks for busting out of a plateau and getting back to making Fast Muscle Gains!
For the regulars who have been following me online for a while, you’ll probably recall that I did an interview with Joey a couple months ago. He’s a really smart guy and a fellow Canadian as well…
You know us Canadians will never steer you wrong, eh… LOL 😉
Joey’s a former “skinny-fat” ectomorph who has totally transformed his physique from being skin and bones… to being buff and muscular!
Just check out his “Before” and “After” pics below…
It’s quite an impressive physique transformation to say the least. The guy knows what he’s doing and it shows in his results. Anyway, just click on the link below to download Joey’s FREE report:
7 Fast Ways To Bust Any Plateau
12 Comments
Caelan
hi lee,
can you hit a plateau only if you are weight training or can you hit one if you are doing conditioning or maybe distance running and you cant improve your time. Also for the 20 rep squat challenge could you do them on back to back days and then take a longer break before you do the next workout?
Hope to hear from you soon.
Bali
Lee I recall sometime earlier you had a blog post in which you mentioned an article written by Frank Zane in which there are times when we are only maintaining as no body can make gains non stop. Can a plateau be the result of this? And is there any way to get around this or should I just switch to fat loss for the time being? Thanks for reading.
Kohl
Hey Lee if I
1. Take a relatively light weight and bang out 16 reps to near failure
2. Rest only 30 seconds and take a weight 10 pounds LIGHTER but can only do 8
reps to failure
Does this mean I worked the slow twitch fibers in the first set (bcos of the high rep) and the fast twitch fibers in the second set since I could only do 8 reps?
Chuck
What are your thoughts on freezing the fat cells on your stomach?
This technique is supposed to kill the white fats cells that are sensitive to cold weather. This would be utilized for a person who is in great shape but cannot remove the pouch area that hangs over the stomach area where you have the extra fat deposits
Joey Vaillancourt "Plateau Buster Writer"
Hi Everyone,
Lee has been a long time mentor in my muscle building quest and I am honored to be featured today on his blog again. Id like to chime in for some questions if that’s alright..
Caelan, yes you can most certainly plateau on conditioning workouts such as cardio or long distance running and the same principle would apply where you would need to switch things up…generally when im cutting up for a shoot or competition, after about 2 months of performing a particular cardio workout, I cannot achieve anywhere near the same heart rate at the intensity I was initially doing..just a sign of adaptation. Its our bodies natural survival mechanism to adapt to new stressors.
Bali, you definetly cannot make gains non-stop as you pointed out, but generally if you are trying to gain muscle and you have stopped gaining, I would always try including one of the plateau busters that I mention in the report before moving on to starting a fat loss phase..more often than not, after incorporating a plateau buster, you will see results from it in the coming weeks.
Kohl,
Lee might have a differnet opinion, but doing what you stated above would result in only fatiguing type 1 fibers…I would switch it around. Start with a heavy set 5-6 reps to trigger type 2 fibers then drop the weight and further fatigue the muscle and work those type 1 fibers.
carlos
hey lee.. i need help … i seem to be stuck at a plateau as well im stuck at 200 lbs on the bench and i need to get 225-240 by Christmas break please lee!!!! i need tips and im kinda worried about it… ): any tips? supplements? im 17 btw
leehayward
You can hit plateaus with any kind of training, cardio, strength, etc.
As for the 20 rep squat program. I usually recommend people start out doing it 3 days per week. Then as the weights start to catch up with you drop it back to 2 days per week (you can do an extra upper body workout in between if you like). Once you feel that doing it 2 times a week is too much, then the program has run it’s course and it’s time to switch to a different training program for while.
leehayward
It really depends on the individual, just because you’ve hit a plateau with mass building doesn’t mean you need to automatically switch to fat loss training. You may just need to take some time and do active recovery maintenance type training for a while, before kicking up the intensity again.
leehayward
When ever you lift weights at all you are working ALL muscle fibers. But when you do heavy training you’ll work primarily fast twitch fibers. When you do lighter higher rep training you’ll work primarily slow twitch fibers.
But what you described above would still be primarily slower twitch fibers because the low reps came about from muscle fatigue, not from heavy weights.
leehayward
I have no experience with freezing fat cells and I wouldn’t even know where to start on this one… Even though it’s been pretty cold outside lately here in Canada 😉
leehayward
One of the best things I find for busting out of a bench press plateau is to STOP Benching and do Dumbbell Bench instead. I actually have a YouTube video about this at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJnZ0gscR1E
alan
hey lee from sunny ireland lol,i must say your genuine article respect dude,i agree some people hit plateau and dont even know it,ive been training natural 14yrs and i have done it myself,but ive learned,i do a programme for 8 weeks tops then change,im doing powerlifting now,check out some of my videos on youtube my username is irishbusa,keep up good work lee,stay strong 🙂