Tips For Bodybuilding: Overcoming A Plateau

It’s happened to the best of us at some point or the other…. 

Many of use tips for bodybuilding to create successful workout programs, and we constantly add more weight on the bar, more pounds on the scale, and become bigger and stronger from week to week.

But out of nowhere, our gains come to a screeching halt, and our muscle building and strength gaining progress is stopped dead in its tracks.

This, my friends, is called a “plateau.”.

All progress halts during a plateau, in spite of our best efforts in the gym and in the kitchen. What does a typical bodybuilder do in response? Haphazardly switching up their training routine, these builders do everything they can to “shock” their muscles into new gains...

They change everything up, including their rep ranges and the exercises they perform... They try to force new gains by experimenting with new techniques like forced reps, negatives, and static holds.

HALT!

Even though some tips for bodybuilding say that varying your exercise routine is the key, these plateaus exist as a result of far more fundamental reasons. It’s not because your body has mastered your old workout.

Most of the time, a plateau simply means that you are overtraining. We need to consider some basic physiology in order to see why this is the case…. When we train intensely in the gym, we hurt our muscles.

With every set that we do, it takes longer for the body to heal. Your body needs time and nutrition to heal when you leave the gym, in order to repair this damage. When your muscles have been remodeled back to their previous state, your body will also start to build up more muscle as an adaptive response to the stress.

Are you still with me?

Here’s where it gets more complicated…. As you get stronger and begin to lift heavier poundages, the stress on your body increases and so does the “hole” in your body’s recovery abilities. For example, a seasoned bodybuilder bench pressing 300 pounds for 6 reps is placing his muscles under far more stress as opposed to a beginner who is only pressing a mere 125 pounds. 



And what is the connection with the plateaus?

Totally!

The heavier weights and increasing stress levels that you subject your body to each week HAVE to be compensated for by a reduction in training volume and frequency. If you continuously raise the bar on each and every set, but at the same time, you refuse to cut down on the number of sets or training days, your body will eventually reach a stage where it is unable to properly recover between workouts.

When you can’t recover properly, your muscles are not given an adequate amount of time to remodel, and this leads to limited size and strength. If you interrupt the process of recovery by placing your muscles under more stress before they are fully recovered, your gains will slow down and eventually stop.

This keeps you from pressing forward, and you keep yourself on the plateau. Good to know, right? Believe it or not, when you become more advanced, you must train less often and with fewer sets!

It makes sense that training intensity and volume is DIRECTLY related, because they are part of a balanced equation that works to decide your progress. If one variable goes up, the other MUST go down.

So if you find yourself “stuck” on this weight training plateau, try these tips for bodybuilding…. You have to balance your frequency and volume! Consider inserting an additional rest day in between workouts, and decrease the number of sets you perform for each muscle group.

Find out if you were previously overtraining by applying these tips for bodybuilding and then evaluating whether you come back to the gym stronger. Here are a few more tips for bodybuilding to keep in mind…. Often, a slight reduction in volume and frequency is usually all you need to make constant, uninterrupted progress in strength and size.

Understand that the body has a limited amount of recovery ability and as you grow stronger, you are using more of it with each set; so don’t panic and start hunting for some new “ground-breaking” routine.
If you want to blast yourself through the plateau and into a new phase of growth, reduce your volume and insert an additional rest day into your routine. If you found these tips for bodybuilding helpful, make sure to visit me at www.MuscleGainTruth.com for more highly effective tricks and tips for bodybuilding. If you want to build muscle fast, then you can't be making mistakes that will sabotage your efforts.

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