Is it really a plateau?

I was training the other day and thought to myself that I've stagnated on a few lifts. I looked through my history of those exercises and I'd been lifting the same weight for the last few sessions.

It can feel demotivating when you're hitting a plateau, like your training isn't effective, or you're hitting a ceiling that you can't push through without considerably more time and effort spent training.

Later, while I was looking at a few clients' programs, I looked at my own and saw that I'd only completed 28% of my prescribed sessions in the past 30 days.

There are a few reasons for this, largely having had two separate illnesses in the last month.

It's a nice reminder that before you assume you've got the most out of an exercise and go changing your program, you should check a few things with yourself: Have you been training to an appropriate intensity? Have you been consistently completing sessions? And have you been pushing your accessory exercises?

I truly believe that most of the time people struggle to make progress with their training, it's due to one of these reasons. Not to say it's directly their fault, but it's important to recognise what's actually happening, as this gives you the power to adjust your training to get the most out of it.

If you're not training close to failure on strength or hypertrophy exercises, you'll struggle to progress.

If you don't consistently train, you'll struggle to progress.

Your accessory exercises often support your main lifts. If you're not training them hard regularly, your main lifts will stagnate.

Assessing the effectiveness of your own training can be difficult, because we typically attribute fault to external reasons when things aren't going well for us. This is why having a coach can be so valuable, as a coach can evaluate these things with less bias.

If you're interested in getting the most out of your training and achieving some cool milestones, book a free consult with me.