Through my years of personal training and wellness coaching, I’ve found that overcoming plateaus in gym and life is the number one challenge my clients face. Whether it be muscle growth, weight loss, or just overall goals in life, they speak of how when they first started their journeys, they noticed such big improvements. But after a few months, they would see less and less progress, eventually hitting a wall of little to no change. They will still be training, dieting, or sticking to a routine in their day-to-day life, but nothing is really changing anymore. There are no more signs of growth.
Usually, I hear these things when I’m doing consultations. I’ll ask what their newest goal is or what they think their biggest hurdle in the gym is, and that’s when they mention the stop in growth. As I stated before, this type of hurdle can happen in anything, but let’s take muscle and strength gain as an example.
The Secret to Overcoming Plateaus in Gym and Life
If a client is not seeing any improvements in a certain amount of time—but did notice them when they were first starting—I usually ask something along the lines of: "What is your rep range, set range, and the weight you are using for training?"
This will tell me a lot of things. For example, do they even keep track of their rep and set ranges? Do they know the weights they train at? Do they know the most optimal ranges for different muscle groups? To be honest, none of that is the information I’m actually looking for. That question is really just a leading question into the next one, which is: "What do those last 2-3 reps look like, and what does your last rep look like?"
This is the information that’s really going to answer why we have not seen growth. Most of the time, people answer these questions with something along the lines of, “I do 3 sets of 10-15 reps and nothing really different besides a good burn on reps 13-15.”
THIS IS WHY THEY WILL NOT SEE GROWTH.
How Failure Leads to Overcoming Plateaus in Gym and Life
Let’s break this down. When they first started coming to the gym, any form of resistance training was something the body was not used to. Over a few months, they saw a change, and that’s great. The body did what it was supposed to do: it saw that it was getting resistance training, and it adapted.
But if we are using a training level where we are lifting 10-15 reps and are honestly able to go to 16, but we stop just because 10-15 is our "known" set range, then we aren’t pushing and forcing the body past its comfort. What we're essentially doing is coming in and telling the body, “Hey, we need to lift this weight for 10-15 still,” and then we set it down and go about our day. Of course we won't see change! The body has no reason to change; IT DID EVERYTHING WE CALLED OF IT TO DO.
So, what we need to do is force more adaptation. How? By failing… constantly.
And when I say failing, I mean you cannot get the full rep in. The weight should come up slower for 2-3 reps and then just not move at all. I recommend at least 2-3 sets of failure in the 6-8 rep range. This means we can at least hit 6, but we cannot go over 8. This is because with anything more than 8, we are usually just burning up the energy in the muscle versus pushing the muscle to its limits. Think of this like a car running out of gas versus hitting its highest speed. We want to push the limits while we’ve still got gas in the tank.
Doing this makes the body have a bit of an "AHA" moment. It realizes, "Oh, we are being called to lift X amount of weight and we can't. Let’s adapt some more and get to where we can lift that." Then, we progressively add more over time, always failing.
Applying These Lessons to Your Life
Now, as I said, this can be used for other parts of our life too. For example, dieting. If a 3,000-calorie deficit worked and now it doesn’t, you probably need to be at a larger deficit. The less you weigh, the lower your maintenance calories are. If you’re not getting as much done with your current routine as you used to, then you probably outgrew it. You need to adjust to add more to your plate or reframe it to reorganize for your new lifestyle.
As we grow, we need to be constantly pushing. It is not as simple as, "Oh, I work out, so I'll be bettering myself." That is a trap that only betters yourself compared to when you weren’t working out. We need to ask: "How can I force my body to adapt more in any area of my life?"
Overcoming plateaus in gym and life requires a shift in mindset. The more we fail, the more we grow.
