Reaching a Plateau

Why not try mixing up your routine, and then coming back to the lifts you want to improve on after a month or so? Also, don't roid. Everything has its limits.

You could stick with your current working weights and increase volume (do more sets/reps) and even decrease rest time between sets. This is probably the safest bet. Just do more work and gain some more muscle. You may need to increase calories depending on your current dieting strategy.

It's definitely normal to experience this with increasing experience. Muscle mass and strength progression exponentially decreases as muscle mass and strength increases.

If you feel like the strength progression is stalling because you feel tired or weak all the time, maybe a deload week will help, but generally plateau busting requires working harder and increasing workload.

>>42800175
Well I always switch up my lifts but keep a schedule of which muscle groups I hit.

>>42800310
A deload week sounds intriguing. What does it entail?

>>42799973
Try doing exercises that support the exercises you wish to increase strength in.
I.E:
for deadlift try doing suitcase deadlift or one legged deadlift, or for squat try good mornings or front squats, etc.
What this will do is put emphasis on muscles that aren't worked out as much in the exercises that you major in.
Alternatively, what is your routine looking like? often this could be where the problem lies, that your routine is bad
and What weights are you sitting at? Are you even worthy of a plateau, or are you just not trying hard enough?

>>42801097

A 'deload' is essentially a period in which you decrease the intensity and volume of your workouts as a means of 'active recovery', meaning giving your body a break but still keeping active so you don't fall off the wagon so to speak. If you've been working out consistently for the past month or more, you could try just taking it easy this week to give your body some rest. Muscles recover very quickly from exercise (1-3 days generally), but what takes longer to recover is your nervous system, which accumulates stress over time. A deload can help bleed off some of that accumulated stress. That's the theory anyway.

If you want to try a deload week, just do your normal routine, but decrease the weights used by 40-50% or decrease the sets/reps. It should feel like you're not doing much; that's the point. You may feel tempted to do more work to make it feel like you're getting in a good workout; but that will not help whatsoever. Exercise some constraint and take it easy. You will not lose your gains. This is a time to skip the pre-workout too if you like to use those.

>>42801336
Thanks for that. I've tried doing something like this in the past, but it's hard to lift so light. It makes me feel like I'm wasting my time, so I'll just say fuck it and lift heavy anyway. I'll take your advice and use some willpower to avoid lifting too heavy.