How to Break a Workout Plateau

Many experienced lifters as well as novices eventually reach a point where their routines just don’t provide the same challenges, benefits, or results. This is called a plateau. Sometimes the plateau is more physical but sometimes it is mental as well. Usually the key to breaking these is to mix things up a bit. But how exactly do we mix things up? One of the best ways to shock your body into change especially if you’ve never done them is to incorporate intensity techniques into your routines. These don’t require you to stop doing your favorite exercises, but rather change the way that you perform them. So let’s get into some of the more popular intensity techniques and how to implement them!

Cardioacceleration

Cardioacceleration is a technique that has been made more famous by fitness expert Dr. Jim Stoppani. It is essentially performing HIIT in between your sets. So instead of resting and not doing anything in the 30-60 seconds between sets, you perform some sort of cardio to get your heart rate up. This is also great because it helps you save time by doing cardio within your strength routine. You could do jumping jacks, jump rope, run in place, high knees, mountain climbers etc. 

This technique is great if you are feeling bored in your routines because it instantly makes it feel more intense and gets your heart rate up. So you will burn more calories in less time and hit your body in a different way.

Drop Sets

Drop Sets are a very popular technique among bodybuilders to fully exhaust a muscle and increase time under tension. A drop set involves finishing a set and immediately lowering the weight and going to failure again with no rest. You will ideally do this multiple times. So for example you may curl 10 reps of 25 lbs, then 10 reps of 20lbs, 10 reps of 15lbs, then 10 reps of 10lbs, with no rest in between. 

Perhaps the reason that you have stopped progressing is because you aren’t fully depleting your muscles. When you curl lighter weights once you are already tired, you recruit more muscle fibers that you haven’t already torn and wouldn’t normally use because you don’t normally lift that light. However, after a few drops sets, even a light weight gets very difficult. This makes drop sets great finishers near the end of your workout as well because they thoroughly exhaust you and hit your muscle in a new way.

So throw these in maybe at the end of each exercise on your last set.

Supersets

Supersets are probably the most popular and well-known intensity technique. A superset is when you alternate back and forth between at least two different exercises without rest. These can be from antagonist muscle groups but are commonly the same muscle group but exercises that work slightly different mechanics. For example, a common chest superset is to alternate between a bench press and a chest fly. 

Supersets not only allow you to finish your workouts quicker, but they also add more intensity and pump to your workouts. You could throw these in really anywhere in your workout to help increase your muscular endurance and boost intensity.

Rest-Pause Sets

Rest-pause sets are another great way to fully exhaust your muscle cells, similar to a drop set but without lowering the weight. To do a rest pause set, you perform your set like normal, then with the same weight you perform another set until failure after only resting about 20 seconds. You repeat until you can no longer complete more than one rep or until failure. These really help you push at the end of your sets and leave nothing left. This is beneficial strength-wise as well because you aren’t lowering the weight. So this way, you get used to handling that same weight even if it is for less reps. Just don’t overdo it and perform rest-pause sets on every exercise because you could risk overtraining. We would recommend them on safe compound movements near the beginning of your workout followed by accessory lifts.

Partial Reps

Partial reps are another intensity technique but to preface there are certain exercises where they would be unsafe to do, so they must be done with caution. On exercises that place your body at risk of injury when done incorrectly such as a back squat or a deadlift they shouldn’t be done! Partial reps are performing just part of the rep with slightly worse form once you can no longer perform a proper rep. This helps to squeeze out what’s left and increase strength.

One example is with a barbell bicep curl. You curl properly until you can’t anymore and then maybe swing the bar a little bit to get it up or only curl it halfway up before it falls back down. This also works well on machines such as a leg extension or lat pull-downs where you can safely return the weight to the starting position when you fail. 

This is a slightly less formal technique but still makes sure that you really can’t perform another rep in the set.

There are other ways or techniques that can help to break a plateau but intensity techniques such as these are a great place to start. And more importantly you should know that whenever you are working out, you are still making progress. The only way to truly plateau is to stop going. So never give up! And trust that if you put in the work and time, the results will come.