Article By: John Fontana

Last week I discussed some possible causes of a slump or plateau in the gym.  Before I began to truly study exercise I constantly went in and out of mini plateaus.  It seemed that every few months I would hit a wall and actually get a little weaker than I was before.   Back then my answer was always to train harder than I had before using the “no pain, no gain” mentality.

The thought, “If I’m not getting stronger, I must not be lifting hard enough” that most people get is a natural reaction to the situation.  The problem is that most of the time that thought process is not a good one and will actually make things worse.  There are hundreds of variables that go into strength training, and slumps are not always caused by lack of effort.

The purpose of the “Not Getting Any Stronger?” posts is to help you get outside of the hardheaded mentality that most people bring to the gym.  The majority of the time, your plateau is likely caused from some type of programming error.  Somewhere along the line you made the wrong call in what you are doing for workouts.  Last week I talked about the amount of time you spend doing a particular workout.  This week I will dive a little further into the actual workouts.

As a review, the main issues covered last week involved the amount of time you spent in a certain exercise program or what’s called a micro cycle.  A micro-cycle refers to an amount of time (in weeks) you’ve spent performing a particular style of workout. The main mistake that people make is that they have either spent too much time or too little time during a micro-cycle.

Although spending too much or too little time in a micro-cycle are common causes of a plateau, they are not the only culprits.  You may be right with the amount of time you spend doing a particular workout, but have the exercise selection or other variables incorrect.

I hate to break the news to you, but it is rare you will find an effective workout that you can rip out of a magazine.  If you are getting your workouts from one of the magazines with a bodybuilder on the cover, you may be in trouble.  Guys who have been working out for at least ten years create most of the workouts in those magazines.  Not only that but they are examples of what the bodybuilder has been doing while nearing a competition.  Unless you are in a similar situation, those workouts won’t be suitable for you.

Too often, I see people in the gym doing either a terrible selection of exercises or a terrible order of exercises.  Doing a ton of isolation (bicep curls, chest fly’s, leg extensions…) exercises won’t ever allow you to reach you full potential.  Those are called auxiliary exercises and should be done as a compliment to your prime mover exercises.

Exercises such as squats, dead lifts, pull-ups, rows and bench press should be done during each workout.  If you are not doing at least one or two of the primary or “big lifts” during each exercise, your strength will not continue to rise.  You have to perform those big lifts because they will shock your nervous systems and muscle fibers in a way that isolation or auxiliary exercises won’t.  Not only do you need to do the big lifts, but also you really need to load up with them.  This is where you work on true strength and should never be doing more than 8 reps or less than 4 sets.  Throw that 3×10 mentality out the window and start getting into 4, 5 and even 6 sets.  Always look to increase your total volume each week without lowering weight. For example, if you benched 4 sets of 6 reps last week with 80 pound dumbbells, this week you should be able to do 5 sets of 5 with at least 80 pounds.  You will have increased your total volume by one repetition, look to do that each week.  This will gradually build you up into a “stronger than he looks” person.

Auxiliary exercises should be done for one of two reasons, or both.  One reason is to strengthen your synergist muscles such as the biceps, triceps and forearms so that they can assist your big muscles.  If you are performing a bench or row, those synergists will be taking part in helping you complete each rep.  If you neglect the synergists too much they will lag behind your bigger muscles and fatigue before your sets are done. There is nothing worse than not being able to do more pull ups because your forearms too tired or not being able to do more rows because your biceps are on fire.  The other reason for auxiliary exercises is strictly for vanity purposes.  It’s no shocker that you want bigger arms or bigger calves, but if strength is your main goal than those shouldn’t be.  You should never be performing more auxiliary work than primary work if your main goal is strength.

Make sure that you are doing at least one or two primary exercises per workout.  Depending on your current workout program and the way you are splitting each week up, you should probably be doing at least two primary exercises per workout.  Also, when you are doing those primary lifts, keep the weight high, sets high and reps low.  Your body will only call upon the strongest muscle fibers it needs to do each rep.  If you don’t move heavy weight, you won’t ever activate your strongest muscle fibers.  If you want to truly get strong you will need to work on strengthening your strongest muscle fibers.

Next week I will explore program design a little deeper and talk about order selection of exercises.  Until then you can go to http://shadowfit.com/signup_1.cfm?secret_code=dh374hfj3s and register for a free personalized workout.  Just fill out the questionnaire appropriately and we will build you a workout that will get you as strong as you’ve ever been.

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