 Oh, man, you know what sucks plateauing, you know, when you're working out hard your training nothing is happening That's why we did this episode with a whole episode on ways to break through Plateaus. Oh, oh, yeah, that's right. We do a giveaway. Don't wait. I know that's why you're here All right, so here's the giveaway for today. You get free access to maps suspension This is a suspension training program You need no other equipment other than Suspension trainers for this workout. So it's great for you guys and girls that want to change up your workouts Or if you don't have access to a gym little space, it's a great workout Here's how you can win that program Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode to help us with the YouTube algorithms Also turn on your notifications and subscribe to this channel You got to do all those things in order to potentially win this free program Also, we only have 48 hours left for the sale on map strong and maps powered up They're both 50% off But that sale ends in 48 hours So you have to act now if you want to take advantage head over to maps fitness products calm Just use the code August special with no space for the discount. All right, enjoy the show Nothing is more frustrating than a plateau. How many times you got to get questions about that like my body stopped responding Yes, it's not building muscle. I can't burn more body fat. What the hell's going on I'm doing all this stuff and my body is frozen and I'm working harder than ever before But you're not following a maps program. That's that's the end of the first mistake. No, you know what? Let's talk about all the different things that you could do One by one each of them by themselves Oftentimes gets the person's body to respond sometimes requires Changing multiple things so we're gonna go down a list of all the factors that you could change in your Workouts that can get your body to start moving forward again. So before we go on to this are okay So we're gonna go over 10 different ways to potentially break through a plateau Yes, but before we because we listen and we know this but so before we go into this do you guys Prefer to do one of these things at a time or will you pair them? And if you do pair them, let's save that for afterwards on your favorite ones to pair together Yeah, that's a great question and it depends how hard and how long of plateaued great question Okay, absolutely. All right. So what's the first one first one is depends this one is by the way These are no real particular order, but this first one is Often one that nobody even considers. They don't even think about changing the tempo of the repetitions My favorite to teach this is one of my favorites to change because it's easy. It's like I don't have to do anything else except Slow my reps down or speed them up like just change the tempo and be consistent with that change in your workout And it usually is enough to get me moving forward again Well, you can really like change the entire adaptation process by just this one factor I mean like to be able to stimulate fast twitch muscle fibers to you know, have that kind of response It's a completely different response the end different signal. You're sending your body just by you know increasing the speed of which you lift or you know, the way that you're the intention of what you're doing with the exercise will will tell the body something completely different so Tempo or to slow it down obviously Is going to tell the body a completely different thing? I love this one and I've talked about on the show many times before because one of the most common goals Even if your goal is fat loss you you normally want to you know tone or build muscle at least keep muscle right keep muscle More often than not though building muscle is in somebody's goal one way or another and the protocol for hypertrophy What the tempo looks like is a four to two protocol, which is a four second negative, right? So four seconds on the eccentric portion of the exercise Which by the way for building muscle is one of the most valuable portions of the of the exercise and Almost nobody Actually does a rep that slow and I used to I used to love Teaching clients that especially my muscle building clients that okay I want you to look at everybody on the gym floor right now and find me one person and count They're negative just you know counting your head and how long does it take him to give the bottom? Yeah, find one person that actually does a four second or more negative and it's just unbelievably rare and It also is a great way to teach form and technique right when you slow down the name where it gets sloppy as people let The let gravity do the work on the eccentric portion of the exercise and a lot of times You're losing that tension on the muscle and so teaching a client how to slow down the negative keeps I think better tension on the muscle slows it down so you have better control and form and then also Maximizes the benefits for building muscle so messing with tempo is one of my favorite things to do Yeah Now on the other side of that is and this is definitely for those of you that already have good control and good stability Is it's lifting faster? Yeah explosive explosive push press or You're doing a push press and you have bumper plates and you drop the weight So you're not even doing a negative, but it's all about this explosive positive that change Can oftentimes be just enough to get your body to respond and also to be clear a Plateau typically happens not because you've reached your genetic limit like oh no my body cannot possibly Build more muscle or improve its performance or you know, whatever Oftentimes it is what you're doing or what you're not doing so for most of you listening right now It's if you plateaued it's because of something you're doing or something that you're not doing the next one Is another one that a lot of people tend to get stuck in? And that's the rep range Most people even those you watching this show right now Think about how many reps you tend to hit in your bench press or in your row or in your squat And I would bet money It's probably within the same for rep range in other words, you know Oh, yeah, I tend to do 10 to 12, you know, or I like to do them around five or six, right? Most of us tend to get stuck in a particular rep range because we like the way it feels Yeah, either we like to pump in the burn from the higher reps or we like to feel that heavy weight of the low reps Nonetheless getting stuck in a rep range is a guaranteed way to get your body to stop responding I find there's two most common people when talking about rep range There's always exceptions the rule but the two most common people are somebody who Sticks to a rep range all the time or the person who claims to change it up all the time, but then they have no Structure around it. So they're like, oh, yeah, you know, I do 10 reps all the time And then the next day I'll do 15 or you know one exercise I do this and but they have they have no way to measure it because They never go. Oh, I stick to this exercise for this long and follow this rep range And then I transition to they don't have a any sort of structure around it And they they do understand the benefits of changing rep range So they're always changing it randomly and don't realize that their body is probably very adapted to training that way And that there's no structure around to be able to say, okay When I do this rep range is these are the benefit benefits and adaptations that I get So those to me are the two most common is either somebody who is stuck in the exact Same rep range all the time and they never move out of it or they are randomly moving in there Also, there's a lot of tribalism around this in terms of like separating people in camps and where you identify the most as well I'm more of a power lifter. I'm more, you know of an athlete. I'm more of a bodybuilder I'm more of this and more of that And usually rep ranges is very much like set in stone in a lot of programming to where You know, this is where I get this is where I'm most comfortable and I've had the best results So venturing outside of that is not really something I want to consider. Yeah, no, that's a hundred percent true in my experience You most people do best Stick into a rep range for about three to four weeks and then moving to another rep range And when I do this consistently, I just feel the best if I don't do this consistently I start to find I plateau real hard I start to get joint pain and things start to get, you know, totally stay I just feel like if you don't Structure it like that that you still fall prey to the same habits as the person who gets stuck in the same rep range Yes, you just just do it differently, right if that makes sense like you are Mixing it up, but you're still kind of mixing it up the same way all the time I've also noticed that people who mix it up, you know, quote-unquote mix it up They always do the same rep ranges for certain exercises. Sure. So yeah Oh, yeah, I do five reps for bench press, but I do 20 for cable crossover So I'm doing high and low reps, but really it's the same rep ranges for the same exercises all the time Yes, no with the best approach just in our experience is you pick a lower rep range or a moderate or a higher rep range and Do that for most of your exercises and do that for about, you know, three to four weeks And Justin's right. I think in both these things we talked about both tempo and rep range and many of the other things we talk about We all tend to fall victim of this based on the camp like you you brought that up for rep ranges Why I think the same thing for tempo if you were an athletic guy, how do you move? Explosive everything's fast, right? If you're a bodybuilder guy, you're probably the the group that does slow I never did any eccentric, you know I had to really be intentional to do that because it was just like picked a way up then get rid of it Exactly. And so I think that in having some self-awareness around Who you are because we all kind of do gravitate to a style or identify as a type of a lifter You know is so the key to this is to be self-aware and who do I typically gravitate towards or the style I gravitate towards and then trying to move in the opposite direction for a while and you'll see extreme all kinds of benefits in both The tempo and rep range now the next one is one that I was probably one of the last Things that I ever started to manipulate in my workouts and really it came to me on accident for most of my Personal workout career and my clients what there was always the same amount of time that we'd work out when I had a client They come in it's always an hour right if I worked out I always had myself scheduled for two hours, which would give me time to warm up work out cool down eat Whatever and so my rest periods were always roughly the same I didn't time myself But they were always roughly the same because what I would do is I would do a set I'd walk to the water fountain get some water walk back by the time I got back. I would do my set and so I was probably around One and a half minutes to two minutes between sets and I never really changed that now The accident happened when I started to get pressed for time This happened after I had kids when you have kids sometimes shit happens in the morning You oh my gosh my two-hour window now. I have 40 minutes How am I gonna fit all these exercises that I normally do and so I started super setting or I started doing short rest periods and I noticed Phenomenal results I happened again this morning this morning. I came in I had 45 minutes to do an hour workout So I did much shorter rest periods and I noticed something completely different Then I started to play with them in my programming and I got great results I love mixing up the rest periods where I'll go 30 seconds in between sets and of course I have to go much lighter. I can't lift as heavy or I go longer and have much more time And I can lift up much heavier really changes the feel of the workout the pump that I get the control that I have It's an easy thing to change you have to change anything else You could simply cut your rest in half or double your rest and then watch what happens again Here's the the groups right you have the power lifter who loves to do a set go do his knee wraps wait Three five minutes get some water memes where they do a rep and then they like have a couch over there Yeah, you know to get a blanket on right sleeping. I mean that is totally the the power lifter right three plus minutes I want maximum rest between every single lift and you and so you tend to do everything that and just because even if you are a Power lifter it still would benefit you to move this to break some plaques throw it in everyone. Yeah So even if you are someone that is that not only I identify as but you are that that person You still will benefit from from messing with this the opposite and then you have the other client who is Loves the fast hippo classes that just can't stay everyone. We've all trained this client who you know You're telling them the rest that's more often what else what else what else they're dancing. They're like well I can do something else or I'm ready. I'm ready. They want to go right back in the exercise And you're like that's been 20 seconds. Hold on like I want you to rest for a whole minute, right? so again having self-awareness around who you are like and then trying to move away from that and You know, I kind of was the the bodybuilder guy, right? So I fell on that like 90 second protocol is what I just kind of gravitated So this is something that I was guilty of for a long time and I still to this day Have to like focus on or otherwise no matter what rep range I'm moving in no matter what tempo I always kind of rest about that 90 seconds. It's just it's kind of my cadence, right? It gets the workout done in about an hour or so I can get everything done. I feel good and ready to go So again, I have to really challenge myself to either speed it up or Get myself in the powerlifting mindset where I rest you have some fun with this So here's what I would do is I would do my normal workout and I would look at my my time and I'd say okay Look, I'm averaging about 90 seconds next workout I would take a stopwatch because you will gravitate to what you did before even if you think you're going faster You might only be shaving off 10 seconds Get your stopwatch as soon as you finish your set hit it and be like I'm doing the next set in 30 seconds Oh boy, it changes the entire dynamic of the workout and the same thing in the opposite like you're a fast You know in between sets take your stopwatch like I'm waiting a full three minutes And you'll be like I'm ready to go look at the stopwatch. Oh my god I have another 60 seconds like totally changes the dynamic of the workout and it changes the stimulus for your body Yeah, the whole concept of the pump was just a foreign Idea for me until like I even I think it was back when I worked for Adam Where he brought me out on the floor and was like here's we're gonna superset today. I'm like, what does that mean? Oh my god, like everything just was just filled up and pumped and it was a completely different experience So it's the only way I could do as much weight or more Or quickly figured that strategy. Oh, yeah, I get what this how this guy lifts right here Yeah, but I mean it took that new stimulus to realize wow There's a whole different methodology that you can apply to your training, you know I'd say that you know jokingly, but there's some truth to that and and again having self-awareness around this that What makes this difficult is you're inevitably going to suck What if you when you something new when you move out of whatever you're doing? Consistently and that is the hard part I think that's that you have you're gonna have to lighten the weight up dramatically because you just Yeah, and it or you're not gonna sweat as much. Yes. You're resting longer. That's right So you got it. There's definitely a mental game here where you have to be aware of that You're gonna be challenged, but the way you have to shift your mindset is that's good That means if you if this is new it's difficult There's a lot of room to adapt and change and improve and that's what we're looking for when we're when we're seeking to Break through a plateau. Now when you talk about rest periods, do you guys have like I have like three ranges I like to move in and out of I have the 30 to second 30 to 60 second range I have the 90 second range and then I have the like which is 90 to two minutes and then I have the three minute plus Yes, those are the three here three kind of sex. I never go below 30 seconds. I feel like when you go below 30 Yeah, so I'll go third all same thing I'll go 36 I'll go 30 60 to 90 and then you're three minutes plus My happy place, but everything out of that is like rough and I have to do it though Oh, the 32nd ones are fun I mean as long as you you make peace with the fact that you're not gonna lift as much Yeah, man, the pump you get is just it's intense. Yeah, I can get addicting to I hate doing that I've I've learned to love and I actually didn't really learn to love this until really hanging out with you guys because I was never a Single double triple type of lifter, you know doing heavy heavy lifts, right? I the the three minute rest period in between and since we've built a business around I used to work in the social media Answer an email and I'll go back to a set like and because we have our own place You know, I can stretch the workout to be two hours if I want to so I've learned to to like that that pace Even though I to gravitate towards the 90 second now this next one people change quite often It's an it's a it's a common one that people change Unfortunately, people tend to only change it in one direction. Okay, and that's to change the volume of your workouts What that mean? What does the volume mean? That means the total amount of sets and Exercises that you're doing in your workout now when people hit a plateau They do often change the volume to get a plateau, but they almost always add volume ad. Yes It's always like oh, I must not be doing enough. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten people's clients excuse me clients bodies to respond in big ways By cutting the volume by taking their total volume and having them do less You may be in this category you if you're doing a lot of exercises and a lot of work And I've been working out for a long time and you're doing you know 15 sets per body part or you know per week and you're doing all stuff and you think man My body stopped responding. I need to do more try doing half try cutting your volume in half And here's what often happens you get stronger right away literally within that same week You'll notice seems so counterproductive. It does and it's hard. It's a hard thing to sell It's hard concept to sell because all we've been fed for so long is like more is better more intensity more volume Keep adding adding adding, but you know There's this speaks to there is the right dose for each person and that those changes and it changes and you have to Be able to stay ahead of that and and be able to take yourself now into a new area of growth that you need to focus on So I have a lot of thoughts around this one Mainly because it was one of the most impactful things for me when I was competing as far as what what changed my physique like Consistently for show over show after show now the reason why I think the point you guys are making it holds true And it is probably more true than not is because I think everybody just thinks that more means more results I think that's just so common if you're if you're a motivated person You're in the gym. You're listening to a podcast about fitness more likely than not You're the type that just keeps piling more and more on thinking that you're gonna get more results And there there definitely is a very there is definitely a sweet spot of rest and calories and how much volume You should be doing now why this is so important or such a big one for me was never in my career until this point Did I actually like mathematically track this like I didn't do that until competing never had a reason to I didn't care Enough to actually sit down and calculate my total volume and you there's a math formula for this right? So it sets times reps times weight and that gives you the total volume for whatever you're measuring So if you did ten sets of ten reps with a hundred pounds multiplying times each other That's your volume. That's your total volume for that exercise, right? And so to make it easy I picked like it, you know the big bang for your buck type of exercise the squad that like the big five that I was really paying attention to Even though you can count volume counts on all the isolation exercise, too That's what I was really tracking to see so I'd slowly progress and the key was when I first started was to follow the rule that I talk about on the show all the time Which is my goal was to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change So I wanted to start with the bare minimum, you know cut very similar to a you know pre-phase of maps anabolic Two two days of exercising two sets of most the exercise you're doing full-body type of a routine Measure that volume out figure out where you're at and then literally you only need to add five to ten percent every couple weeks to that and that will that will take you a Really long time and you will continually progress simply just by tracking your volume and slowly Incrementally etching it up like that now the problem is There's a lot of people probably listening right now and they're well beyond all that and your guys's rule and truth They're already doing too much. They're already doing too much That's why they're plateauing right is because they're overtraining too much all the time So you cut their volume and boom like magic their body responds So you got to assess this for yourself and by the way, here's a deal changing any one of these variables at worst You might not progress. Okay, so don't worry. It's not like you cut your volume And oh my god, all my gains are gone forever. No, you'll cut your volume. Oh, yeah, that wasn't it So maybe it's something else. Let me try you know something else The next one is the frequency and specifically what we're talking about is the frequency of which you train each body part Per week. Here's how I love to mess with frequency. I like to keep everything else the same and change the frequency How does that work? Well, let's say I work out my back Twice a week and I do 10 sets on Monday 10 sets on Thursday. So that's 20 total sets for my back I could also take my back and train it four days that week, but do five sets on each day So five sets on Monday and Tuesday five sets on Thursday and Friday I'm still doing 20 total sets. You have a cheese of volume. He's just spread that out Yes, I've just increased the frequency all else everything else is equal and this was a game Changer for me back in the day I used to train each body part once a week with about 15 to 20 sets per body part when I finally was convinced that maybe It's a frequency problem and I took all those sets and I just divided it up over three workouts That's all I did It was like I turned on a light switch and I felt it immediately literally within the first week I could feel that I was stronger and things were responding and it was really really trippy to me And so frequency is a very important one to a lot of times this can speak to people have been running a split or You know a different type of a program like that versus like a total body type of You know workout program where you can hit these body parts like like you said a few more times throughout the week But you know continue that similar amount of volume Instead of just trying to pile it all in on one or two days throughout the week It's it's a pretty massive shift on your body now the thing that you have to be careful about is the same mistake that I'm I bet we all made I know I made this mistake for sure when I the light the frequency light bulb went off was Oh, I do check and I used to back then I used to split you know chess shoulders buys You know it was like set up with that. I'm like, okay The sounds like the research says that two to three times a week per muscle group is the most ideal for building muscle So I literally did everything that I was doing for my chest same work. Yeah Basically the same workout now three times a week And so I went from doing 15 sets on one on Monday to now doing 15 Monday Wednesday and Friday And now I'm doing 45 sets which now you fall into the problem problem in the trap that you talked about with volume Way too much volume. Yeah, what's the the literature is pretty clear on this 12 to 20? I believe this was like 9 to 15 I thought it was 12. Okay, so you know, so 20 is the peak You know and here and I made the mistake of going 15 sets 15 15. It's just way too much volume Everything the same right just divided up So that is the key to this is to figure out where you're currently at if you're only training, you know if you're doing a body part split and You want to try and mess with the frequency Then and go to like more of a full-body type of routine two or three times a week Then you need to measure what you're doing sets wise and then keep in mind that this total sets in a week The sweet spot is somewhere in that 10 to 20 sets Not much above it not much below it and to stay somewhere in that range and not to make the the Joe Donnelly mistake and do 50 to 60 sets on a muscle group unless you're completely enhanced You're gonna end up getting stuck on a plot. Totally. Now. Let's talk about intensity. Okay This is another one like volume that people tend to only go in one direction Their body stops responding and so they say to themselves. I must have to work out harder That must be the issue. I'm just not working out hard enough So people do change the intensity, but it's almost always in the direction of harder I'm gonna talk to you about doing the opposite and I know the reason why I'm doing this is I know a lot of fitness fanatics Watch this show and a lot of fitness fanatics. That's our tendency our tendency is to go harder every time something stops working Well, I'm gonna convince you that sometimes you need to go easier in fact studies show That when people take a week What's what do they call that week where people do a back-off week? Deload deload week that when they do a deload week the gains tend to happen right after the deload week or even during the deload week Yeah, so this is what happened to me I used to go to failure in every single set because I was convinced from reading all the body building magazines at the time that if you went to failure, you know, you triggered muscle growth because Failure was the very end. So go to failure. No matter what that'll get things moving And so that's what I did all the time and then I went back and started reading old muscle building books and publication I'm talking old like these were written in the early 1900s by people like Eugene Sandow, right and all of these guys back in those days before protein powders create definitely before steroids and these guys were Impressive and I mean, I think Eugene Sandow would do a one-arm bent press with like 300 pounds Which is that's impressive now even it's insane and all of them said Train hard, but make sure you have enough energy left over for the next workout And so the way I interpreted this was these guys are training hard But none of them are beating the crap out of themselves Working out and they only all worked out about three or four days a week So I said what happens if I stop going to failure and I just stop about two reps short of this Now here's the irony of this the irony was as a trainer I almost never train clients to failure never because every time I ever Experimented with a client going to failure they would go backwards now for some reason I thought my body was different So I should go to failure all the time But when I applied the same thing to myself and I stopped every rep short of failure or every set short of failure about two reps My body started responding again So intensity you can manipulate and sometimes it's going lower intensity gets your body to move forward Well, this is part of why before we started the conversation I asked you guys, you know, I kind of prefaced it with you know There are things that you like to pair together and and the reason why I was alluding to that because I think that it's Necessary for certain things that you manipulate for example, we just talked about increasing the frequency So if you were training chest intensely one day a week and you now disperse it over two or three times in the week You have to manipulate the intensity also You can't keep the same intensity that you were training that one chest on that or the chest on one day And now do it two and three times a week or else you're gonna run into this problem where you're over training and you're gonna get stuck In another plateau So you you have to know that you've got to modify your intensity based off of other factors that you're manipulating at the same time too So and I think again talking to this audience who is probably into working out More often than not and like Sal you talking about the failure That was one of the biggest game-changers for me during my fitness career was Starting to leave what we call two in the tank. Yeah, I used to train every set to failure Like every single set I was shaking or I had a spotter to help me finish the last three reps and Simply backing off and actually leaving two reps in the tank for my entire workout Actually busted me through a massive plateau. There was two completely different conversations I would have between, you know, my athlete clients versus my everyday average person client And typically everyday average person client, you know, it that mentality of going a hundred percent every time and like it It didn't really exist. So that was something that I was sort of building my way up towards because yes It is there's value in that but also it can it can exceed the amount that's good for your body so Yeah, I in me coming from the athletic background. I totally get it because Every single workout in my mind was just like if I was practicing which was I want to drill at a hundred percent Yeah, so that way it applies best on the field, but it unfortunately doesn't work that way when you're trying to build muscle You know, it is dose-dependent like I need to be able to apply what's most appropriate for my body to grow It's so that's such a great point doesn't because this is another one of those You know, you need the self-awareness here to know who you are Because I did I I trained probably a split right here, too Like I definitely had clients that you know, oh, it hurts, you know, because it starts burning Yeah, and they want to back off the intensity all the time. Yeah, I mean, so you definitely had client Their heart rate starts pounding a little faster with that. They're like, oh, I feel like I'm gonna have a heart attack I need to stop slow death. So I had a woman literally be okay Yeah, I had a woman literally throw her dumbbells on the ground cuz she's Literally, I handed him to her. She was doing reps. She did like three reps I've had that for how much to these way and I said, oh, there's just seven pound dumbbells. Oh my god She threw them on the floor. I'm like, what are you doing? She's like, I've never done more than five I'm like, you were doing them. Why'd you throw them on the floor? Yes, so you got to know who you are Are you the person that is looking for every reason to not push and not you know stretch your capacity or are you the Fitness enthusiast who wants to keep pushing themselves and more and more and more and that's who's that you got to know And who you are and where this applies because there is definitely Some value to increasing intensity with the right person Totally, you've never stretched your capacity for if you've never trained a failure before you're gonna see tremendous benefit by actually Intermittently doing that in your routine but if you're the fitness fanatic where or like any of us who train that was looking for every ounce you could get out of your workout you probably could use a lot or you get a lot of value from backing off Yeah, it's just it's just it's obvious that going harder is the next step, right that making it harder It's not so obvious. That's why it's so hard to communicate that sometimes It's going easier and that'll get your body to move forward. All right, this next one is it sounds obvious But we're gonna explain to you how to make maximize this. Okay, so change your exercises now That sounds obvious right. Oh do different exercises. My body's gonna develop differently. Okay, let's get a little deeper into this Here's what you need to do with this change the exercises and the best results You're gonna get are if you change if you change to an exercise you suck at okay, so pick the exercise You're the worst at so if you always do barbell squats with the barbell on your back and you're really good at them But you've been doing them forever. You're like, you know, I want to try a different leg exercise And I know I can leg press and I know I can do you know, you know a Bulgarian split stand squat Oh front squats, man, I suck at those. I'm not gonna do those I bet you the one you'll get the best results out of is the one that you suck at the most and the reason is because There's so much room to grow. There's so much improvement you can make I mean every time I've done this where I pick an exercise I suck at I'll gain 10 or 15 pounds on that exercise Every single week because I went from sucking to not sucking so bad to I'm getting kind of good at it Versus picking the exercise that yeah, it's different, but I'm kind of good at it anyway How much am I gonna possibly add to that? Oh, yeah a lot of times why you suck at it is you know What you're not addressing in your in your program right now. It's causing you to plateau That was you know the case a lot of times and that's why for me And I know I can get into a lot of barbell training and a lot of like bilateral type of training because it's it's I it feels good like I can I can really stack plates and I can add load and it's fun And and then when I go to do Bulgarian splat a split squad or like lunges or things that I'm like Oh my god, I'm so shaking and unstable and you know, this sucks I'm gonna go right back to squatting but you know to highlight that now and focus on that bring it You know a little bit more frequency In terms of like rotating that into my workouts makes a massive Difference and then also adds, you know that that that's stability that will bring my strength up even more in my workouts I think this is of all the plateau breakers one of the greatest hacks for Experience lifters is this one and the reason why I think that over the other ones is not that that they don't work also But when you're a new lifter you could basically throw every exercise any and every exercise Yeah, you suck at everything and everything is you're adapting and getting better But if you've been lifting for a really long time You've you've definitely identified what you do. Well, you've definitely gone through phases of Gravitating towards what you like to do and there is definitely you've figured out what modalities of training you do not like I don't like fucking around with that explosive stuff or that high-intensity type of interval training Like I don't like messing with that or I can't stand that really grinding heavy lifting type of training or I don't like Turkish Get-ups, I don't have the mobility and the flexibility to do like you definitely have shit You know when even to be if you're great at lifting you've been lifting for a decade plus There are things that you know that you're not very good at and the trick is just to be able to Mentally focus in that direction because you will and you just kind of realize that that you've gotten really good at a lot of Things and the thing that's probably gonna show you the greatest change or help you break through a plateau is Focusing on the shit. You're not good at oh try this do this You've been working out for a while say okay. I'm in a plateau I'm gonna do a new workout for the next four weeks Do this go down body part by body part and pick a lift that you suck at for each body part And then for the next four weeks your goal is to get good at all those exercise that you suck at and watch What happens over the next four weeks the progress will blow you you'll notice Okay, those that have been listening to the show for a long time and listen to our quads where we answer live questions and stuff One of the things that you'll see that we almost always recommend the same program and the what I know What makes all of us choose that is we listen to what the person's saying quickly? We can start to figure out what type of person they avoid this. Yeah, we know how they train We know what programs we've written that are similar to that And then we know what are like polar opposite of that and we'll always recommend the polar opposite because we know It's gonna show them the greatest change. We know that okay I can buy what she's telling me or he's telling me right now I can tell they like this way of training. So that's kind of like our anabolic program or oh, that's like our performance program So it's like, okay I'm gonna shift this person to strong or power lift because I know that that's gonna be such Unfamiliar territory for them that their body is gonna see the greatest change totally. All right So this next one a lot of people don't connect this one to Plateaus and that is mobility Oftentimes people don't realize that the reason why their body is not progressing is because their body is preventing them For progressing because it has its own to me governing in place It's got its own governing and safety mechanisms to prevent injury, you know So you've been squatting and you're stuck at 200 pounds and you think okay Is it you know my diet is it the reps is the sets and you're trying all these different things and nothing seems to be working Not realizing that the reason why your body is not letting you lift more than 200 pounds is because there's a mobility issue in your hips That your body's identified and said if we go any heavier We're probably gonna hurt ourselves and your body is very effective at doing this. I remember when I had my bench press I don't remember what the weight was but it was stuck forever and all I literally all I did was like two days of Rotator cuff exercises. Yeah, and I added 10 pounds to my bench press And it was why because my my body obviously identified that my shoulders weren't stable enough to go any heavier So I strengthened the muscle that is not even directly connected to them in a rotator cuff Stabilizing muscle doesn't lift the bar when I'm bench press all it does is stabilize the upper arm, right? But because I had to increase stability my central nervous system allowed me to generate more force So I could lift more weight. So this is very now This is obviously true for beginners like if I take a new person and I'm training him I'm focusing a lot on stability and mobility, but advanced lifters people working out for a while This almost never dawns on them that the reason why they can't add more weight to the bar or the reason why they're not progressing It's not because of any other reason than then the fact that their body is sensing instability or mobility And if they just took a few weeks to focus on that they break through the plateau Well, not only that they're just they're not sensitive to their body signals Which as they're going through this like your body is telling you certain aches and stiffness and pains in certain joints are Areas of instability or you know lack of range of motion that need to be addressed And so the common thought because of the way the industry's kind of set it up is well Maybe I need, you know wrist wraps. Maybe I need to belt it up Maybe I need these leaves. Maybe I need whatever fucking device they can sell and push on you to Provide that externally when there are methods like mobility and in drilling These exercises to really build that back internally. Well, here's what's cool, too I found really fascinating about this process for me because this is something that I really experienced later in my career was putting a lot of emphasis on on mobility is that when you Do a lot of work in this direction and you gain this new range of motion The amount of work you have to do to maintain or build the same amount of muscle is So much less than what you had to do before to do the same thing and I use this my squatting It's like it trips me out how little and how infrequent an amount of volume I have to train my legs to keep the same size on when I was hammering them in that short I never used to break 90 degrees Me going from now from someone who never broke 90 degrees all the way Astagrass is a dramatic change of range of motion and that new found range of motion is Allowed me to do way less work and still maintain the size of my legs with way more volume on it That blows my mind So if you find a way to increase your range of motion and this is I'm using legs example any on any muscle And you gain a new found range of motion You're getting more you're getting you are getting more work on that muscle for less effort and you will build more muscle Yeah, so do this right so you're in a plateau. Nothing's oh my gosh. My body's not moving forward the next three weeks Focus primarily on mobility not only will you improve mobility and connection and stability But oftentimes that means for three weeks You're not training with as much intensity and volume and you're giving your body a little bit of a break Then you go back to your old workouts. You've you're now rested fully recovered You know you're not you haven't lost any muscle or strength because it takes long on that to make that go away But you got this new stability and mobility and you go back and work out all of a sudden you feel more stable Everything feels better. Oh aches and pains are gone And then you watch the weight to start move back up And again, I found that this to be more true for people who've been working out a long time than almost anything else All right, the next one is diet related And this one is it's an interesting one because off it's funny either people think this is always their issue Or people think this is never the issue. So people fall into one of two camps like yeah Oh my god. I'm not progressing. I got to double my calories. There's that crowd of people We know what do they say like there's no such thing as overtraining just under eating under fed Yeah, which is totally not true and then there's the other camp where you know Oh, my body's not responding and I look at the workouts and whatever I say Well, how's your diet and then you see the face like why are you asking me about my diet? What does that have to do with anything? Well, it has a lot to do with your progress Usually if it's not a it's usually a macro issue not eating enough protein or my carbohydrates are too low or something like that Or more commonly, I'm not eating enough or I'm eating or I'm not eating a little enough In other words, I mean, I'm not getting losing body fat anymore. My calories are too high or I'm not getting enough muscle Your your calories are too low. I've found this most common and and the biggest Game changer for these people it would be really common that I get somebody who hires me who is trying to Reduce body fat. They're trying to lose 20 to 30 pounds and they're training three to five Maybe seven days a week anywhere in that range, right? They're training they're training frequently and They're at really low calories and they're stuck in this plateau and actually getting them to increase Calories and maybe even reduce frequency if they're up at the seven seven range So less work more food for the person who's trying to lose weight Which is really hard to get that mental shift is one of the best ways to bust them through a plateau So long as I can get them to shift that mentality and they can be okay with the scale potentially going the opposite direction of Their goal temporarily they benefit the most from it They've been in such a low calorie phase and high amount of volume and frequency of training that their body It's just become so efficient. It ain't building any more muscle. It's just surviving. It's like you're feeding me 1500-1800 calories you're training me five days a week all these sets and exercises. I'm just trying to live I'm not gonna build muscle for you right now or burn more body fat You're not giving me enough and just hanging on right They're just hanging it's just your body's just hanging on and so getting that but that's hard right because they're hiring me and They're they're stuck in a plateau and they're trying to lose 20 more pounds And I'm gonna tell them hey train less and add some more calories and we're probably gonna see the scale go up It's really hard to sell yourself as a trainer that you know what you're doing That and when they when they approach you with that goal But the truth is this is the person who probably benefits the most from this plateau right here Is they've just been Under-eating for a long period of time and pushing the body so hard and they're trying to lose more Yeah, or you have the opposite right that the person who's just always on this continual bolt and they're you know I want my definition and I want more but they're afraid of the scale moving in the wrong dress This was me right? It was funny because I was just eating to me sounds obvious when I say it But at the time it wasn't obviously I was just eating too much I cut my calories. I got leaner and all of a sudden I looked bigger Muscularly wise right because I had more definition So look at your diet as one of the factors that you could change to get your body moving All right, so this last one is an interesting one and I'm gonna give some specifics Okay, so the last thing is to try a radical Workout known as a plateau buster now. I'm gonna be very careful with this because People taste radical sounds crazy. It doesn't well people can take things to too extreme like oh, that's it My legs aren't responding. I'm gonna do 85 sets today I'm gonna say like that would be just that was something I would have done when I was younger That's not necessarily what I mean what I mean by a radical workout is something totally different than what you're used to Here's one of my favorites one of my favorite and I literally Recently discovered this and it works so well for me that this is something now I have in my back pocket is what I'll do is I'll take a day. This is why it's radical It's not something I'll do all the time, but I'll take an entire day and Every other hour or every three hours. I'll go do three exercises three sets of each exercise So I'm literally every other hour. I'm working out for 15 minutes and I'll have a garage gym So it's very easy for me, but I've done this several times and it's remarkable at how much my body progresses When I do this so to give you an example I would do like barbell row barbell bench press barbell squat three exercises I'll do maybe five reps of each one three sets each I'll start at 9 a.m. So I do that 9 a.m. And then I do it 11 a.m And then I would do it at 1 p.m. And so on until about maybe 5 p.m. And throughout the whole day It's like a lot of volume doesn't feel like it because I'm take every other hour. I'm off But man do I get great results now keep a mind when I did that my intensity was moderate I wasn't going to failure But you can try this you could try something weird and something totally different out of the ordinary Occasionally and oftentimes it gets things moving. Yeah, and it's just one of those kind of a Shell shock kind of a feeling that you're placing on your body. This is where I like some of those other kind of more I Guess advanced techniques and things like we mentioned with strip sets and yes, you know You can do like certain techniques where It's a lot of demand The either you're really ramping the intensity up in the workout or you're adding like, you know Quite a bit of volume that you normally wouldn't or you're doing like an insane amount of reps like hundred reps or something like of an exercise I mean, it's just kind of one of those I'm gonna get Super stimulated in this workout, which then is gonna carry me into, you know My next workout with a completely different feel when I think of radical too I think that includes just radically different from what you're doing, right? So you gave an example of something like radical that is, you know extreme very extreme all day long event That probably a good portion of people may not be able to do or definitely not consistently do But I think radical also means radically different than what you would grab it So instead of like kind of changing one of these things like oh, I'm resting 90 seconds So now I'm gonna rest, you know, 60 seconds, you know something kind of different It's like going the kind of complete opposite doing all of them This is actually something that right before we got on air So I'm coming up on almost a month of not training right now So I haven't I haven't got back to lifting and something that would be radically different from how I train is Bodyweight or all suspension training. I just don't I Intermittently do that very rarely here and there, but I love barbell lifting I love heavy barbell lifting. I like building like a bodybuilder type of building But I just body weight suspension trainer stuff is the complete opposite of what I like to do Which I think okay, I've been off for almost a month. I know I'm gonna be weak as shit I know my body is gonna respond and build muscle to almost anything I do This would be a good time for me to do an all body weights Suspension trainer type of training for a while and so that is something that I would consider Radically different that falls in that category. What a great. What a great point Perfect if you train always like an athlete go train like a powerlifter if you always train like a powerlifter Go train like a bodybuilder or maybe do Bodyweight stuff or train with rings or kettlebells only yes Radically different from what you used to and to break through plateau doesn't mean you just switch to this new workout style That's the new workout style for the rest of your life Do it for four weeks literally just do 30 days of something completely different then go back to what you were doing before and Oftentimes that's enough to get the ball rolling again And then you'll move past that plateau and then eventually hit another plateau And then you can incorporate a lot of stuff that we talked about in this episode So look if you found value in this episode if it helped you out and you want more good great information Head over to mine pump free calm We have a lot of guides that can help you with almost any fitness goal again They cost nothing mine pump free calm you can also find all of us on Instagram So you can find Justin at mine pump Justin me at mine pump Sal and Adam at mine pump Adam