Overcoming Training Plateaus: Causes and Cures by Jerry Brainum 2/25

 

 

A training plateau is a decline in strength and muscle gains a few months after starting a workout routine. Dogma holds that muscle gains come slower than strength gains. Much of that notion is based on observations of the progress made by those who begin bodybuilding training. Initially, most of the progress that occurs in the first few months of training involves more significant gains in muscular strength rather than muscle gains. This effect is often attributed to better coordination between the brain and muscles or improved neuromuscular coordination. Muscle gains begin after about three months of steady training, but gains often cease within six months of training. This is known as a training plateau. Another pertinent issue is the extent of muscle gains possible. For most people, the most rapid gains in muscular size and strength happen when they first begin resistance training. After that, gains come far slower, although they still occur depending on genetic predisposition to gaining muscle mass, hormone profile, higher testosterone levels, training intensity, and attention to progressive overload in training. That latter effect explains why so few people regularly gain muscle mass and strength. Muscles won't grow or get stronger unless you impose a certain amount of stress on a trained muscle. Most people who train in gyms rarely attempt to increase overload by adding more weight or doing a few more repetitions. Instead, they use the same weights and do the same number of reps in every workout, which will maintain the gains they have already made but not promote further gains in muscle size and strength.

Is there a genetic limit to muscle growth? I covered that in a past article in Applied Metabolics, examining the factors that may limit muscle growth. There is a limit to how large muscle can grow, but no one knows what this limit is. One indisputable thing is that using various anabolic drugs, such as anabolic steroids and growth hormone, will allow most people to at least partially bypass their preset genetic limitations to muscle growth. But some will gain more muscle than others, even using the same anabolic drugs. I witnessed this while training at the original Gold's Gym in Venice, California. I watched Arnold Schwarzenegger train with many different training partners, all using the same exercises and training volume as Arnold. Arnold was even generous enough to let them in on the precise anabolic drug regimes he used, which they dutifully duplicated to look like Arnold or at least make the same training progress. Despite this, none of them ever came close to making the gains that Arnold made, and this was because of Arnold's favorable bodybuilding genetics and response to anabolic drugs. I can attest that having trained with Arnold myself a  few times during his bodybuilding heyday, there . . .