Why you Need Powerlifts to Break Through a Plateau

Break the Mould

An exceptionally important aspect of increasing your strength, fitness, you name it, is the importance of a sense of progression. It’s a hurdle that everyone will most likely hit, stopping gaining, a point which separates the strong from the weak. If you are trying to build up muscle, tracking your gains is mighty important. If for the last 3 months you have been unable to increase the amount of weight on the bench press then by logic you are not progressing. A common reason for this happening is because you have not varied your workouts.

The body is a clever thing and will go out of it’s way to resist affects placed on it. If you simply repeat the same old workouts and movements each week then you may reach a plateau, then start to lose interest because your not gaining. This doesn’t simply relate to gaining weight but can be seen in weight loss treatments as well. This is when it’s time to break the mould.

There are many ways to change up your workouts. The first being changing the order in which you work out. If you have a 7 day split with each day of the week having the same consecutive workout week after week, then the first thing you can do is change this around. Instead of starting the split off with the bench press, finish the split with the bench press etc.

Another thing you can do is too change your rep range, if you do sets of 8-10 reps then start doing reps of 6-14 reps. The more variety the better.

There are lots of different types of ways in which you can work out. I have done posts on HIT training and on Hypertrophy Specific training which are also worth checking out.

YOU NEED TO POWERLIFT

Powerlifting is completely different to the conventional weight lifting techniques. A Powerlifter will never really worry about the size of his abdominals, it’s more down to shear ferocity and strength.

When you power lift you will not do many reps, and a lot of the time you can be doing a simple one rep max. You can only powerlift on the huge compound exercises, dead lift, squats and bench. This puts a lot of stress on lots of muscles and joints on your body and yes it’s going to hurt.

Muhamad Ali was once asked, ‘Ali, how many sit ups do?’ To which he responded, “I don’t count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. When I feel pain, that’s when I start counting, because that’s when it really counts.”

You need to continually push your boundaries and get out of your comfort zone. Powerlifting is an exceptional way in which to do this as you will always be breaking out of your comfort zone.

I could explain to you here how you should go about lifting but I think you should use the resource I learn’t from.

Stronglifts is a website similar to this, which focuses heavily on powerlifting. They have a 5×5 program which in essence involves 5sets of 5 at squatting, dead lifting and bench pressing.

So a big thumbs up to Mehdi the founder of strong lifts, and I hope everyone here can use powerlifting to break through a plateau like I did.

I would love to hear if you have ever hit a plateau and if you have your own personal way in which you get out of it. Please leave a comments below. Until next time keep on lifting.