This is a place that all of you have been at or will eventually get to. The plateau is probably one of the most frustrating places to be because no matter how hard you try, you don’t seem to go forward. It maybe something that happens with your body weight or your lifting weight. It’s a lack of progression plain and simple, but there are ways to get around it.

Identify What Is Holding You Up

Typically there is a muscle holding you up. If you plateau with your bench press, often it is some little part of the movement that is getting you and working it out can really help. I don’t recall the exercise, but I believe it’s called the 4 box bench press. It’s where you have a box on your chest and you bench press with it like that. You can’t bring the bar all the way down, so you only end up working a tiny portion of your tricep to make it strong.

Shake Things Up

Plateauing can happen because your body gets too good at compensating for muscles. You always have to shake things up because your body adapts to make things tolerable and that will leave you plateauing.

If you’re having problem with your barbell bench press, start doing it at an incline or using dumbbells. Throw your body a curve ball, so it has to adapt toward that. After a few weeks of that, go back to the old exercise.

I hope these ideas help you blow through your plateau because there is absolutely no reason for you to have to suffer through these problems.