From Plateau to PR: How to Break Through Strength Barriers | Mind Pump 2552

plateauing sucks we're going to talk about how you can break a plateau and actually hit a PR let's break some barriers get your body progressing again let's talk about it get after it yeah so Plateau a plateau is when your body just stops progressing and anyway which we'll get to in a second but for about 21 days I like we actually in fact before we we started this episode we talked about what we would consider a plateau now I do want to say and I think strength is the best metric but I do want to say that I think sometimes think they're plat sometimes people think they're plateauing when really they're looking at one metric and they're not counting all the other potential things that they're progressing in so it's like you know maybe my bench press didn't go up but my stability feels better my range of motion is better or something like that right or I'm not losing weight on the scale but but I feel better I got more energy typeal so a plateau for me is like like nothing like there's no PR nothing moved on those different metrics yeah you got to consider the whole thing yeah this is a cool conversation because when um when I was competing in in training obviously every time I showed up to the stage I had to show progress right and it's inevitable you're training like that consistently for several years I'm going to run into these situations where oh no I'm plateauing I'm not seeing results typically the way it looked like for me is that I was constantly checking in with myself all my all measurements all what's going on strengths everything about every every week to two weeks and I would never allow uh like I would never adjust based off of just like one check-in because you could just have an off week sleep could be bad and the body doesn't progress like consistently it doesn't these spur right so I would I would need to see at least two if not three of the check-ins with no movement or movement in the wrong direction for me to change course otherwise I would like stay the course I believe in this is the the path this is what I'm supposed to be doing be consistent with it make sure I am and then it' be like okay checked again didn't move okay checked again still didn't move okay if this continues for one more week now I'm I'm starting to go to probably what your points are on the start attacking those so 21 days right about 3 weeks is is yeah what you're looking at and this is this is primarily true for people I would say within the first two or three years of being consistent after that then you know plateaus lasting you know three weeks become more commonplace because obviously we have a limited capacity to continue progressing you can't just progress forever yeah I mean if that were the case I'd be able to bench press it yeah but I also think that I I think that and you communicate this well a lot on the show is that you know there's there's progress in many other ways that a long I think when you become when you become as advanced or been lifting as long as you have especially with the consistency that you have you're not you can't use strength as your marker always it's like oh as my sleep been getting better lately and oh is my energy is my skin is my mood it's like you know those things is my Mobility feel better is my sword like so you're you're looking at other metrics like but I think this is a really important conversation for people in their early years of consistency because when you're early on so long as diet programming the thing you're checking the right boxes you should see and it's not linear but you should see overall consistent progress you should be seeing yourself continually get stronger continually see better performance in the gym physique your body composition all those things uh should be now it's not perfect linear but you definitely over you know A month's time you should not have trained a month and feel like you didn't progress especially early on you mention Mobility that's that's a big one that I see a lot of times like it's very elusive for people because they're just focused on strength and hasn't moved but when in fact going back and reinforcing you know these The Supporting Cast the the secondary muscle groups um and a lot of times like just getting that stability back in the joint it it boosts back into you know pushing you through that too where now your strength can move again but you know a lot of times people don't see that because they'll you know just be so focused on that Progressive overload and that just had had worked for so long until it didn't yeah by the way increasing your range of motion means you're stronger even if you use the same weight so if you if you squatted an inch or two deeper with the same weight to the same reps you're stronger because you have a deeper range of motion now I mean I don't think I need to say this but plateaus are the most frustrating um part of Fitness uh definitely one of the most frustrating parts of Str strength training and it's it's frustrating because it's not frustrating when you're not doing anything because you expect to not see any progress but when you're working hard and you feel like you're doing the right things you feel like you're putting in good effort you're consistent you're not missing a beat to see no progress that's incredibly there's there's it's one of the most frustrating things that you'll encounter uh in your fitness journey it's it's more frustrating in my opinion than having consistency issues or missing the gym cuz you expect to not get you know progress right that's also frustrating by the way it's oh I can't put work in and it's not moving it's still frustrating I'd say it's like showing up to work for a week and not getting paid exactly exactly there's not a lot of job what but also great analogy too because we talk about uh you know Finding Your Passion finding a job that you would do that you would do even if someone didn't pay you is like the secret to finding a job that's also the secret when it comes to training like do a do something that you you know work out because you love to work out and you want to take care of yourself not because you necessarily need to see results week in and week out because if you attach it to that then it can get very discouraging in moments like this because there's going to be periods of time on your journey of training when you don't get paid for the job and are you the type of person that's going to throw in the towel and quit showing up to work because you didn't get paid that week and a lot of people would say yes if it was a job I would not show up to work the next week but it's that's why it's important that you have this love for it and enjoy the process of learning and growing and that you do it CU you you're going to encounter plateaus I think that's the point we're trying to make they're very normal you're if you're consistent you will hit a plateau but the key is to have a strategy when you do first off know how to identify in a plateau which I think we've somewhat explained uh but then also have a strategy um now here's the strategy that most people employ when they hit a plateau after working hard and being consistent and it's usually the wrong strategy and this is what they typically do the typical person working out consistent especially when they're first getting into it like their first year of consistency they had a plateau no progress for three weeks or or or six weeks and what they do is they go oh I must need to add more or I need to go harder so I need to just push harder and do more and more and more this is sometimes the answer but usually not the answer usually the answer to the person who's very consistent who hasn't missed a workout who now has plateaued usually the answer is not to do more that's typically not the answer it is sometimes but usually not the case it's usually the wrong answer and what tends to happen and here's how you know this is not the right answer for you is you add more work the plateau doesn't budge and then it starts to go backwards then you start to see yourself actually losing strength and losing progress and definitely don't add more work at that point realize oh adding more was the wrong answer my body doesn't have the ability to adapt to this properly I've actually lost strength Let's uh let's look at everything and change everything and let's employ some different steps back by popular demand we are going to do a giveaway the RGB bundle Maps anabolic MTH performance Maps aesthetic one of you viewers will win access to all of them but you have to like this subscribe turn on notifications and put a comment below it's got to be a positive one also in this episode you heard us talking about map strong and Maps powerlift both 50% off right now for this episode go to Maps fitnesspro ccom use the code pr50 get one or both of them for 50% off I'm trying to think of the scenario where it is when when I mean maybe the client that you had to start really slow because they they thought they could only commit to maybe one day a week you know and they've been doing that for a while saw good results and then now their body's pretty much adapted to the careful calculated addition of volume appropriate volume is when it's Works which rarely happen I was going to say cuz I think it's important that we tell that to the audience because I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is when a plateau comes just piling on more that's right and and it's usually not a little more and it's exactly and it's usually not that that's not the solution to that person the only time I can think of it where that is the solution is the rare occasion where I had a client who's like Adam I don't want to commit to any more than one hour or a half hour of working out a week can you help me and of course I can because you weren't doing anything before and if I give you effective workout for a half hour hour a week we can definitely see progress but what I know will eventually happen is if they are consistent with that at some point they'll probably start to hit a plateau and then the easy go-to would be increasing volume on them and so that's probably the only case I can recall where that is the answer to this well I could see that I I mean I've also seen like some of clients I've trained that beforehand they had a routine that they always did where it's just same weights that they always pick yes and it like and really like the progressive overl wasn't a thought process it was just like this is what I can control and this is how many reps I do and then it just stops working for them yeah that's the that's another category of individuals and I would see this more with my middle-aged gym members who it became a routine for them and they had plateaued a long time ago like they haven't changed anything long yeah and they just it's like oh I Pi I use the 10B dumbbells for this I put the weight stack it here for that I do the exact same thing exact same thing on the treadmill the exact same thing whatever yeah and they just don't see any progress they've accepted it and they just haven't changed anything and if they if I ever got the opportunity to talk to them uh and then get them to hire me um then we were able to make some some pretty small changes to get their body uh moving forward I like the way that you Adam talked about adding volume when you had really been meticulous and calculated it because the typical approach to adding volume is just doing a much more but you when you were competing you were very careful to add just a bit more volume but that started with you tracking your volume to even know what that looked like yeah no I think there's the other challenge is you know okay maybe this is a situation where I can add a volume but it doesn't take much it literally is like a a set set more of something or just a little bit more of that exercise slowly or increasing weight because that's the other part that people don't factor in is that if I've been training in a program and that let's say let's say you're following one of our programs that's laid out for you and you've gotten to a point where when you first started doing squats you were doing those sets of squats with 220 225 and now you're at 235 that's Progressive overload volume went up volume went up you know and so I don't need to move anything there it's like I'm waiting until I start to see a plateau there and then when I increase it is just a tiny bit it's like 5% or something yes there's a tiny bit more and when you look at that in the context of an entire week it's only like a set or two more of an exercise and that will sort of do it it would just be I I don't recommend this to the average person because I don't think the average person is going to track total volume like I was you know because I would just okay uh I've did it let's just say hypothetically you know 5,000 lbs of total volume on my legs this week so I just need to make sure that I do at least that or five or 10 more pounds more than that every weekend that was just kind of the thought process was cuz other thing I noticed too was for people that don't track who just go through the natural EB and flow of how they feel like when I would zoom out of a month I would have weeks where I had 5,000 lounds and other weeks where I'd have 45 and then back up to 5,000 and so you naturally have this s flow and so my first goal was just be consistent with the volume be consistent with it it's funny cuz like Diet when people are trying to they're not tracking and they're eat they're trying to diet so much more than they think and they stay the same that's what exactly what I found with volume is that we kind of naturally have like you you and you all can like you know if you think about it you're like yeah it does make sense because I know there's those times where you're like man it was just a good workout and what do you do on a good workout you throw extra more or you do a little extra we would have these natural but then when I zoomed out I wasn't really Progressive overloading I was having weeks were down and then weeks were up but then when I added it all up the total volume was so the first step was be consistent with my total volume and then allow to get to a place where I wasn't seeing progress and then I would just barely bump it up well the first thing I think you need to focus on and really really uh look at carefully because its objective is strength strength is of all the metrics and I don't think it's a perfect metric in the sense that you don't need any other metrics I think compiling metrics is a great way to really judge the effectiveness of your workout and and and how your body's progressing and all stuff but I like if I had to pick just one metric especially if I was dealing with somebody in the first three years of consistent strength training it's strength yeah because strength tells me a lot by itself other metrics don't tell me a lot by themselves or at least not as much so with strength if somebody's getting stronger then I know that their nutrition is at least adequate I know that their training programming is at least moving them in the right direction I know that sleep yes so if if strength is moving forward then I'm I know we're doing okay we're doing well so I think the focus on strength is very important now what lends itself well to this even if you're somebody that doesn't really care too much about how strong you are or at least how strong you are is just the means to an end because you just want to get lean or you want to change how you look I think a great Plateau Buster for those people is to follow a strength training program where strength is the goal in other words to give you an example I used to do this whole time I'd have female clients who would hire me who's primary goal was just to look good they they really how much weight they lifted was cool and they liked it but they didn't really care if they squatted 135 or 100 what was important to them was how they looked in the mirror how they felt in their clothes and all that stuff uh so it wasn't that big of a deal for them and and they would hire me because they weren't progressing well one of the best ways to get them to progress again was to have them train a powerlifting routine where the goal was to get stronger and and regardless of how you look we're going to get your Squat and your deadlift in your bench press for example to go up and it was great because powerlifting routines in particular or strength competitive strength training type routines where you're competing to lift more weight the programming is so much more precise bodybuilding routines are not nearly as precise hit routines definitely not as precise but powerlifting is typically a science because they're designed for competition and so when you look at a powerlifting routine it looks like 90% of your one rep max here 30% here follow these reps regardless of how you feel oh I feel like I could do more Reps don't worry about it follow the program it's about getting stronger following the subjective metric and when you get stronger other things start to follow along es including and especially the aesthetic so I think focusing on strength is a great place to start this episode's brought to you by Joy mode great for pumps and the biceps and also down there click right here if you want a discount well it naturally just builds better behaviors uh throughout your day when you're focused on strength and which is what we're trying to reiterate to that type of client that's trying to lose body fat and look better and all these things it's just harder to communicate that whereas you can focus on strength it's like you have to get the adequate amount of sleep you have to rest and uh you know you have to eat well all these things have factor in yeah and it's accountability built into that uh so I think it's it's great to steer somebody there first and then you know as we go as we go along in the process too that's where we can alter uh things to cater more towards uh you know more physique and aesthetic goals so I I want to blend this point if you don't mind with your second point because for me this is one of my biggest hacks for breaking through a plateau and that would be to your point focusing on strength okay well what do I do if I'm plateauing strengthwise in all these major lifts I do and that is change the exercise up and then Chase strength so like one of the best hacks ever is every because everybody has this everybody listening right now has a handful if not more exercises that they just avoid they just don't like it or they're scared to try it or it's just not their favorite to do they suck at it yeah they suck at it you name the list list goes on and on but we all have it I don't care how long you've been lifting how advanced you are y everybody has a list they have a list of these exercise and I guarantee on that list there's a handful of really good exercises that belong in there and so one of my favorite ways to break through a plateau is pick some of those exercises or pick a program that is different than what you would normally do if you're the that's why I like your point of like you're helping out like the girl who wants to build the booty or the bikini competitor or the guy who just wants to look a certain way moving them to a strength focused powerlifting strongman type of routine which has all these different exercises that they don't lift in their bodyb building world is one of the greatest ways to bust through a plateau because mainly they're doing movements that are unfamiliar we can now pursue getting stronger in those which is also psychologically beneficial because when you are doing a new new lift although it's challenging and you're not good at it the beauty is that there's lots of room to progress so like for example I suck at the Turkish GI up because I haven't been doing that in a really long time the positive to that is I'm going to watch myself week over week get stronger in it and that can be very psychologically beneficial in the pursuit of breaking through a plateau so one of my favorite hacks is introduce new exercises or a new type of program a direction you normally wouldn't go and pursue strength the combination the two those is like a guaranteed the last time this happened for me like big time was when we created map strong map strong is so you know I mentioned a powerlifting routine powerlifting for me was very familiar because I've trained that way before bench pressing deadlifting squatting in the fashion of you know or or or with with the pursuit of trying to get stronger on those I've done that many times i' never trained with strongman type programming up until we created map strong with Robert obers and there were exercising that i' had never done like snatch grip high poles and you know really heavy Tre bar you know farmer walks wi grip deadlift yeah Z PR like just all these weird like wide grip dead snatch grip deadlift like I never did z uh zercher Squad like you know exercises I'd never really done in programming before and it was the it was the first time in my adult life where I went radically different and I got great exactly what you said it's like I'm doing this new exercise I'm going to suck at it so I'm going to try it and then the next week I can add 10bs and the next week I can add like that that didn't happen to me since I was a te it's like new Gams it's like you get that you get it's it is it's the hack everybody who's been training for a while or a long time knows what like you you always refer back to man when I first started it was so great you can hack back into that and one of the hacks is going to you know what I love about that program too it reminds me of how we met and how what I was impressed by what you did in maps anabolic before we went out when I first before I knew s and I or knew of like before we met in person we'd only talked virtually and you sent over map anabolic and I went oh this is brilliant and what I thought was so brilliant was the way he programmed it because I knew what his first phase what he was doing because he I knew he was solving a problem with most all of our clients that they didn't focus on strength in these compound lifts same thing goes for another thing that I see a lot of people don't how many people do 20 reps of any exercises that's phase one of strong so it's like a guaranteed plateau bu not only are you doing different exercises you also are doing sets of 20 which rarely anybody does you combine those and it's like a guaranteed recipe to that's the next point which is to CH change the rep range in a radical way and look uh probably 80% of the people listening to this podcast maybe more stay within a rep range it's generally the same rep close to it right yeah oh yeah sometimes they do three more reps or five more reps but you're not in a radically different rep range like you you if you train in the the 12 15 rep range like when's the last time you trained in three reps probably never or if you always train that five rep range when's the last time you went as high as 20 reps probably never changing the rep range in a radical way is a very easy way very easy way and I'd say probably 60 to 70% of the time that alone uh breaks you through a plateau is simply moving to a completely different R range and I like this one cuz it's easy I'm not telling you to do anything else I'm not telling you anything else just take you don't have to learn a new skill or just adjusting this one metric that yeah does like feel completely different workout espe especially if you are hyper aware of your own Tendencies because like you said even there's a lot of people that are pretty good about they understand that there's you know this kind of six to eight rep range and they know there's this 12 to 15 rep range and they kind of float around these different rep ranges and so they feel like oh I do most of them but rarely anybody ever trains singles doubles or triples unless you're a powerlifter type and rarely anybody's training as high as 20 reps unless you're into the Super sets and highend endurance type of training those two areas nobody touches yeah those are kind of the two areas that nobody really touches and then you ask yourself am I the person who kind of leans more towards the 15 plus am I the superet guy the short rest period guy the 15 reps plus type of person or am I the guy who's like I don't like doing anything over 10 and whichever one you avoid the most if you gravitate towards that that's a that's a plateau Buster next uh is just to change the tempo this by the way is a veteran trainer trick this is like trainers who are veterans there's certain tricks that we have where where we can convince somebody to hire us too easy for you watch this yeah it's like like there are certain tricks you you you learn as a trainer to get people to hire you long term so like oh I'm only going to try you out for 10 sessions and what you want to do as a trainer is you want to show them something so that they believe that you know what you're talking about uh and then they hire you first 6 months this this is a TR this is a trick you change the tempo you take somebody and go cool let me show you oh you always do squats let me see how you do them all right cool here's what we're going to do 5c negative pause at the bottom for two seconds come back up and then boom they see progress in their legs from that alone and it happens very quickly and this is another very easy one take your current workout and you know the one most people don't do is the 4-second negative so take your reps give it a four full 4 second negative before you come up first off you're gonna have to lighten the load by a good 30 40% but watch what happens to your progress now if you are that rare individual that does that speed it up a little bit but change the tempo is a very easy way to get the body you to adjust your wrist a bit more with that as well and recovery but yeah it's all those factors it changes the whole dynamic of of the movement uh and yeah that just doing that 4 second negative it really like impacts the muscle and breaks it down so yeah that's a huge one if you've been listening to the podcast for long enough you've heard me say this so many times because I was blown away I remember when I first read the protocol for hypertrophy training and it was 422 and then I went out in the gym and I just started counting everybody's NE and I was like Nobody Does it so this became my hack for like the advanced lifters and the reason why I say that it's not because it won't affect uh newbies or somebody who's a novice it absolutely will affect them too but sometimes I actually would get to train somebody who who knows all the stuff that we said before they actually do train in all the rep range they do understand a lot but I found nobody mess with Tempo that was like the that was why you say it's an advanced or like an experienced trainer experienced trainer who's trained a whole bunch of all different people may have came across some Advanced lifters that have done a good job of doing changing the exercises going after strength messing with rep ranges oh but I bet they didn't [ __ ] with Tempo yeah I bet they didn't mess with Tempo and so messing with Tempo manipulating that but yet not changing any of their routine up was a Surefire way for me to show them like something different and that was like an easy hack by the way you can be very specific with this if you plateau in just one area you could change the Tempo Tempo of just that exercise you don't necessarily have to change your entire workout this way but if you have a lift where you're really trying to get that lift to improve change the tempo of just that lift and then watch what happens a lot of times even if you're more experienced you can you can add more explosive Tempo so it's all about acceleration at that point which gives a more fast twitch response watch your muscles like completely respond different that's what happened with me when map strong cuz map strong has the like the snatch grip High PS which I never or I rarely programmed explosive lifts like that and I got crazy upper back Gams from that uh now you mentioned earlier Adam about knowing your Tendencies here is something very valuable which is find a new structure and then follow it and trust it because here's what ends up happening and I guilty of this uh a lot of people are guilty of this we you'll change something and then you go back to your old Tendencies of course and you'll try it for a couple weeks and you go back like okay I always back Squad they said try a new exercise I'm going to front squat this week and then what do I do next week go back to back squat no no no follow a new routine stick to it stick to it allow your body to adapt and get better with it and then Watch What Happens following a routine I don't need to make the argument that having a structured routine is valuable for a beginner obviously because they need to know a direction but I will make the argument that it can be just as valuable for the advanced lifter because Advanced lifters follow their own thing they get stuck in a rut they do the same they tend to follow the same Tendencies when I am given a new routine that I didn't write or I didn't necessarily say oh this is not something I want to do but I know if I follow it because it's not something that I have a tendency to do uh I'll get great results as a result guaranteed and everybody is this I don't care what anybody says the all of us in hear this if each one of us were to train each other we know each other well enough that we would know what program to make them stick to that would give them the greatest change because we know each other's Tendencies I know like and that's not the say that Justin and S and Doug doesn't cycle through programs or do different style it's that you all still gravitate to the thing you do preferences yes you have your preferences and I know if I was trying to impress you by showing you change especially body composition chain or strength gains I know where I would go I would go to what Justin doesn't like to do the most I would go to what Sal doesn't like to do the most and to show them the most results this is everybody everybody has this even if you're good about Psych cycling through modalities you still have a tendency it's human nature it's human nature and it's not NE by the way I want to point this out it's not necessarily a bad thing because I do think this is part of enjoying your workout and being consistent right part of why Justin loves to swing the clubs and do strong exercise like that because he enjoys that and I if you made him do a bunch of body bodybuilder bro isolation exercis he would go he would shoot himself or say I don't want to train like this forever so there is something positive about gravitating to ality because it keeps you consistent but it's also smart to be aware when you hit plateaus that oh I've been doing this too long or oh now it's time to change that's the self-awareness is like I'm not saying it's bad to have Tendencies or have things you like to do and show the gym but when you are saying I'm at a plateau and I can't break that Plateau to have the self-awareness literally need to change yeah yeah that's your that's your that's your body screaming at you saying hey you have been doing that type of stuff too long now let's switch over here right hey sorry to interrupt you look are you lifting weights eating a ton of food and struggling you're not packing on any muscle you're not building any muscle at all you're not getting stronger well check it out we have a hard Gainer guide this can be your ultimate resource to turn that around pack on some muscle mass with our hard Gainer guide it's totally free you can get it by downloading it clicking on the link in the description below now if you're like if you're the individual that's super consistent never misses a workout like you are religious about it and you're plateauing recover Sometimes some off sometimes you need a we Y and now what you can do in that week is either you can take it off uh completely which is perfectly fine that's great or you could have a structured recovery week and if I'm not mistaken Doug we have a guide for this that we we give it away right yeah it's for uh for free on mind pump free.com what's it called the 7-Day rescue recovery guide I believe okay so it's it's a guide that we wrote it's free it's and it's 7 Days planned out literally to accelerate recovery includes things like cold and hot exposure static stretching Mobility work some band work but nonetheless so you can get that at mind pump free.com but nonetheless uh sometimes what you need is a week off or a week of recovery a week of exercise or movement that facilitates recovery so maybe you don't do nothing but you do little so you can allow your body to have that break now I would experien this on accident all the time as a kid because I was so consistent so dogged about it then I'd go on vacation didn't have access to a gym i' come back and be stronger and that happened to me enough times for me to realize like I think I need a week off sometimes I think that's why that's the reason why I PL yeah I actually I like this tip a lot for this audience right if you're if you're listening to this podcast I would bet you're more likely the person I'm sure we have a nice split right we obviously have a lot of listeners so there's a there's a there's somebody in every group but if you care enough to be listening to a podcast that teaches you about exercise and fitness you probably are more likely the consistent person who's working and you're looking for the Competitive Edge always or you want more be different for like the biohacking tech people just trying to do the least amount yeah so I I would I'd venture to say that there's a big portion of people probably listening right now that would greatly benefit from a scheduled recovery week like the one that we've created or you might be the person that needs to scale back a little bit just because that's you if you are consider especially if you consider yourself a fitness fanatic because I don't know how many times this would happen to me and we talked about this on the show where you took off for vacation for a week and you had to because you were out camping or somewhere far and then you come back and you were stronger that's like a clear indication that you were overdoing it when a week of not training makes you makes you break through a plateau like that's a clear indication of like oh you were redlining just way too much and so this is good advice for this but I love the the I mean when we create the guide I really like it so I think want something yeah it's laid out for you it's free so may as well use that so if you don't know what to do or what we'd recommend then check out the guide got some questions here the first one is I haven't lost any weight for 30 days is this a plateau maybe not yeah maybe not if you got stronger if again it's also weight you know they said weight in the question you could also be eating eating more too like I don't know how many times I've had a client be discouraged because 30 days went by they didn't lose any weight but I'm like you're eating 300 more calories a day you know that right your metabolism is faster your metabolism is faster that's not a plateau that's a good thing right now and we're heading in the right direction so just because you're you haven't lost weight in a week doesn't mean that we aren't moving in the right direction in other metrics or or what I would see often with clients in the first 60 days is they didn't lose much weight at all but I would track their body fat percentage and it turned out they lost body fat and built muscle so the scale didn't change but they lost inches and they lost body fat especially if you're not increasing weight I think yeah that's that's the big thing yeah so it it weights still unfortunately is stuck in people's mind that if they're on that journey of like losing body fat when in fact it's probably better for you to keep and maintain the weight and in the beginning in the beginning can diet changes break a plateau oh yeah definitely that was another easy hack for me when I'd get the typical person and look at their diet and be like oh cool let's bump your protein and then all of a sudden you see progress go through the roof and of course it can change plateaus with fat loss right A lot of times people miscalculate their caloric intake they're eating more than they think or whatever or a rer diet even adding cars back in I know I did that for a while was like carnivore a bit and then my performance dropped substantially like as I worked out and to just add that back in and have the energy was huge I was just before we walked in here I was just talking to Kyle Kyle is training uh a friend of ours it's a famous country singer and he was just breaking down his diet with me and he's like he's like bro I'm just going to he go I'm just going to bump his carbs right now CU he's on tour he's doing all these things he's trying to build strength he's like Adam he was only eating this and that's a perfect example right there like by how that can break someone through a plateau because he knows the level of intensity obviously the strenuous that can be and him being on a low carb is like a recipe for losing strength so he's like I'm going to show him strength gains just simply by bumping his carbohydrates how often do you guys Plateau what do you personally do I Plateau all the time now well though I always Plateau now because I've been I'm a Perpetual Plateau I've been one Plateau to the next just over here over here I Plateau all the time because I've been I've been strength training consistently since I was uh you know 14 years old and I'm 46 now so I can't and I'm not going to perpetually progress that being said I could break some plateaus in areas that I neglect like it would be very easy for me if I plac some focus on Mobility to break through a Mobility Plateau the reason why I Plateau Mobility wise I don't place a lot of focus on it or flexibility or stamina like I don't spend a lot of time training stamina aside from the high rep squats or something like that so I could definitely break through some plateaus but the ones I'm always focused on are the ones that make me bigger and those aren't those I don't think I'll break it's mainly what I lose interest in yeah I'm not consistent enough to have a plateau I'm either making change or I'm not your goal is to hit a plateau my go is my a you've been on a good run yeah I you know it's uh it's really easy uh especially when we talk about all the different things that that measure Plateau it's actually very easy for me to not one I'm definitely nowhere near the cons I'd have to be at Sal's consistency level to even make this even think about a concern because I'm normally progressing one way but it's such it's just a shift of focus because even if I plateau in a strength category then I know that if I typically that means i' I've been so focused on getting strong that I've probably been neglecting some Mobility stuff so then all I have to do is switch over to mobility and then let's say I focus on that for a little bit then there's always a program that it's like oh man when was the last I mentioned it earlier when was the last time I did Turkish getups I'll start to implement or windmills into my routine which I haven't been doing and so then I'll break so you know I would I don't suffer from plateaus because there's always something that I can be switching over or focusing on and I think that's the key to this is being aware of that uh that you should always be challenging yourself with new something new ranges of motion new exercises new tempos and so uh you know nobody should really hit a plateau for that long they they if and if they do they should definitely be shifting their focus does sleep affect plateaus oh god of course I I I can't I mean I I remember the first time this I had a client like this where I couldn't figure out what was going on we had changed different parameters and metrics and we'd start moving forward a little bit but they Plateau real hard again and then I addressed sleep this was in the early days I would consider my early days as a trainer first five years or so when I didn't realize the impact sleep had mhm and I had I had a a trainer that worked for me who was very good at understanding the whole body and I heard her communicate to a client about sleep and I thought oh I mean that's I guess yeah I guess that is true and I worked on sleep with this person and it was like I it was like a it was like a magic it literally it was like a magic wand everything progressed suddenly because we key just unlocked all potential totally and the best routine by the way will suck with terrible sleep so sleep is such an important part of all this that it for sure has an impact I feel like um every young trainer tends to NE neglect this conversation and then you become an older trainer and then it becomes the only thing you talk about yeah I think once you especially if you're a new parent oh I didn't know this I think once you reach an age where it's obvious then you realize oh [ __ ] how long I was getting away with not focusing on this and I I don't know if I've ever met a trainer who's been training for 10 15 20 years and is now in their you know 40s and 50s and reflects back to when they were younger and says like man I wish I would have figured that out sooner because it's interesting how how the human body will eventually force you to understand and grasp this and then you realize holy crap it's such a GameChanger to get sleep and to focus on that so yeah no matter how old you are right now listening to this if you're young and you don't think it's that important it is and I promise you if you put some energy and effort towards it you'll see a difference if you're older you're probably already nodding your head that like you know this because how easily sleep affects everything totally all right I know you like that episode if you did check this one out 30% body fat for men this is way too high this is actually a bit high for women as well so in today's episode we're talk about how you can go from 30 to 10 what is 10% body fat this is when you have a visible six-pack can you go from 30 to 10% yes it's possible but not if he guesss along the way so we're going to talk about how you can do that in today's episode now there's a huge range right of like body types and some people can run uh a little bit heavier uh and or a little bit higher body