How to change your approach to break through limits

Here are six approaches for you on how to switch up your training when you feel like you are not getting anywhere to get the desired results and push beyond your limits.

Volume

If you are stuck on a certain weight and your personal record will not move beyond the 300, 400 or 500-pound mark, volume can be a good and easy approach for smashing through to your next PR. You might also call this a shock cycle.

Programs like German Volume Training, Smolov Jr and Smolov take you through literally a ton of volume to get you past. I have used these programs and found that the smolov programs work well for myself to get through a sticking point with a lift. German Volume training did not give my strength gains but helped with building mass.

Another technique is to finish off your day with 5x10 of a certain exercise. Look up the Boring but big program from Wendler for details.

Load

Modulating the weight moved can also help to get you to the desired place. Usually dialing back to 90% from one repetition maximum helped here. If you have established a PR in training and your program is not going anywhere, reset it to 90% of your actual 1RM and take it from there.

This is an approach taken from the books of Jim Wendler’s 531 program and can be applied to any program.

If you are working with a high repetition approach with lower weight that does not give you the desired result, there is some anecdotal reports from bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzenegger that „shocking the muscle“ by going up in weight and still try to hit the reps fo your set helped them to grow.

Speed of movement

With affordable wearable technology like the push band, it becomes now possible to measure bar speed for home gym warriors. I have personally not tried this approach of monitoring training and making deductions from it, but the concept is very interesting makes sense on the surface.

Here you would try to break through limit by increasing the speed at which the same weight travels during your lift. This emphasizes explosiveness over strength gains.

Range of motion

Limiting the range of motion can be another way of training your way through a ceiling and crush your numbers. With this approach, you isolate the weakest part of your lift. To achieve this you first film yourself and based on how the lift feels and what you can observe in the footage you define the weakest / slowest part of the movement. Then you go back tot he gym, adjust the safety pins accorsingly in the power rack and work only that part oft he movement hard at the same weight. Squat negatives are one way of doing this.

Nervous system

This is a tricky one but there ways tot rain your nervous system to fire quicker. The Kbands training approach, chaos balls and juggling are good ways to get the nervous system to fire quicker. Anything which is light weight and requires a qucik resposne from your brain to react. The faster and better the connections from your nervous system tot he muscles the more power you can relaese in lesser time which translates to more force created & therefore strength.

Movement pattern

Apart from sticky points that can be adressed through limiting range of motion there also can be movement pattern which hold you back from developing maximum force. In sports the higher your middle point ist he harder it will be for you to move quickly in different direction. Therefore stay low when you have to switch qucikly in which direction you want to go giving up maximum speeed in favor of manouverability.

In lifting this can be adressed through strength imbalacnes which manifest in one hemissphere being weaker than the other by overtraining the weaker one to catch up to recreate balance. IMbalanced movement patterns usually lead to loss of force along the way, as the bar path is not straight.