How to Bust Through A Strength Plateau
Serious head-turning strength is a rare thing in this world today.
Look around and you’ll see that most of the powerful lifters have one thing in common: they’re all very far from being lean and chiseled. Yep, that’s right! Most strong people today are overweight and lack really solid definition.
In fact, some people don’t even think it’s possible to be lean and strong! They think you have to choose between one or the other. Certainly these people have never been introduced to Kinobody and my training methods.
You see, when most people hit a strength plateau, the common answer is that you need to eat more food. Sure, if you eat tons of food, you’ll gain mass (muscle and fat), which will make you stronger.
But there are two things wrong with this approach:
- You’re going to end up looking worse since you’ll be adding a good chunk of fat.
- You will be sacrificing ‘relative strength’. Relative strength is really the key to being athletic and functional. Relative strength is how strong you are proportionate to your bodyweight.
Who cares if you can bench press 400 lbs if you struggle to do 10 chin-ups. Who cares if you can squat 600 lbs if you can’t jump or sprint with power and speed. With relative strength you support total athleticism and body mastery.
Now obviously none of this “relative strength” talk pertains to busting through a strength plateau. And you’re exactly right, but bear with me for a second; there’s a point to it all.
You see, your goal isn’t just to gain strength. Gaining strength is easy!
Instead, your goal is to build relative strength. You want to gain strength without getting fat in the process. This is something that I have mastered. And when you are building strength while staying lean, you will hit plateaus.
Eating more surely is not the answer. Therefore we need a new method to bust right through an exercise plateau. The answer, my friend, is called exercise rotation!
How To Break The Plateau With Exercise Rotation
Time and time again I’ll get questions on my blog that go a little like this:
“Hey greg. I’ve been following your program and I’ve been making great gains. I’m leaner, stronger and more muscular than before. The only thing is that my incline press has reached a plateau and I can’t seem to get it to budge. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.”
Let’s break this down! When you’ve been advancing on the same exact movement for several weeks, inevitably you will hit a plateau. What’s going on is that your body needs a fresh stimulus.
The more you keep doing the same exact exercise over and over again, the more exhausted you will become. In fact, you may even feel drained just doing a couple sets of that particular movement. Often times, if you keep trying to progress on a movement that has stalled, you will regress and get weaker.
You Need To Make A Change (ANY Change Will Do)
What is going on is that your central nervous system requires a new and fresh stimulus to continue making gains. This is literally as simple as making the slightest variation like changing your hand position or switching from barbells or dumbbells.
By changing up the variation of an exercise, you continue to build the same movement pathway and muscle groups, without getting stuck. You effectively take the brakes off your bodies limits. You will then start to make strength gains for several weeks.
That said, inevitably another plateau will set in. It is at this point that you want to go back to the original movement. And what do you know? You will be pleased to find out that you’ll be stronger than ever. Moreover, you’ll start to make progress on the movement again.
Here Is An Example Of Exercise Rotation
Here’s how it looks:
Let’s say you’re experiencing barbell incline bench press plateau. For the next 4-6 weeks, you’d work on incline dumbbell bench press. Once you hit another strength plateau, usually around the 4-6 week mark, you’ll go back to barbell incline press.
Let’s use another example. Let’s say you’ve hit a plateau on weighted chin-ups and you are struggling to even add a pound to the belt. Well you would then want to switch to pull-ups (hands facing away) for 4-6 weeks. You will definitely find pull ups very challenging at first, but as you advance on pull-ups, you will be improving your chin-up strength as well.
Therefore when you go back to weighted chin ups, not only will you be fresh, but you’ll continue to make strength gains for the next 3-6 weeks! (Yes – it’s really that effective.)
How To Use The Kinobody Exercise Rotation Tactics
For building the kinobody physique, there are six core movements that support a well developed and athletic physique.
For the upper body these are:
- weighted chin ups
- incline presses
- overhead presses
- curls
For the legs/lower-body, these include:
- single leg squats
- deadlifts or hang cleans
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Hi Greg,
I stalled on both incline barbell press and standing barbell press last week and i’m a bit mixed up on the switch over weight. My incline barbell was at 185lb however i was struggling to incline press 32KG Dumbbells today. Its the same with the standing barbell press, i stalled at 125lb, but when i switched over to dumbbells i could only push 24Kg.
My main concern and question is, should it be that much of a drop of weight when switching over? I was expecting a little drop but not as significant as that.
Thanks
it depends. if you haven’t really done dumbbell then you’ll have to work your way up
Hey man,
Figured I would give you my view on your current situation. So the drop in weight isnt as dramatic as you think it is. The reason for this is because you are no longer pushing one singular weight with both arms (barbell). You are pushing two individual weights with one arm each (dumbbells). This is actually more physically demanding because it requires you’re stablizing muscles (the muscles that dont actually do the work itself but just keep you at good form) to work twice as hard. You might not think it, but the switch from barbell bench to dumbbell bench is actually a VERY dramatic change for your body. Which is why it works so well at crushing plateaus.
Matt
Just a quick question Greg, what is the best method in doing the lateral raises is it the standard pyramid training or doing it by 13-15 reps like in your warrior shredding program?
God bless
Both options work quite well. These days my favorite method is to actually do rest pause training. Check it out, it makes up a big component of my new muscle building program – superherobulking.com
Greg I have a bunch of skeletal issues that I will soon get chiropractic treatment for and I was curious about how much you think it will help me build strength and muscle because I have always had difficulty. So I have hypo-lordosis, my pelvis is tilted to one side, my left shoulder is disproportionally higher then my right and my neck doesn’t line up correctly with my spine. Now I have been plateaued on pretty much everything for months and no matter what I do I can not bust through them. (My right arm is also about 0.75 in bigger then my left and my right shoulder is a little larger) From your experience do you think once these issues are sorted out that I will start busting through these plateaus and my other arm and shoulder will catch up? I know you are not a doctor but I figure you have probably trained somebody with issues like this.
Hmmmm not sure and I really have no expertise here. But it sounds like a good idea to correct these issues.
Awesome, cheers dude.
Hey Greg,
Would you reccomend rotating lifts whilst cutting?
Or should you be in maintenance or bulking?
Cheers,
Matt
You can rotate lifts while cutting for sure!
Hey Greg,
Sweet article!
I’m interested in increasing my vertical, so how much weight do you use for your Sumo Deadlifts? (I’m not going to start using the same weight as you of course, but I’d like to know the relative strength that I need to work towards in order to jump higher.)
I haven’t really “trained” my legs with high resistance training… I only did plyometrics.
I’m more or less the same height as you, (almost 6 foot). I can touch the rim with a 2-foot jump and a 1-foot leap, but a few more inches would be great.
I actually find power cleans to be more effective for vertical than sumo deadlift. I do about 225 on power cleans (hang style) for 3. I have barely been doing them because of a wrist injury. Also weighted pistols are awesome. Try to get to 50% of your bodyweight.
Thank you Greg. :)
Hi Greg! I injured my wrist 3 weeks ago and decided to continue to train by changing excercises where I was feeling the pain. Beside biceps curls, I’m able to get by but I wonder if it hurts my recovery. Like I said I get buy but I do feel it… At the same time I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of completly stop training for an extended preriod of time ( the incontrolable fear of losing hard earned gains!!).
I would like your intake on this, I ‘m not sure what I should do. If I remeber correctly, I think you hurted your wrist too a while back. Man it sucks…
Jason
I would suggest completely resting for four days. Then only doing exercises that don’t aggravate you. You won’t lose much taking even 1-2 weeks off the gym.
Hey Greg
i was wondering if you were planning on releasing the ideal proportions for the warrior physique since you have released them for both the superhero and Greek god physiques.
PS : would your physique in the shrink wrap video be considered the warrior physique or somewhere between warrior and Greek god ?
Awesome website dude and thanks for the quality content .
I’d say somewhere between warrior and greek god. I was still 171 lbs at 5’10, which is still decently sized. But probably leaning more towards warrior. Yah I can do some for warrior.
that would be awesome also i have one more question i own both the superhero and Greek god programs ans was wondering if using the diet approach from the superhero program and utilizing the Greek god program to reach good or great strength levels then doing the superhero program would be effective to reach that physique
i am currently 185 cm and 66.5 kg
waist : 29.5 in
arms : 13.25 in
shoulders : 46.5 in
chest : 37.5 in
body fat around 8 % i can see veins on my lower abs but its not super vascular
Yes, you can definitely follow the diet approach from superhero with greek god. Yeah, your biggest priority should be gaining size and strength.
Hi Greg,
Although I have made some solid gains with your GGMB program from the beginning of this year, I have been really inspired lately to invest most of my time/effort in progressive calisthenics, which is undoubtedly the epitome of functional strength. Your own calisthenic ability with 2 consecutive chin-ups, plyo muscle-ups, and HSPUs excites me to eventually attain these moves.
At the same time, I don’t want to lose any of the dense muscle I have earnt through your GGMB routine – do you think I will be able to maintain my definition/mass while trying to focus on calisthenics? Lately I have been really slack with recording my routine because it is frequently disrupted by other gym-goers in my way. So, I’m even contemplating buying a power rack to hit the major lifts & doing street workout.
Do you record everything you do on a daily basis to track progress still?
Thanks Greg, I love your work!
PS: Everyone at my office has jumped on board the Kinobody express! Haha ;)
Hey Jonny!
You don’t have to switch completely to calisthenics. I actually don’t like the idea of that unless you can’t get access to weights. I’d rather see you do a hybrid. Switch weighted chin ups to assisted one arm chin ups. Shoulder press to handstand push ups and start doing pistol squats as your leg movement. That would be my suggestion. I don’t like one arm push ups as much as incline bench to build a great chest. IF you do a hybrid you’ll make great gains.
yes, I always record my workouts. All the time! I have never not recorded my workouts. That sounds stupid to me.
Hahah dude that is so amazing! What kind of office do you work at and what city?
Greg,
If your protocol of 3 RPT sets for strength works so well, then why are so many strength coaches and people people still training the 5 x 5 method?
Just wondering…
Dude I understand your logic but this mentality gets you nowhere in life. You must understand that just because everyone else trains a certain way, doesn’t mean it’s the most effective. Mainstream lags behind. Try them both out for yourself and see what works best. Stop looking to the common path to determine what’s right. That’s what sheep do.
I do prefer RPT because I get to go all out for 1 hard set, then back off few a couple more sets and get a few extra (volume) reps.
But with 5 x 5, the first 3 or 4 sets seem like extra warm ups with only the 5 th set as a work set. I don’t like it.
I guess it’s a system…more strength based than strength plus hypertrophy. I will stick with the RPT.
Thanks.
Baaaaaaah…
Very well said Rob and couldn’t agree more. You know your stuff.
Thanks Bro.
You know your stuff.
Hey Greg!
A couple of questions regarding this topic:
1) Have you ever done Lat Pulldowns instead of Pullups and then got stronger at Pullups when you got back to them? I’m asking this because I find Pullups hard to progress on and Lat Pulldowns would be easier to progress on because our bodyweight isn’t involved. Do you think they’re a good alternative to Pullups to use every now and then or do you find that they have little carryover to them?
2) In the SHP’s Chest workout you offer an alternate variation of the Chest movements (Flat Barbell Bench Press + Incline Dumbbell Press) for when we plateau. My question is: when should we change to it? When we plateau on the 2 main movements (Incline Barbell + Flat Barbell Presses) or when we plateau on 1 of them? Or should we rotate them independently? I’m asking this because my Incline Barbell Press is still progressing but my Flat Barbell Press isn’t, so should I switch the 2 movements to the abovementioned alternate variation; wait before I plateau on Incline Barbell Press too and only then switch to it or should I simply change the Flat Barbell Press to Dumbbell Flat Press and stick to the Incline Barbell Press for as long as I’m progressing on it?
Thanks a lot!!!
1. Not nearly as much carryover. Pull ups are not hard to progress on. You just have to start adding weight and just add like 2.5 lbs to the belt each workout.
2. You can change it when you plateau on both of them. If your incline is still going up then keep rocking it. Also try resting longer between incline and flat bench press.
I rest around 3-4 min between them, should I go up to 5 min or is that too much?
Also, I like the feel of the Incline Barbell Press and I can feel it in my chest, but I can’t say the same for Flat Barbell Press. It feels akward and I feel it mostly in my shoulders and triceps (and I do my best to pull my shoulders back and keep the chest up) when going heavy, I only start being able to properly use my chest in the higher rep sets. Should I drop the 4-6 set and do 6-8, 8-10, 10-12 in the Flat barbell press instead?
Thanks again!
3-4 is pretty good. I would do 4-5 minutes. Yah you can go higher in reps on flat barbell. You could also try flat dumbbell bench press and see if that is more effective for you. Or you could do weighted dips with a wider grip.
So if I am stuck at Bench Press doing 160 and I switch to dumbbell press should I start right away with 80’s in each hand to equal 160 or should I start lower like with 65 in each hand since 65×2=130 which is about 80% of 160
No don’t start with 80’s man, that’s way harder than bench pressing 160. Find the weight that challenges you for the right rep range. There’s no calculation you can do.
Hi
Wow very nice post. Never read about these and even with being lean. Very cool.
And when it is the oficial launch of the superhero program i thought it was on oct 7.
Regards
Will be releasing next week! Yah there’s been a delay it will be soon.
Super helpful article, thanks Greg!
Glad you enjoyed it man!
Hey Greg!
when changing exercises, what do you do with the weight?
i got stuck at chinups at 25kg, switched to pullups, and did 31.25 kg today, and haven’t hit a plateau yet. anyways, when i hit a plateau on pullups, lets say at 35 kg.. do i switch to chinups and pickup where i left (at 25 kg), cause that seems a little to light, and i’m going to waste a lot of time lifting below my max.. how do i determine the weight? also, i stalled at standing shoulder at 60kg total, and today i did 34kg seated DB shoulder, and i feel i can add a weight for a couple weeks more.. but do i just start at 60 kg military again, or should i increase the weight? hope it makes sense, cheers man!
You’re going to have to go in and just figure it out! Go by feel. If you feel like you can do more than 25kg then do so. It’s up to you! But it’s not a waste if you’re able to start progressing at 25kg when before you were stuck.
The other option is you could go back to 25kg but see if you can get 1 or 2 more reps.
Hi Greg,
Im following your superhero program and i have to say that this program is fuckin masterpiece.
But i’ve got one problem because my shoulders hurt as fuck- i think its because of incline benchpress. Can u do some tutorial for this exercise ? I would really appreciate it because i think that my form sux.
Thanks and keep up your excellent work
Glad you’re enjoying the program man! Okay read this – https://kinobody.com/workouts-and-exercises/bench-press-form/ and this https://kinobody.com/workouts-and-exercises/flexibility-training/