What to do when your gym progress stalls...

Why have you hit a plateau? 

If your 100% sure your in a plateau, skip this paragraph and continue reading. If your still reading, let's talk about a plateau really is. A plateau is when your progress in the gym, or a sport, stops improving for over a month at a time. A plateau isn't when you just have a bad session or when you come back from vacation and are weaker for the first couple weeks of getting back into your routine. It's also not when you lose some progress after getting sick. If I just stated your case, you likely haven't plateaued, and it will just take some time to get back on track. Don't worry, just keep doing your think, and you should be good to go. If your experiencing training where you haven't been able to improve your form, weight, or reps for over a month of consistent training, you may be plateauing, so lets fix it. 

You plateau when your body and muscles are not given a reason to change or grow. When someone first starts to lift, they're body adapts to the new movements and adventually it will become stronger to be more efficient. If that person just keeps doing the same movements, eventually, their body will stop adapting because it is already adapted to be able to do the work. That person must keep challenging their body by increasing the difficulty in order for their body to keep adapting to the workload. 

Solutions :-) 

To start tracking your workouts, you can either use an app or you can write them down in a dedicated notebook. A common app that people use is 'Strong.' In the app, you can plan workouts, track data, and see your workout history. When training, make sure you have a plan. You can try different training splits like "push, pull, legs", "upper, lower", "fullbody", etc. If what your doing right now isn't working, try changing it up: lower the weight and improve your form, add a set or two, increase the weight and do less reps, or do a mix of both. Give your body something new that it hasn't seen before. Sometimes its also best to take a couple days to a week of to let your body rest and reset, especially if you have been potentially overtraining. 

Secondly, another thing that you can do is tracking your diet. Most people use an app for this one. "my fitness pal" from Puma and "cronometer" are two great options for this. If your training properly, but not eating enough protein or calories, it will literally be impossible for your body to recover and rebuild muscle. A general recommendation is to eat in a calorie surplus of about 200-500 calories per day and to eat roughly 1g/lb of protein per pound of bodyweight through whole protein sources. You can use a maintenance calorie tracker online to figure out your calories, and the nutrition calculator will track your macros, including protein, when you input the foods. For example, a 150lb person, burning 2400 calories per day should eat about 2600-2900 calories and 150g of protein every day for optimal muscle growth. 

Inorder to grow, your body must be stimulated beyond what it is used to. Not only does fueling well make it easier for you to push yourself in the gym, but it also allows your muscles to have the resources it needs to grow.

Lets talk about making a plan and strategy going forward.