When To Modify Your Exercise Program
If you are like me, you might have started your fitness or powerlifting journey with exercises that you were familiar with from high school sports or followed your gym buddy’s program. This likely worked (or may still be working) for a while, but eventually, your body will no longer be able to experience the same benefits to your amount of training anymore. This is called ‘plateauing’, which is a common occurrence involving a diminishing return on your exercise commitment.
No need to worry, though. You have a few options when you reach a point where you need to be challenged further!
You can focus on specifying training!
This is when exercise gets even more fun. What might have consisted of 3 sets of 10 repetitions can now be interlaced with ‘strength days’ and ‘hypertrophy days’. This being said, you can perform lower reps with more weight on strength days and vice versa on hypertrophy days. Getting big and strong!
You can play around with drop sets.
With what now? Drop sets are great for when you are having trouble lifting a heavier weight for strength gains, but you want to gradually increase the load. For example, you could squat for a ‘triple’ for 2 sets (2x3) and then drop to 3x5. This will allow you to experience an overall increase in strength, but without lifting at a high intensity for 5 sets all at once.
You’re getting bored!
This happens! Monotony is no fun! We are always looking for new ways to challenge ourselves. For many of us, doing the same lifts for years can get boring. This is a good opportunity to try some new exercise variations, play around with tempo or even add an entirely different type of training (e.g. yoga, treadmill running) into your program. After all, exercise should be fun! When it seems like a chore, it gets harder to stay motivated!
I encourage most people to seek guidance when it comes to progressing exercise safely. Unless you are well-versed in strength and conditioning principles or have vast experience as a strength athlete or powerlifter, speaking with a specialist or powerlifting coach is often the best course of action when you want to continue getting the most out of your training.
As always, feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about how to progress--or regress, for that matter, your training.