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Never Plateau in Your Weight Lifting Program!How you set up your weight lifting program will either make or break your fitness results. This article shows you a sure-fire way to make sure you never hit a plateau in your lifting routine again. After all, hitting a plateau will stall your gains faster than anything else. And the worse thing you can do is try and work through a plateau by training more. You have to take a step back and look at the big picture of what you're trying to accomplish. Your workouts should be very demanding. They should also be intense and very focused. But with this intensity comes the need to rest -- to allow your muscles to fully recuperate from the demand that you've placed on them during your weight lifting program. Muscle growth is achieved by progressively overloading the muscles and forcing them to adapt by adding new muscle to handle future demands. If you never allow your muscles to fully recuperate, they will not be able to handle any new demands placed upon them. They will start getting weaker from less rest. That's exactly how plateaus happen! Plateaus occur from overtraining. And overtraining happens by doing too much too often. Gaining muscle is not a result of how MUCH you do, its a result of HOW WELL you do things. Proper rest and recovery from your weight lifting program is so important, it literally is the deciding factor behind results and no results. Here are some steps you can use immediately in your weight training program to avoid hitting a plateau. 1. Keep workouts short and sweet. Your weight lifting program should be just that, training with weights and not mixing cardio with it. Workouts do not need to be long to be effective, in fact, if they're too long, they become counter- productive. 2. Do not turn your weight lifting routine into an endurance event. Keep your workouts brief and focused. Complete your workout in less than 45 minutes. This short time period will ensure you do not over do it and will also ensure maximum intensity. 3. Keep a lower number of reps and sets. This lower range will ensure maximum overload and increased intensity. If you feel that you did not work a muscle sufficiently after two to three heavy sets, I question the amount of weight or your intensity on those sets. Remember, its not the quantity of sets that matter, it's the quality. 4. Don't over do your cardio workout. Keep your cardio at three to four sessions per week, 20-30 minutes a session. Too many cardio days or too long of a cardio session negatively impacts your weight lifting program. These are a few things you can do to avoid overtraining and hitting a plateau in your weight training workout. Stick with short workouts and get plenty of rest. This article was taken from the muscle-building weight lifting program "Simple Steps to Get Huge and Shredded" written by personal trainer and bodybuilder Shawn LeBrun. |