How to break a plateau

Are you really on a plateau?

One bad workout isn't a plateau. Neither are two. The weight on the bar swings with sleep, stress, food, even the time of day you train. A plateau is when your estimated max on a lift sits still for several weeks while you train as usual.

Here's how I look at it: I take your best estimated max for each workout over the last eight weeks and work out the slope. If it's growing slower than half a percent a week — under half a kilo a week on a hundred-kilo lift — that's flat, a stall. Fewer than four sessions with the lift in that time is too few to judge: two or three points can make any slope.

There's also the opposite case people mistake for a plateau: the weight hasn't moved in three workouts and you're doing 12 or more reps. That's not a stall. You've simply outgrown that weight and it's time to add — I remind you about that.

Step 1. The boring causes

Before changing the program, answer three questions honestly:

• Sleep. Under seven hours for weeks — strength doesn't grow, however you change your sets.
• Food. Eating in a calorie deficit to lose fat slows strength gains, and for advanced lifters can stop them. That's normal: holding your numbers while cutting is already good. Protein — around 1.6 g per kg of bodyweight a day: past that, according to the Morton et al. (2018) meta-analysis, the extra benefit nearly flattens out.
• Consistency. Open your log: how many workouts were there last month? A "plateau" is often two workouts a week instead of three and a skipped one every third week.

If any answer is bad, start there. It's boring, but that's where most stalls live.

Step 2. Technique

The weight often stalls not because you lack strength but because your technique stopped transferring it. On the bench your shoulder blades slip, in the squat your hips rise too early, in the deadlift the bar drifts away from your legs. You don't feel it on your own lifts — on video it's obvious.

Film a working set from the side — how to do it right is in the guide on filming your set — and send it to me for a review. I'll say what I see and what to fix first. Sometimes one fix — bar position, depth, grip — unlocks a few kilos within a couple of weeks.

Step 3. Volume and rep range

If sleep, food and technique are fine, it's time to change the load — one thing at a time, so you know what worked.

• Volume. Doing fewer than 10 working sets per muscle a week? Add 2–3. More sets give more growth on average, but with diminishing returns: that's what the large Pelland et al. analysis shows. If you're already at 20+, volume probably isn't the problem — fatigue might be.
• Rep range. Six months in 8–12? Switch to 4–6 with more weight for 4–6 weeks, then come back. The reverse works too: a lifter living at 3–5 reps benefits from a block of 8–10.
• Progression. Stopped adding weight every week? Move to double progression: reps, then weight. Small plates of 0.5–1.25 kg help too.

Step 4. Exercise variations

Sometimes a lift stalls while the muscles are still ready to grow. A similar movement for 4–8 weeks helps then: instead of the bench, a paused bench or an incline; instead of the back squat, a front squat; instead of the conventional deadlift, a block pull or a Romanian deadlift. A variation loads the weak point of the main lift and gives a fresh stimulus.

When you go back to the main lift, start 5–10% below your record and climb the ladder again — a couple of weeks later you're usually above where you were. Comparisons of similar exercises are in the comparisons section.

You don't need to grind sets to failure to break through: in the Refalo et al. (2023) meta-analysis, failure showed no clear muscle-growth advantage, and it brings more fatigue.

Step 5. Deload

If you've been training hard for a long time, your joints ache, motivation is gone and your numbers aren't just flat but dropping, fatigue has built up. The answer is a deload week: the same exercises, about half the sets and 85–90% of your usual weight, with plenty of reps in reserve.

How experienced athletes do it: in a survey of 246 strength and physique athletes (Rogerson et al., 2024), a deload lasted about a week on average and came roughly every 5–6 weeks, most often triggered by stalling lifts and joint pain. They usually kept training frequency and exercises, and cut volume and effort.

Don't confuse a deload with time off. In the Coleman et al. (2024) study, a week with no training at all in the middle of a nine-week program didn't help: that group's leg strength gains were even slightly smaller, and the break made no difference to muscle growth. Back off rather than skip. More in the glossary: deload.

How I help

A stall shows best in numbers, not feelings. I work out the estimated max for every lift after every workout and see where it's been flat for eight weeks. If the weight hasn't moved for three workouts at 12+ reps, I'll remind you to add. If you've really stalled, ask the coach "why isn't my bench going up?" and you'll get an answer from your diary: what's going on with frequency, volume and reps, and what to change first.

A diary program can include a deload every N weeks — in that week the target for a set has no increase, about 90% of the weight, and I remind you to cut sets.

Read next

• Deload
• Plateau
• Progressive overload
• An AI coach that reads your diary