So, you’ve reached the dreaded sticking point. You’re hitting your workouts consistently but there is not much happening. You might have a specific body-part that is stuck, a specific lift that is stuck, or your entire body might be stuck, but rather than search for the next magical routine, try some of the following plateau busters.

1. Busting Through a Strength Plateau

Bodybuilders who reach plateaus in strength on a given exercise can almost always get moving again if they back off a bit on the intensiveness and up the frequency. Say your bench 1rm is 225 and you've been stuck there for an eternity. The way to bust through a strength plateau is to back off a bit on the poundages, add some frequency, and don't train the exercise to failure. Here is a scheme based on a two steps forward one step back approach you can use for any lift where you increase the weight for two consecutive workouts and decrease it for one. It will work for any lift.

Let’s say your current bench 1rm is 225. You’d do the following at the beginning of your workouts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

You'll start with a weight you can handle for 3 reps, add weight for 3 workouts and then reduce for 1. You can hit a given lift fairly frequently but you don’t have to train the specific body parts associated with the lift that often. For example, you might do your normal higher volume chest workout once per week each Wednesday, but there’s no reason why you can’t do a few heavy reps of bench on Monday and Friday.

2. Do the Opposite

If you normally train a muscle group once a week with high volume, train it 3 times per week with low volume. If you normally train it 3 times per week with low volume train it once a week with high volume. If you normally train it twice per week go either down to once per week or up to 3x per week.

3. Add Feeder Workouts

24 hours after you’ve worked a body part pick an isolation exercise for the same muscle and hit a couple of very light sets for 30-50 reps short of failure. It’ll help increase blood flow, nutrient delivery, and also help recovery. A sled works great for this as you can do a variety of movements for either the legs or various pushing and pulling upper body movements.

4. Get Your Bodyweight Up

One of the biggest causes for a plateau is lack of sufficient intake at the dinner table. Unless you are a doughboy, a beginner trainee, or have genetics to die for, the body is not very good at keeping your fat cells the same size while it increases the size of your muscles. Therefore, one good way to break a plateau is to lose the obsession with the ripped abs. Pick a number on the scale you want to weigh, figure 1 to 1.5 pounds per week pace and get after it. Yes, you will gain some fat and no you probably won’t look your prettiest, but your strength will go way up and any size plateaus will be shattered. Just make sure your bulk doesn’t take you to beached whale type body-fat percentage. Around 15-17% is as high as you wanna go. Any higher then that and you’re getting into the territory where you risk permanent fat boy syndrome.

5. Add Targeted Calories

Short of an all out bulk this option will also work well. Most muscular growth occurs in the 36 hours immediately following a workout; however, restoring of glycogen takes precedence over growth. Therefore you want to get glycogen stores filled up ASAP and also make sure you have plenty of fuel floating around the following day while your muscles are growing. Add an extra 100 grams of carbohydrates to the combined total of what you normally take in during your workout, immediately after your workout, and your 2nd post-workout meal. So, if you normally take in nothing during your workout, 50 grams of carbs immediately after, and 50 grams a couple of hours later, you might consume an extra 50 grams during your workout, 75 immediately after and 75 a couple of hours later. Also make sure you’re slightly hypercaloric the following day. For an extra bonus I’d also recommend synthesize.