The 5 Week Plateau-Busting Workout Program

Stuck in a rut with your current routine of 3-4 sets of 8-10 reps per exercise?

I hear you, having been there too many times myself. Trust me – training can get really frustrating if you’re not seeing any results. What usually happens in gym America is what I call “program hopping”. People jump from “Chest Blast Monday” to “Fat Loss Friday ” and everything in between. The outcome? No progress whatsoever. At best time has been wasted and, at worst, injuries have occurred.

However, you should never simply seek change for the sake of change. Always have a realistic goal in mind. Realistic goals should always be measurable and achievable within a certain time frame.

The following routine was developed with two intentions in mind: to increase your work capacity and your strength.

Work capacity is an overlooked factor in today’s fitness world, as we are mostly concerned with strength. The latest research shows though that the most critical factor for hypertrophy (muscle growth) is volume. The more volume in the 75-88% range the athlete can tolerate, the better his progress will be. Therefore, you must improve your work capacity just as much as your strength. One way to do that is to add volume into a fixed amount of time. This will increase your ability to recover and you can stimulate the muscle more often during a given cycle.

THE PROGRAM

In the following program, you’ll train four times a week. The actual training week is broken up in 2 parts – timed workouts and power workout:

Workouts A and B are timed. In those, you’ll train for 45 minutes at the maximum – with a hard stop after 45 minutes no matter where you are at in your workout! The goal is to increase workload, aka add more sets each week. Each set should be very focused, done with good form, but stop about two reps before failure.

Workouts C and D are power workouts. The goal here is to increase the weight you are using by 5% each week. Keep the reps very controlled, think one second positive on the positive part of the motion and three seconds on the negative.

Give this routine a try for five weeks and then switch back to your old split. You’ll be amazed by how much more volume and weight you’ll be able handle!

THE WORKOUTS