Ramblings of Doug Warren

Sometimes to progress you must move backwards

There is a concept in resistance training of the plateau. The idea being that after weeks or months of straight hopefully linear progress all gains in increasing weight or increasing the numbers of reps stop. There are many reasons for a plateau and almost everyone has their own theory. The ones that I believe the most in are that Central Nervous System Adaptation, Over Training, and Bad Form. Over the past several weeks, I believe I’ve suffered from the first and third so let’s take a look at those separately.

Central Nervous System Adaptation

Since I started resistance training in October of last year, I haven’t missed a single day. Three times a week initially moving up to four recently with added depletion workouts when I switched to a Cyclic Ketogenic Diet that’s the same sets of back squats, same sets of dead-lifts, and same sets of bench presses week after week. After a period of time your central nervous system will no longer adapt to the demands placed on it and you must change to move forward. In my case, I knew that I had a week vacation coming up at Disney World. Unlike previous vacations I made no plans to find a local gym, I didn’t pack protein-powder in my luggage, instead I planned on eating three meals a day rather than my traditional 6, and the only exercise I got was hours of low impact cardio from walking through the parks again and again. When I returned I weighed myself the day after resuming the low carb portion of the CKD, and I weighed the same I had the Monday before I left.

Bad Form

The second major problem that I suffered from is that after the loss of my work-out partner, I had no one to ‘keep me honest’ I was close to a few goals in the different compound lifts and I grew sloppy in desiring to reach them. For bench presses I increased the weights if I was able to reach all of the reps in my set regardless of how shakey or close to failure I was. For Squats, I had the squat turn into a good morning coming out of the hole on the first rep, but I was so close to a goal I increased the weight anyway. Finally for Dead-lifts I’d increase the weights even on a case when I missed the last rep of a set. In each case I made my goal, but ran into a plateau almost immediately afterwords. For this issue and likewise for Over Training there’s only one real solution.

De-Load

(Also known as the backoff, or reset) If you reach a plateau in an exercise particularly in one of the major compound exercises where week after week you reach the same weight for the same reps or even fall back a rep or two, the number one way to break this is to reduce the weight by 20% and start increasing the amount again on a weekly basis.

In my case it was only the compound lifts that were stalling (However it was all three of them.) I’m still making gains to every accessory and that feels good, but more importantly after resetting the weight I was able to focus on the form again. I’m convinced now that in the absence of a partner watching the form the most important thing to pay attention to while lifting is the barbell speed. That in addition to the number of reps made in the set will determine if I increase a lift for the next session.

With-in weeks I will be at the same place I was before my de-load, and the week after that I expect to surpass it. (3 weeks for bench, 2 weeks for squats, 3 weeks for dead-lifts.) Because, sometimes to move progress you must move backwards.

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