Why Am I Not Getting Stronger?

Ever wondered why your strength levels struggle to go up? Feeling frustrated that you’ve been training hard but still see little progress?

Increasing strength or seeing ‘Gains’ has always been a popular goal with both my clients and gym goers. Increasing your strength can range from:

• Improving leg muscular endurance for marathon running
• Lifting heavier weights for body building or
• Achieving 1 rep max personal bests for power lifting

Whether your goal be fat loss, sporting performance or muscle gains, getting physically stronger is pretty much essential to maximising your results.

However there are times when strength starts to either plateau or in some cases regress, but why is that?

Here are some reasons why this could be happening.

• Overtraining

Referring back to a previous blog of mine ‘Overtraining is best described as constant overloading of the body without giving it enough time to recover and repair itself. ‘

If you’re overtraining then your strength training will definitely suffer as your muscles will be unable to produce the necessary forces to train in an optimal fashion. Learn to REST when your body needs it.

• Variation PT1

Coming to the gym using the same rep range and intensity levels will almost certainly lead to strength plateau. Training periodisation is splitting up your year’s training into different training phases which challenges the body and stimulates growth and change. A typical phase would last between 8-12 weeks before changing however this depends on the task in hand.

An example could be an 8 week phase of muscular endurance training (2-4 sets of 15-20 reps with 60 second rest periods).

The next phase could be a hypertrophy phase of 4-8 sets of 6-12 reps with 2 minute rest period.

My point is that if you don’t change your training approach your body will not be forced to adapt.

• Nutrition

Yes I’m banging on about it again. It’s simple if you’re not fuelling yourself correctly then you won’t perform. This can be anything from hydration to overconsumption or lack of calories and doing mad ‘carb free’ fads! Poor Nutrition can affect stress and muscle recovery which leads to training plateaus and lost motivation.

• Variation Part 2

Increase intensity of training by throwing in Supersets, Tri Sets and Giant Sets

Superset – Involves completing 2 exercises back to back (e.g 10 squats then 10 pressups without rest in between)

Tri Set – Involves completing 3 exercises back to back (e.g 10 squats, 10 pressups, 10 situps without rest in between)

Giant Set – Involves completing 4 or more exercises back to back (e.g 10 squats, 10 pressups, 10 situps and then 10 pullups without rest in between)

• Stress and Sleep

Lack of sleep and being regularly stressed can increase fatigue, decrease motivation, recovery and energy levels which leads to plateaus and regressions in training. Don’t always look at the obvious signs, ensure you are setting the platform for positive progressive training with a lifestyle low in stress and high in sufficient rest.

• Flexibility

You’ll be amazed with how much a tight muscle can affect performance.

If your muscles are too short and tight then the ability to move the joint in a full range of muscle is reduced and increases the risk of injury. Ensuring you warm up, cool down and stretch in between sessions will aid recovery and assist performance.