Hi, CT,
I haven’t commented in a LONG while but I’ve been keeping up with your articles, which I always appreciate.
Recently, you’ve emphasized not changing an exercise in the face of lack of progress over several workouts, saying that this is the point that big gains can occur. You’ve also advised some small modifications to a major exercises after 6 weeks such as changing grip width…
My question is:
if one starts to hit a wall on a lift after about 4 weeks–for example, continuing to get a 5,5,5,4,3 on a 5x5 bench press for 3 workouts in a row–should we just keep working at this exercise as is through the whole 6-week cycle, without making any adjustments to increase workload each workout?
I realize that we should address other factors such as exercise order or hydration, but if they don’t account for our lack of progress on a lift, should we make other adjustments, such as…
- changing tempo?
-Increasing rest periods? - Add a back-off set?
- rest-pause reps on the final sets of an exercise (getting 25 total reps instead of that 5,5,5,4,3 plateau) ?
Do you have certain techniques for this situation you often use with your trainees?
Thanks, and love your work,
Brian