In fitness, what appears to a new lifter as a beginner plateau could easily be interpreted as laziness. Yet, laziness is often an incorrect diagnosis. More often than not, when a beginner is unable to progress, the culprit is an inability to focus. In many cases, we see a person simply going through the motions, repeating the same exact sets for several weeks. Or, rest periods become shorter than recommended or non-existent. Or, every workout becomes its own distinct experience for no good reason. At the start of your new fitness journey, every workout seems new, which is why progress is often rapid in the beginning. Then you will inevitably encounter a point of diminishing returns in progress where the typical beginner reaction is to push harder, increase sets and reps or decrease rest times. While this may work for the occasional day of work, most of the time it just makes movement sloppy and harder to tackle the next workout.
If you start to measure progress less by how exhausted you feel after a workout, and more by the improvements in technique (for example, a split squat that now requires less balance, more control of a push up, or a hinge where control in the eccentric phase is better) you will have a much easier time understanding your beginner plateau. A person can do sloppy squats for three weeks and feel like they were working hard. On the other hand, a person who practices slow movements to ensure good control of the ground with the feet in squats, and control of the chest to prevent collapse, will more likely continue to progress regardless of whether or not that is more difficult than their previous sessions, without even increasing difficulty in the lift. Progress is not always loud. Progress is often quiet and specific.
One common pitfall for beginners to avoid after the initial phase of learning is to change everything at the first moment of frustration with progress. A beginner may practice a very easy exercise, but because they find it easy or feel like it is not improving, they might suddenly add exercises and sets, change the order of exercises, and turn every session into a trial of willpower. That is not usually productive. The first step in the fix for that common mistake is to narrow your focus rather than expand it.
Take just one exercise you are performing, and choose one potential reason you think it is stalling. Let us say you perform push ups, and they break down in the middle of the range. The first potential culprit might be poor control in the middle range rather than an inability to perform the movement with the arms. Let us say you perform squats, and you have not been able to progress in depth in the last week or two. The first culprit might be the need to improve your balance or the flexibility of your ankles rather than putting in more time and effort. Identify one likely culprit in a stalled exercise, and then spend a week or so just focusing on improving the specific weak link without completely abandoning the exercise.
A good practice block may help get back on track. Take a total of 15 minutes. During the first 3 minutes, start to warm up the exercise you feel stuck with. If the squat does not feel right, spend your time doing box squats, ankle rockers, and slow hinges. Use the next 8-9 minutes performing a few exercises: one should be a simplified version of the exercise you feel is stuck with, and the other is a drill to help the exercise get better. If you feel your push ups have stalled with a plateau, you might practice performing your push ups from the wall with a hold plank. If you are stalling with a squat, you might practice box squats, with the addition of a small squat hold with a support at the bottom position of the squat. The last minute or two should be spent quietly analyzing if you feel more stable in this session with that workout. The feeling of improved stability, or balance, or even easier control means the work is becoming useful.
When you feel stuck in your training routine, it is also helpful to lower the amount of effort you try to prove yourself on every workout. Practicing sloppy, inconsistent movements will not teach you a skill if the sloppy part is all you are teaching the body. If you find that the last 3 to 4 repetitions of a movement you are performing are inconsistent and sloppy, you may in fact be teaching yourself sloppiness as well as the desired movement. In that case, a short video recording of a workout can help you see that in real-time. Perform one set of your movement and ask yourself a simple question: did the movement start the same way as the end, or did the movement unravel during the movement? That is information that can help you much more than a sore sensation will. If the movement changed, simply reduce the number of reps and start to teach yourself control in the movement with the ability to repeat.
It is no secret that plateaus are unpleasant for people, since they often take you out of the early momentum of improvement. However, they are also the first moment where you must focus more on your skills, since you can no longer rely on the excitement of the new. It now becomes more important to pay attention to tempo, position, rest, the ability to perform the movement consistently, or simply the ability to practice the movement until you know that you can perform it. While that might not seem exciting at first, it is good news for you. The more quickly that you get better at recognizing how to overcome a plateau instead of simply working harder for results, the smoother, easier and more clear your training can become, and the easier it will be to stay on track.
