Increase Your Max Bench Press

So you've hit a point where you can't seem to increase your bench press? Don't worry; it happens to all of us as some point. You have probably hit a plateau that you need to work through. There are many things that you can do to get back on track to building a bigger chest and growing muscular strength. Here are a few suggestions.

How to increase your bench press performance

Take it easy

Have you been training hard for too long without taking a few days' rest? Perhaps your muscles are getting tired from accumulated stress over time and all you need is a good rest so that they can fully recover before reaching maximum recuperation and increased strength. There are times when after a few days off I come back to the gym bigger and stronger than ever. You should take a rest week every 2 months or so. Here are ways to turn your rest week into bigger muscle. Also, here are ways to get the most of every rest day.

Check your frequency

Are you working the bench often enough? Or are you hitting it more than you should? Aim for once to twice a week for great gains and make sure that each workout puts enough stress on your muscles so that they are tired the day afterwards. If they aren't tired the day afterwards, then it is time to change up your chest exercises. Make sure that they keep adapting and they keep growing in response. Change up your program regularly so that your body is forced to adapt to new challenges. If you want to change things up, try the totally exhausting Garry program. We examined a few studies to determine the best workout split here.

Change your rep range

Have you been using the same 8-12 rep range for months already? Try using a lower rep range like 5-8 for a month or two and see the difference. Or switch to the higher 15-20 rep range to keep your muscles growing. It is best to alternate between three rep ranges (high, low and standard). Change it up every few months so that your muscles will develop a variety of rep strengths and keep adapting to different stimulus (and therefore gaining size). Changing rep ranges will increase the bench press max of your original rep range because the muscles will have to grow in strength to adapt to the new kind of stress placed on it. And yes, high reps can be just as good as low reps at building muscle.

Vary your exercises

Don't do the barbell bench press on its own and expect your chest to grow to its full potential. Include other exercises like the dumbbell bench press, dips, cable crossovers, dumbbell pull-overs and dumbbell flies. This will grow the entirety of your chest to its best potential. Every few months, change the exercises up again by changing the order in which you do the exercises, adding incline or decline exercises, and changing all the exercises with other chest exercises altogether.

Change your grip

Changing your grip (the way you hold the bar) will help to develop other muscles that might not usually get as much stimulus for the bench press but are still crucial to performing the lift. These muscles include your forearms and even parts of the triceps, shoulders and the chest itself. When these muscles are stressed more and strengthened by changing your grip for a period of time, they will be more capable of supporting your original bench press, therefore helping you beat your max. 

Strengthen your supporting muscles

What if the weaker triceps or shoulders are the culprits that are limiting your bench performance? Weaker triceps, for example, will tire before your chest muscles get the decent workout that they deserve and you stop before they get the stimulus needed to grow at their best. Try strengthening these supporting muscles so that your chest has all the time it needs to work its magic under the bar. Determine whether you need a separate shoulder day or whether any other specific muscles are holding you back.

Check your diet

In order for muscle to grow, your calorie intake needs to exceed your caloric output (What else would they grow from if all the food that you eat is burnt up as energy?) Besides that, are you eating the right foods that your muscles need to grow, along with the right nutrients to sustain the energy that you need to perform the workouts that cause muscle growth in the first place; without forcing your body to dip into its muscle reservoir? This is why it is easier for bodybuilders to work within bulking and cutting cycles because it us safer to take in too much calories to build muscle than taking in too few calories which hampers (and can even reverse) muscle growth. Consider taking supplements to aid muscle growth or fill in the nutritional gaps that your diet keeps missing.

How's your ZZZ balance?

Getting enough sleep is crucial to growing muscle strength and size. Most of your muscle growth happens during sleep. If you are not getting enough shut-eye, your body will prioritize other functions that happen during sleep over muscle growth to survive. Lack of sleep could lead to quicker over-training, lack of motivation, and worst of all... lost gains. 

Make sure all the above are in check and you should be well on the road to constant muscle growth in size and strength. STAY STRONG!

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Get Bigger Calve Muscles Right Now - You're Doing it Wrong

Calves are what I call a 'gene-muscle'. Some people can grow their calves into mini boulders while others can't, even though both could be working just as hard on them every week. Unfortunately, the size that your calves can grow in proportion to the rest of your body is largely predetermined to luck-of-the-draw genetics. Don't lose hope though, there are still ways to get them show-ready and larger than life with smart lifting and a few changes to your work-out routine. Check out these smart tips that will turn your puppies into bull dogs.

How to get bigger calf muscles

Treat your calves like any other muscle group

Firstly, the calves should be treated like any other muscle group. They differ from the other muscle groups in a variety of ways. They were made to take more heat before failing. In the wild, you died if your calves gave out when running away from Mr. Lion (not Luscious) and other tribes. They are made up of more slow-twitch muscle fibers and less fast-twitch muscle fibers. The abdominal muscles are another example of muscle types that are mainly composed of slow twitch muscle fibers.

This is why most people think that you should train them differently. You should, however, train them the same as other muscle groups. If you train them using higher reps (but lower weights) and at higher frequencies (more times a week than other muscle groups), you are appealing to their slow-twitch nature. By doing this, their slow twitch nature will be stimulated, instead of the few fast twitch fibers that have the most potential for massive size.

Instead, you want to increase the fast-twitch part of the muscle (therefore increasing the potential for increased size). You do this by appealing to the fast twitch part of the calf muscles. By training them according to their slow twitch nature, you are enforcing the fact that they don't grow like the other muscles. If your calves are trained like they are just as fast-twitched as other muscles, they will adapt and change.

Lower the rep range

Would you train your chest at 20 reps for 4 sets? Decrease your rep range and increase the intensity by raising the amount of weight that you put on them. This will appeal to their fast twitch fibers and you calves will grow bigger.

Work to failure

Your calves burn because they would rather work with oxygen energy instead of glycogen energy (lactic acid is released when we exercise at energetic rates higher than what oxygen can replenish). Work them to failure in the same way that you would push your bicep muscles. The burn is their way of telling you that they are uncomfortable. Let them get so uncomfortable that they are forced to change.

Rest times

If you are working on your calves every day, you are not working them hard enough per session (not enough to cause delayed onset muscle soreness). You might not be giving them enough rest to grow and improve for the next workout. You should try to grow the size of your calves in the same way that you do with chest and back muscles, even though they will give you more resistance when you try to do so. Your body prioritizes calf function over other muscles, since they are so important for you to escape danger. If they don't have enough rest, they would rather decrease size in order to be ready for the next time you need to run away. Just like how training chest muscles too often won't give it them the time that they need to recover, training the calf muscles too often won't give the fast twitch muscles enough time to recover and grow. 

For those who don't know the difference between fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers

Fast twitch muscle fibers are the fibers in the muscle that are used for short periods, but at higher intensities. They rely on glucose instead of oxygen for energy because oxygen will take too long to add up in the fiber for the amount of power that the muscle needs right now. They grow a lot bigger than slow twitch muscle fibers.

Slow twitch muscle fibers are the muscle fibers that are used at low intensities for longer periods of time. They reply on oxygen for energy. Since they don't need to store glycogen, they grow a lot smaller than fast twitch muscle fibers.

For a good example of the size potential differences between fast and slow twitch muscle fibers, think about the muscle differences between sprinters and marathon runners. Sprinters use fast twitch muscle fibers, since they need a lot of energy in a short space of time. Conversely, marathon runners rely on slow twitch muscles because they use less energy, but for longer periods of time. 

Are you working them hard enough?

If you train your chest to failure, why are you not training your calves to failure? Calves are harder to train to failure because you will initially have a larger portion of slow twitch muscle fibers. Their slow twitch nature is reinforced by being repetitively used in low-intensity, high endurance movements like walking and running - which we all do a lot of in life.

This means that when you do exercises that recruit fast twitch fibers like calve raises, your higher percentage of slow-twitch muscle fibers release more lactic acid as a response (you feel a burn in your calves before you reach failure). Every time you work your calves, work past the burn until they start to fail and you can't move the weight anymore. Once you are failing to execute full reps on them, you are reaching failure. In order to start increasing the fast twitch fibers in your calves, you need to get used to working your calves to failure every time you work on them. This will take some time to get used to, because your calves are naturally inclined to burn and make you stop BEFORE they fail as a survival mechanism. As a rule in survival, your calves are programmed to never fail, because reaching failure means that you would not be able to get away from dangers (like animals in the wild).

Once you have reached failure, try to do a few forced reps (with as much of the full rep movement as you can) because calve muscles are also programmed to recover as quickly as possible to ensure your natural mobility and survival.

From the beginning of your movement, make sure that you complete the full movement of each rep. Start with your heels as low as what feels naturally possible and lift them as high as you can. You should be struggling to get your heels as high up as possible with each rep, meaning that you almost pause for a second at the top of each movement by trying to reach the highest point possible. Pause here and let those puppies suffer.

Don't rush through your movements. This would be your natural instinct to recruit slow twitch fibers by turning it into a semi-cardio activity. Yes, doing this will burn. The burn is a good indication that you are challenging them more than what is naturally expected.

But just like when you work your other muscle groups; it is about increasing strength and size, not speed. The slower you go, the more it should burn. The more you work through the burn, the closer you get to failure. The more you cause your calves to fail, the more that they are forced to grow those fast twitch muscle fibers.

Use a lower rep range

You bench at a range of 8-12 reps, right? Then why are you doing calf raises in the 15-20 rep range? It is easier to use the fast twitch muscles in our chest but easier to use the slow twitch fibers on your calves. Using heavier weight and failing on lower reps just feels wrong on your calves because they are not designed to do so - but the whole point of this is to grow your calves past what they are naturally inclined to grow and have their size proportional to the rest of your muscle profile.

 To do this, put them on the same regimen as the rest of your body, whether if feels 'comfortable' or not. Make sure to reach a point of failure and do a few forced reps. Get used to using a lower rep range, and then alternate between rep ranges every few weeks to keep them on their toes (pun intended). Switching to high reps every now and then benefits muscle growth in all muscle types.

Muscle confusion

Your calves will get used to their exercises very quickly, because they are naturally essential to our primal survival. Do you need a good counter measure? Use calve exercises until they reach a plateau and then change the exercise to keep them growing. The change could be something as simple as swapping the standard standing calve raise machine for standing dumbbell raises on a step, or using a barbell on your shoulders, or doing raises on the flat ground, or changing rep ranges (and rest times in between sets). You should be changing your calf exercises more regularly then other muscle groups because of the fact that they adapt so quickly.

Different exercises for different goals

Different calf exercises will affect the calf muscles differently, so be sure to do a mixture of exercises to grow the different parts of the calf evenly.

Standing calve exercises (on a straightened knee) will stimulate the gastrocnemius more. This is the part of the calve that looks like a tennis ball at the back of your calve and gives the calve the shape and definition which looks very aesthetic.

Seated calve exercises (bent knee) help to widen your calves and add bulk, which is important to keep your calves in proportion with the rest of your body.

Lifting you toes while keeping your heels on the ground under a weight will increase the size and strength of the front part of the lower leg. These are the muscles that are the closest to your shin. You can do this by holding a dumbbell or kettlebell on your toes and balancing them with your hands. Lift your toes while balancing your heels on the ground. You can pivot your heels on a step for a greater range of motion.

The usual stuff

Your calves need nutrition just like all the other muscle groups

They require a good bulking diet to grow in size. Make sure that your diet includes enough natural food to keep your immune system strong. Supplements are a great way to make sure that you reach your daily macro nutrient targets. An energizing pre workout can increase calf performance and recovery.

Avoid catabolism

Make sure to follow these tips to make sure that your muscles are not breaking down and undoing all of your hard work.

Was this article helpful? Let us know in the comments below. STAY STRONG!

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How to break a plateau

Get back to progress.

If you follow the same workout program for too long, you will start to see diminishing results (fewer gains in muscle size and strength) over time as your body adapts to the stimulus placed on it. This is called homeostasis.

You want to grow as fast as possible, right? A gym program is only as good as the strength and size gains that it brings you. 

There might be nothing wrong with your program, but if you’re doing the same thing over and over, your body will have adapted to it and stop growing to meet the same old physical demands.

Signs that you've hit a plateau

1. No increase in physical performance for two weeks or longer
2. You aren’t losing fat or building muscle anymore: Your body weight isn't changing
3. Your gym regime seems more like a daily routine instead a challenge
4. The work seems easy but you still reach failure and can’t push past your previous bench marks

Change it up.

1. No increase in physical performance for two weeks or more

You aren’t increasing your reps and weights anymore. You're stuck at the same place that you were two weeks ago. 

It needs to be for two weeks in a row for you to be concerned, because all of us suffer from drops in performance for a day or two, every now and then. If your physical performance is not improving, your body won't either.

2. You aren’t losing fat or building extra muscle: Your body weight isn't changing

This is a classic plateau symptom. Your body has adapted to your exercise routine and has become comfortable. It does not feel the need to change because it feels safe with its physical expectations and output.

3. Your gym regime seems more like a daily routine, instead a challenge for your body to overcome

This is a psychological symptom of a plateau. If your workout no longer challenges you, and if you don't need that much determination to finish your workout, it might be good time for change. 

I personally change my workout plan whenever I feel like it is getting boring to avoid hitting a plateau. This will also encourage that lack of motivation, since you aren't feeling or seeing any physical changes as a result of your hard work anymore.

4. The work seems easy but you still reach failure and can’t push past your previous bench marks

This is a classic, common sign that you've hit a plateau. If you don't feel like your workout is taking a lot out of you, even though your body won't let you go any further, you've most probably hit a plateau. 

If the maximum volume, time, reps or weight that you can do stays the same; you've hit a plateau. If your maximum output decreases, you might have over trained.

Change is awesome.

Although over training and plateau’s can interlink, they are not the same thing. 

It is possible to over train without hitting a plateau - and it is possible to hit a plateau without over training.

A plateau leads to a lack of physical progress. Over training leads to reversed progress (you get weaker instead of stronger), joint pain or injury, and exercise-induced depression.

Signs of over training 

If you’ve overtrained then you need to remedy that instead of trying to break a plateau. Click here to heal from over training.

1. Insomnia or oversleeping

2. Lack of motivation

3. Extreme appetite changes (no appetite or extremely high appetite)

4. Moodiness, frustration, depression or emotional outbursts

5. Diminished physical performance

6. Muscle spasms and twitches

7. Low immune system

8. Constant, unquenchable thirst

Note that it is extremely unlikely to get any of these symptoms from a plateau (except for the emotional response for people who tie their self-worth to their exercise performance or physical progress).

Don't push your body too far.

1. Sleep: you suffer from insomnia or oversleeping

Ironically, struggling to get good sleep, sleeping too much or the constant desire for more sleep is all caused by over training. All three symptoms can arise from too much physical stress being placed on your body. 

For people who struggle to sleep, your body is under so much stress on the central nervous system that it can't calm down to recover properly. Read more about your central nervous system, how over training affects it and how to help it recover here. 

Sleeping for too long is common among others who are over-trained because your body needs more time to recover, but the stimulus placed on it is so high that it never catches up on needed recovery.

This will also explain lethargy, fatigue and the desire to sleep all the time. This is how to fall asleep ASAP.

Sleep problems are rarely caused by a plateau, though.

2. Lack of motivation (could also be present in a plateau, but not as much)

While a plateau can also sap out your motivation to further your goals, over training attacks your motivation more aggressively. 

Some people don't lose their motivation when they've hit a plateau. They just fall into the monogamous routine of doing the same thing over and over again - even when they don't see new results anymore. 

Over training is the most common culprit among athletes who begin to wonder why they are putting so much effort into their sports or exercise efforts in the first place. 

Many of them start to hate the sport that they do or dread the idea of practicing or exercising. Over training can cause depression, whereas hitting a plateau does not have as a big an impact on your emotional state.

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3. Diet: lack of appetite or constant cravings for high calorie/fast food

This is a very common sign of over training that isn't usually present in people who have hit a plateau. 

Since their bodies are bombarded with physical stress and they are frantically trying to recover, they might not be able to regulate their hunger (ghrelin) and satisfaction (leptin) hormones properly.

Again, different people will experience this in different ways. Some people will lose their appetite completely because their bodies are starting to break down from too much physical stress. 

Others crave high calorie and high fat foods because their bodies try to get as much energy from food as possible to compensate for drastic energy depletion. 

If you feel like this might refer to you, you need to recover from over training.

4. Moodiness

This is commonly seen in athletes who have over trained. Since the physical stress starts to crush the body from the inside out, the emotional state suffers as well. 

The brain does not have enough time to recover during sleep, since the body is taking as many resources as possible to recover physically. 

Also, mood-regulating hormones fall out of balance along with the rest of the body's normal mechanisms.

5. Halted or diminishing physical performance

When you train more than what your body can recover from, your physical performance will not increase but slowly start to decrease. 

The longer you stay in this overtrained state, the faster the rate at which physical performance declines. The longer you over train, the longer it will take to recover.

Too much of anything is unhealthy.

6. Muscle spasms and twitches

This is due to the central nervous system being over stressed. It starts to fall apart. Getting this from hitting a plateau is almost impossible.

7. Lowered immune system: Falling ill more easily and more frequently

Your immune system also takes a big hit when your body suffers from over training. If you are getting sick more often, you might have over trained and your body probably needs a good long break.

8. Constant, unquenchable thirst

This is another common symptom that is associated with over training. You might also feel nauseous often as well. In other cases, it also becomes harder to follow your normal daily routine (waking up, working, spending time with friends and family, bed time, etc.)

There 8 other possible reasons for extreme thirst from exercise.

If you have over trained (nearing or at the point of over exertion), a few rest days might be all that you need. Here are great ways to make your rest day the best recovery day that you've ever had.

Rest is good for you.

Now that we've distinguished the difference between over training and hitting a plateau, read on if you think that you have hit a plateau.

How to break a plateau

There are 8 ways to break a plateau. These methods can turn your workout routine back into the body-enhancing agent that it is meant to be.

1. Take a rest week

2. Change your diet

3. Use creatine

4. Change your exercise routine

5. Get more sleep

6. Increase sunlight exposure

7. Invite a friend to your workout

8. Mix in some music

Do this and prosper.

1. Take a rest week

A rest week might be all that your body needs. 

Your body adapts between workouts the best that it can for the time being, but there is also a long-term recovery that the body can use to maximize your progress. 

It is recommended to take a rest week off every 10 weeks that you spend hitting the iron so that your body can repair itself on a deeper level. 

Lack of long rest might be causing your plateau as the need for deep recovery starts to accumulate.

Avoiding this kind of long rest for too long and you risk eventual over training.

Benefits of a rest week

Have you ever noticed that your muscles look bigger when you've skipped a few days of exercise?

A rest week will allow your body to re-align muscle fibers, strengthen bones and joints and stock up on inter-muscular nutrients without the stress of quickly recovering as best it can before the next workout. 

Many people have larger muscle growth rates in their rest weeks than on normal training weeks! I am one of these people. 

People often return to the gym with increased strength, stamina and motivation. I recommend that you spend two days during this week at the gym - only stretching and relaxing in the sauna, which will help to maximize your body’s recovery.

It is hard to avoid the gym, road or studio when you've finally built up the dedication to make exercise a daily habit. Trust me when I say that the results (and mental benefits) are worth it. You will return with more motivation than ever.

Try it out at least once and see how you feel when you return. 

In the meantime, use this opportunity to clean your house, spend some extra time with the family or do something fun. 

A nice, relaxed walk can do wonders for you, both mentally and physically, during a rest week. The goal is not to stop moving completely. It is to allow the body to go into a deep state of recovery.

Not sure what do to with your extra time on rest days? Turn an awful rest week into an awesome recovery week. 

Here is the perfect rest guide if you're only doing it for a single day.

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2. Change your diet

You’ll be surprised how often too much or too little of something is the cause of that annoying plateau. 

Are you consuming enough calories to sustain muscle growth or energy output? Are your macro nutrients (protein, carbohydrate, fat, fruit and vegetables) in the right proportion and size according to your current physical needs? 

There are many ways to customize your diet.

1. Try a simple/fast-acting carbohydrate food straight after your workouts to replenish glycogen stores in your muscles quickly

Your body might need more energy to advance to the next level. Use MyFitnessPal to monitor whether you eat enough calories.

2. Increase protein and water intake (throughout your daily meal plan)

You need water to recover. Avoid beverages that cause dehydration. You can't build new cells or repair them without protein.

3. Increase the total daily calories you consume

If maximum muscle growth is your primary goal, try a diet high in calories for maximum muscle gain.

4. Switch out your protein sources (too much whey, too little fish?)

Try taking protein supplements according to the way the protein enters your body so that your body always has the protein that it needs to recover.

5. Add micro-nutrients like vitamins, minerals or oils

Are you eating enough fruit and vegetables to get important nutrients that your body uses for recovery? Do you need more minerals or electrolytes? You lose precious nutrients every time that you sweat.

6. Check your supplements: Are they really perfect or is it time for a change-up?

I've seen many cases where simply changing supplements increased muscle growth. Here are the supplement basics that everybody should know.

7. What else can you add or subtract to help your body get its growth back?

Is all the sugar in your diet slowing you down? Perhaps you eat too much junk food or too little carbohydrates for sufficient energy production.

Try a few of the points above until you find what works for you. I battled with a shoulder joint injury until I supplemented with fish oil daily.

Try different things to find what works.

3. Go on a creatine cycle or use a pre-workout

A good pre-workout or creatine cycle will give your body a boost to blast past that wall it can’t climb over. 

Start with a half dose for 2 weeks. Advance a full dose for 2 weeks. Go back to a half dose for the following 2 weeks. Keeping the same reps and weight numbers you did on the full dose when you do the second half dose. 

Sometimes our bodies just need a good push in the right direction to get them growing again.

Find the form of creatine that works best for you. Don't use creatine for too long without giving your body a break. You should always cycle creatine.

Try other types of supplements for muscle performance.

4. Change your exercise program

This is the most common way to overcome a plateau. I've listed it at the fourth best way to overcome a plateau (instead of the first) because you should automatically change your program at least every 2 months.

How long have you been following the program that you are currently on? Go back to the other points if you've hit a plateau and you've changed your program within the last 2 months. 

It’s time to change things up if you use the same exercise plan that you did 2 or more months ago (regardless of whether you hit a plateau or not).

Change the whole program completely (like from a standard 5-day split to a Push-Pull-Legs (PPL) program or vice versa) or change a few small things within the program if you want to keep at it a little longer. 

If you are ready for a real challenge (advanced weight lifters only), try the GARRY workout program. You can also check out our research on what the best workout split for muscle growth is.

There are many things you can change in your existing program to bring back your body’s awesome adaption mechanism.

Change equals growth.

1. Rep range

Many people cycle between a week of higher reps and a week of lower reps to keep the body in its prime adaption phase. Try using heavier weights with fewer reps or lighter weights with more reps.

Changing your rep range can have a great counter-plateau effect. High reps can also build muscle mass.

2. Rep times

Increase your TUT (total time under tension) with each rep. 

If your reps are usually under a second, take a full second to lift the weight, another second to hold it there and two seconds to lower the weight back to your resting position. 

The burn you feel in your muscles after doing this will definitely be an indication of greater stimulus being put on the muscle.

3. Number of sets

Change the number of sets to a higher or lower number. 

Would your muscles benefit from a few more sets per exercise? Are you doing too many sets for them to recover sufficiently before the next exercise session? 

4. Change the exercises

Switch rows with pull-ups. Replace cable presses with bench presses. Do hack squats instead of knee extensions.

This will help you to bust out of that plateau instantly.

5. Change your grip

Reverse the grip on all of your exercises to work the muscles from an angle that they are not used to. This will force them to adapt to a new form of stimuli.

I was shocked at the positive change that this simple hack brought to my own training regime when a friend recommended it to me.

6. Change your set format

Swap the standard 8, 8, 8 set for a pyramid style (15, 12, 10, 8, 6); drop set (6, 10, 12, 15, 20) or super-set (bench press and dips in the same set) to keep forcing your muscles to grow.

7. Intensity

Decrease the amount of time that you rest in between sets. 

Now muscles will need to get stronger and bigger to be able to cope with less recovery time they have before being recruited to work again. 

You can also increase your rest time, so that you have more strength with each set.

Discover which rest times work best between sets.

8. Exercise order

Change the order of exercises you do, so that different fibers in the muscles are recruited at different exercises. 

The bench press might be exhausting your triceps before you hit the dips. 

Now your triceps can do more on the dips and your chest will need to step it up to complete the bench press afterwards.

9. Rest between exercise sessions

You might rest too little in-between sessions that use the same muscles. They therefore aren’t at their full potential next time round. You might rest for too long. In this case, they are over-rested and have started shrinking back to normal before they are stimulated again.

Keep it fresh.

You don't have to implement all of these changes at once. Choose the ones that you are going to change and take it from there. 

The next time you feel a plateau coming on; you can change a few of the other elements. 

Sometimes, all it takes is one good change instead of many. 

If you really want to change everything up at once, go ahead. That's also okay.

5. Get more sleep

You might feel fine, but an extra hour or two of shut eye might be all that your body needs to recover to the max for its next workout session.

Most muscle growth happens when you sleep. It is important that we get enough of it and have the right nutrients in our bodies when we sleep so that our muscles can do what we want them to – grow!

This is how to fall asleep efficiently at night.

6. Get some sunshine

Expose your skin to the natural rays of the sun. This will increase your testosterone levels naturally through the vitamin D that our skin makes during contact with sunlight.

No wonder why our energy levels are lower and we're just plain lazy during winter!

There are many ways to increase your testosterone naturally.

Sun and sleep help with performance.

7. Add a friend to your workout session

Studies show that people perform better at physical exercises when their friends are with them. 

Some healthy competition between you and a bud will increase your muscular output. This might sound crazy, but who cares if you're getting stronger?

8. Mix some music into your workout

Music can increase physical performance during exercise.

Imagine beating your personal best just because the right track was playing!

My personal, top 3 methods to blast past a plateau

Everybody hits a plateau (although some plan ahead and make changes before they plateau). My personal, favorite ways to speed up muscle growth are:

1. Taking a rest week

I like the idea of getting a good, deep recovery every few weeks. I personally feel like it sets my last cycle’s gains well into my new cycle’s starting point. 

After a week of rest, my new size and strength gains become the new ‘starting stats' for me to improve on before my next rest week. 

I take a rest week every 8 weeks.

2. Going on a creatine cycle

I feel like creatine can be the jumper cables to a body that wants to start slow down. 

It is natural for our bodies to save energy whenever they can. They will only grow when it feels like it has to in order to survive. 

A helping hand from mister C never hurts.

3. Change of program

I generally do a rest week and then a creatine cycle once I've maxed out. 

I then create a total change in my exercise program (different exercises, reps, split and everything). 

I love the soreness in my muscles when starting a new program because I feel like the muscle is being forced to grow even bigger. 

If my muscles aren't suffering, why would they grow?

STAY STRONG!

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