The Dreaded Forever Intermediate Plateau — Transcript

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1. 0:00You're lifting weights at least three times per week,
2. 0:02you're getting your protein in,
3. 0:03but if you look at your photos from last year, you kind of just look the same.
4. 0:08What gives?
5. 0:09You might be in the dreaded intermediate plateau.
6. 0:13During the newbie gains phase, if you just start lifting weights and you
7. 0:17start consuming a high protein diet, most people just make reliably good gains.
8. 0:22But these wear off.
9. 0:24As you get more advanced your gains start plateauing.
10. 0:27There are diminishing returns to further training experience.
11. 0:30Welcome to the intermediate stage.
12. 0:32In this video, I'm going to share with you the top six reasons why people get stuck
13. 0:37in the intermediate stage and they fail to take their physique to the next level.
14. 0:40My experience is based on over 15 years of coaching experience, over 10 years
15. 0:45of teaching others coaches how to become better coaches in my PT certification,
16. 0:49and have personally competed in physique sports and done fitness modeling.
17. 0:53One of the most underrated reasons is your lifestyle.
18. 0:56Specifically, your sleep.
19. 0:58Stress is also highly important,
20. 0:59but sleep is more under your control and we have more direct research showing
21. 1:03that sleep quality and sleep duration have a huge effect on your gains.
22. 1:08For example, in one study, sleeping 5 instead of 7.5 hours per day
23. 1:13decreased fat loss from 1.4 to 0.6 kg, and it increased
24. 1:18fat free mass loss from 1.6 to 2.4 kg.
25. 1:22That is an over 50% decrease in fat loss and over
26. 1:2650% increase in muscle loss, or at least fat free mass loss.
27. 1:31Multiple other studies have found similar results,
28. 1:33although the exact magnitudes are contested, it is very clear
29. 1:37that sleep has a huge effect on your gains.
30. 1:40Most people think of sleep as something
31. 1:42kind of down the line with supplements, where you have your training
32. 1:45and your nutrition, and these are the really important things,
33. 1:47and sleep is kind of important, but not really.
34. 1:50But in reality, sleep should be up there
35. 1:52with training and nutrition as the pillars of your long term results.
36. 1:56The second major pitfall is cutting to aggressively.
37. 1:59Many lifters want to just get the cut over with as soon as possible,
38. 2:02and end up being in a very significant energy deficit.
39. 2:05Research is very clear that there is an optimum energy deficit,
40. 2:09beyond which the risk of muscle loss is too large, and fat loss
41. 2:12actually doesn't even increase that much because of the additional muscle loss.
42. 2:16For example, one study on elite athletes found that with a 0.7%
43. 2:20weight loss rate per week,
44. 2:21they actually managed to achieve a little bit of positive body
45. 2:24recomposition, and they had better strength gains than with a 1% weight
46. 2:28loss rate, when they actually lost a little bit of muscle mass along with the fat,
47. 2:32resulting in a very similar body fat percentage change in the two groups,
48. 2:35despite significantly more work, less muscle growth, and less strength
49. 2:39gains in the group with the higher energy deficit.
50. 2:43Multiple other studies agree that especially as you get leaner
51. 2:45and more advanced, you need to be conservative with the energy deficit.
52. 2:49The more body
53. 2:50fat you have, the more aggressive you can be with your energy deficit.
54. 2:53But if you have a lot of muscle and very little fat,
55. 2:56the risk of muscle loss when you’re in energy deficit is very large.
56. 2:59So you need to be very careful.
57. 3:01However, you also don't want to spend
58. 3:02your whole life close to a maintenance energy intake.
59. 3:05Reason number three is not bulking.
60. 3:08I commonly see people that finally managed to get
61. 3:11lean with a decent amount of muscle mass without looking anorexic,
62. 3:14and then they kind of go into perma-cutting mode because they are too afraid
63. 3:18to gain any body fat, and therefore they never really end up bulking anymore.
64. 3:23This is also a mistake I personally made, and it really costs you long term gains.
65. 3:27When you get to a certain level of advancement,
66. 3:29you're not going to gain an
67. 3:31appreciable amount of muscle mass anymore without being in energy deficit.
68. 3:35Research is very clear that energy deficiency impairs gains in muscle mass.
69. 3:39You might argue that, since research is clear
70. 3:41that you should be doing a lean bulk with a very modest energy
71. 3:44surplus, and research is also very clear that you don't want
72. 3:46an excessive energy deficit while you're cutting,
73. 3:48it's therefore best to spend basically all of your time at energy maintenance.
74. 3:52However, a recent study actually looked at the idea of “gaintaining”
75. 3:55or “maingaining”, and it concluded that it's more efficient to spend your time actually
76. 4:00cutting and probably bulking in this time that you save with the faster cut.
77. 4:04Specifically, the had one group attempt to be
78. 4:06at energy maintenance, and the other group attempted to be in a 10% energy deficit.
79. 4:10After ten weeks, the “maingaining” group did actually successfully recomp
80. 4:14with one kilo of additional lean body mass and 1.4 kg of fat loss.
81. 4:18However, the 10% cutting group lost about twice as much fat: 2.9 kg,
82. 4:24while gaining basically the same amount of lean body mass: one kg.
83. 4:27There were also no significant differences between the groups in their gains
84. 4:30in bench press and squat 1 rep max strength, and this was in lifters
85. 4:34that had an average body fat percentage around 25%.
86. 4:37Well, the sample included some women,
87. 4:39this is still relatively high, and if you get more
88. 4:42advanced, you're not going to lose an appreciable amount of body fat anymore
89. 4:46when you're at energy maintenance. You stop recomping.
90. 4:49Positive body recomposition,
91. 4:50gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time is possible, but it's mostly
92. 4:54restricted to novices and intermediates who know what they are doing.
93. 4:57In advanced lifters, it gets increasingly difficult and you cannot count on it.
94. 5:02Overall, it's very clear
95. 5:03that your exact energy balance is very important to optimize.
96. 5:07Energy balance and training volume, measured as sets per week per muscle
97. 5:11group, are probably the two variables that are the most important to optimize.
98. 5:16These are such important variables that it's not just a matter of progressing
99. 5:20a little bit faster
100. 5:21when you do the optimization, it can actually make or break the program.
101. 5:25If you're interested in having these variables
102. 5:27optimized for you based on your stats, check out my MH Physique App.
103. 5:30The link is in the description to get a 2 week free trial.
104. 5:34Pitfall number four is ego lifting.
105. 5:36It's very tempting to just force yourself to lift a little bit more weight
106. 5:41or do an extra rep, and in doing so, reduce your range of motion
107. 5:45just a little bit, or involve some extra momentum from other body parts.
108. 5:49What started off being a very strict biceps curl has become kind of a
109. 5:53hip swing, shoulder extension, biceps exercise with shortened range of motion.
110. 5:58Worse technique plus shortened range of motion
111. 6:01is very, very, very bad for your gains.
112. 6:04Research is very clear that shortened range of motion,
113. 6:07especially when you are not doing the fully lengthened part of the movement
114. 6:10when the muscle is at longest muscle lengths, is bad for your gains,
115. 6:14and the magnitudes of effects can be very, very large.
116. 6:16So the combination of bad technique and bad range of motion is really pivotal.
117. 6:23This is basically consensus in exercise science right now,
118. 6:25so I'm not even going to bother referencing this,
119. 6:27but what I do in practice with my clients is adopt a zero tolerance policy
120. 6:32for technique.
121. 6:34It really helps to always focus on technique
122. 6:37and range of motion first and foremost, and see that as a hard limit.
123. 6:40If you cannot do more reps with the same technique, then you failed.
124. 6:45That was failure, and you don't count any reps where your range of motion
125. 6:48shortened or your technique measurably suffered.
126. 6:52Ego lifting also exacerbates
127. 6:53problem number five, which is a lack of systematic progressive overload.
128. 6:57It can be very tempting to fake
129. 6:59your own progress with ego lifting, but it's not actual progressive overload.
130. 7:03Progressive overload is not the cause of your gains,
131. 7:05you can't just add more sets or do more reps with worse technique,
132. 7:08progressive overload is the measure of your gains.
133. 7:12The fact that with the same technique and the same volume,
134. 7:15you can now do an additional rep or lift a little bit more weight than last time
135. 7:19is the proof that your last workouts were effective.
136. 7:22If you don't have progressive overload in your program, where you are getting
137. 7:26stronger, measured as additional repetitions
138. 7:28or increases in load, anything else I would not deem reliable enough,
139. 7:31then you don't know if you are progressing or not.
140. 7:33If you don't know if you're progressing or not,
141. 7:35and which exercises and body parts specifically are progressing or not,
142. 7:39then you don't know how to update your training program.
143. 7:42Your training program
144. 7:43update should always logically follow from your actual results.
145. 7:47Results drive everything in a logical, evidence based program.
146. 7:51Another very important practical reason to implement progressive
147. 7:54overload and always strive
148. 7:55to improve your last performance from the last time you did an exercise
149. 7:59is that you have clear performance targets, and most people don't
150. 8:02give it 100% effort if they don't have these targets.
151. 8:06If you know you have to get that 9th rep instead of 8, you're
152. 8:09probably going to get it because you are going to try really hard.
153. 8:12But if you don't have that clear target,
154. 8:14most people stay a little bit too much in their comfort zone,
155. 8:17and if you do that every single time, it can make or break the program.
156. 8:21Getting that one additional rep for intermediate lifters is often
157. 8:25really all that you're going to get in that workout.
158. 8:27If you're never getting that additional rep, you get stuck.
159. 8:30And that's how you get the forever intermediate plateau.
160. 8:33To get from the intermediate
161. 8:34to the advanced level, you need a systematic, structured
162. 8:38training program that has forms of auto regulation, such as reactive deloads.
163. 8:43As you get to the advanced level, you probably also need
164. 8:45some form of periodization, like daily undulating periodization.
165. 8:48In practice, this simply means that you can alternate
166. 8:50between different rep targets for the same exercise.
167. 8:53A very simple way to implement this in practice is just to have different
168. 8:56rep targets for the same exercise, rather than trying to keep grinding away
169. 9:00at the same rep target,
170. 9:01because you're not going to be able to progress linearly forever.
171. 9:04In fact,
172. 9:05you could argue that
173. 9:05the definition of being advanced is that linear, simple progress no longer works.
174. 9:10If you want such a structured training plan based on my methods,
175. 9:12you can check out the MH physique app in the link in the description.
176. 9:15Regardless of whether you’re using my app,
177. 9:17if you have a successful training program that is working and causing measurable
178. 9:20progressive overload over time, then for God's sake stick to it and milk it.
179. 9:25I see so many people switch a program
180. 9:27because they have some idea of muscle confusion, which I call
181. 9:29muscle confusion-confusion, the idea that you have to avoid adaptation
182. 9:34and confuse the muscle to do it.
183. 9:36It makes no sense at all,
184. 9:37because the whole goal of training is to cause adaptation.
185. 9:40You impose a systematic stress on the muscle, it adapts to that
186. 9:43stress, and the adaptation is the gains that we are seeking.
187. 9:47It is the muscle growth and the strength gains.
188. 9:49So when your program is working, then for God's sake, don't change it.
189. 9:52Stick to it and ride out that nice progress.
190. 9:56When you switch to a new training plan you lose your progression benchmarks.
191. 10:00Your training history is now gone, or at least it's not perfectly 1 to 1 comparable
192. 10:04to your current data, so you no longer know if you are progressing or not.
193. 10:09The problem is that, especially with new exercises, most of the gains
194. 10:13in strength in the first few weeks of a program are neural.
195. 10:16Most of these adaptations are just improved
196. 10:18neural coordination, not necessarily evidence of muscle growth.
197. 10:22So if you keep switching up the program every four weeks, you never know
198. 10:26if all those gains were just neural, just you becoming familiar
199. 10:29with the exercises, the exercise order, the structure, etc.
200. 10:32or if you're actually building long term muscle mass.
201. 10:35The strongest evidence in practice, if you don't have access to a dexa scan
202. 10:39every week, which most people don't, is to have consistent long
203. 10:44term strength progress on familiar exercises.
204. 10:48You cannot fake 30% increases in your squat,
205. 10:51your bench press, and other big compound lifts
206. 10:53if those are familiar exercises to you. This is almost certainly going to coincide
207. 10:58with muscle growth, especially if your body composition data are also positive.
208. 11:03Big picture: most people get stuck after the newbie gains
209. 11:06because during the newbie gains phase, as long as they have a high protein diet
210. 11:09and they start strength training, they are going to get some gains.
211. 11:12And it doesn't matter what specifically they do, what their training program
212. 11:15is exactly, or how their exact diet is set up.
213. 11:19As you get to the intermediate stage and you want to get to the advanced stage
214. 11:22to take your physique to the next level, you have to become more structured.
215. 11:26You need a structured training plan and good structured diet
216. 11:29so that you can have an exact training volume,
217. 11:31you can implement progressive overload, and you can monitor your energy
218. 11:34deficit and surplus and monitor your body composition change to make sure
219. 11:38that your strength and body composition
220. 11:40are actually progressing in the right direction.
221. 11:42Your progress should guide
222. 11:43how you update the training and the nutrition from that point onward.
223. 11:47Again, you can do this in my app, or you can keep watching more of my videos
224. 11:50to help you design optimized training programs.
225. 11:52I hope this helps you take your physique to the next level and see you next time.