Climbing Higher than Possible
Another wrong theory. The plateau. The dreaded plateau, where you work and work and just don’t make any more progress. How very sad for you. Your body has adapted to some motion, some exercise, and you’re stuck, just can’t break through to a heavier weight, or continued fat-loss. So frustrating. How to fix it? Do more of the same? Try harder? Psych yourself up? Pray? Take a supplement? Have your spotter do more work, all the while saying that it’s “All you!”
Some of it, this limit, is psychological. The 200 benchpress, or 250, or 300. It’s not the weight, it’s the number. Frightening, somehow, and the unconscious mind just won’t let you do it. But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the actual limit to what your body can do with that motion. It’s a real barrier. Lots of theories, not all of which can be correct. How bothersome, all these wrong ideas filling people’s heads. Like the way to overcome the plateau limit.
“Muscle confusion”. Goodness. What a ridiculous concept. It’s just a descriptive term though, and of course there is no brain in the muscles to be confused. Still, it’s a silly phrase. Adaptation is a smarter one. The body has become efficient at executing a movement, say the benchpress, and it’s become more of a skill than a stimulus to muscle growth. This is a bad thing? Only if it’s size, and not effectiveness, that you’re after. Well, either size, or attaining a new goal -- the latter of which is an honorable thing. Even so, for all that adaptation may be an explanation, it’s not a solution to the problem.
We humbly propose another solution to the problem. It’s not that the muscles, the pecs and the triceps, have become as strong as they can be. Far from it. These muscles are not the limiting factor. The limit, the plateau, is in the so-called stabilizing muscles. These neglected "muscles" are not being challenged by that same old foolish motion, executed rep after rep, set after set, day after week after years and years and years. Mercy. Is there nothing else to do with your time, than these same few non-functional movements, mindlessly rehearsed like a pagan bowing before his idol?
It’s not a plateau, it’s a rut. It’s not the big muscles -- they’re getting plenty of work. It’s the auxiliary muscles, the stabilizers -- the unrecruited motor units; they're not getting much of a workout, not even in their supporting role. The big muscles have crowded the auxiliaries out, attempting as it were to take over their function. The trained motor units have reached their capacity, and can't grow any more disproportionately. Well? The benchpress may think it’s a lonewolf hero, but it’s just a player on a team. Everyone needs to play, on a team.
The way out of the rut is indeed to mix things up, do new movements -- give the rest of the body a chance to develop. It should be obvious. It’s only one of the many reasons that constantly varied functional movements must be the core of an effective training program. It’s not an eat-your-vegetables sort of thing, because eating them is somehow theoretically good for you. It’s because vegetables supply the most nutrients; in this same way, doing many varied movements trains the whole body, including the limiting factors, the weakest links, the stabilizers, a full range of motor units within a given muscle. This is what makes the difference between someone who only looks big and strong, and someone who is actually strong, no matter how big.
There's a lot of nonsense in the world. The relative proportion between foolish and wise is probably about the same when it comes to fitness. Perhaps more. Perhaps much more. No matter. We don't know what we don't know we don't know, if we think we know it. Sometimes however we get the chance to correct a wrong notion, or a wrong practice. This is a wonderful thing. We do, after all, live inside our bodies. That's a world where nonsense can make you weak, or unattractive, or old before your time or ill, or worse.
None of us can undo all of the nonsense, because hardly anything is perfect, and of that catagory, none of us fit. No tragedy. The tragedy is not that we aren't perfect, but that excellence is possible, while so much less is the norm. If you'd like to undo some of the decay, you can start with yourself.
Be excellent.
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