by Eric Helms, Ph.D.

As a veteran close to your genetic potential, the big rocks should already be in your cup. So, you’re looking for any and every stone to turn over, no matter how small…but there may still be some large stones out there. Is it possible you missed some strategy or approach that will unlock further progress? Maybe. 

In this article I’ll first discuss the reality of being advanced and the challenge of identifying if you’re actually plateaued. Then, I’ll discuss the strategies I’ve seen advanced lifters use to make notable progress, in the realms of training, motivation, and nutrition. Unlike many MASS articles, this won’t be an in-depth look at research, but rather a collection of my experiences as a 20-year veteran lifter, and a 15-year veteran physique and strength sport coach. With that said, the concepts and advice will be supported by and grounded in scientific principles. 

One of the unfortunate takeaways from my last article (“Do advanced lifters need more volume?”) is that there is an inevitable slowing to the rate of progress you make as you approach your theoretical genetic potential. Many describe this as a ceiling or limit, but in my experience this analogy leads people to put too much focus on what they’ve achieved relative to some preconceived notion of what is possible for them, or people generally. The problem is that you can’t know what is possible for you, and you can’t know how your potential stacks up to your (possibly warped, thanks Instagram) view of what is possible generally. Focusing on an endpoint, the supposed limit of your potential, also takes the focus off the process of working towards that supposed limit, which is actually where you get a hint of how close you are to it. 

A more accurate (1) and informative way to think of your journey towards your hypothetical potential is that it is an asymptote. In simple terms, an asymptote is a point you get closer and closer to, but never quite reach (Figure 1). Why does this matter? Because it means you won’t abruptly hit your genetic limit. If you are making steady, measurable progress, and you hit a hard plateau all of a sudden that you can’t seem to overcome, it’s unlikely you’ve hit your limit, you’ve simply reached a temporary plateau. 

If you’re truly an advanced lifter, you’ve not only hit multiple plateaus, you’ve overcome them. Advanced lifters know from experience that progress isn’t a smooth curve, asymptotic or otherwise. While cliché, those “expectation versus reality” graphs (Figure 2) on the internet are pretty accurate from the position of a veteran lifter or coach who has worked with lifters through their full career. I’ve modified Figure 2 from typical graphs of this nature to emphasize how many not only expect a consistent rate of progress, rather than diminishing returns, but also consistent progress, rather than peaks and valleys. In reality, there are slumps where you don’t progress, and may even regress, but also spurts of faster progress. These slumps and spurts may be due to physiological, psychological, motivational, logistical or environmental reasons.   

With sufficient, consistent effort, solid recovery (sleep, nutrition, stress management, etc.), and sound training, you simply won’t plateau in your novice phase. You will only deal with plateaus as an intermediate and advanced lifter. Understanding where you are relative to your potential provides appropriate expectations for your rate of progress and thus, can help you identify if you’ve actually hit a plateau. In Table 1, I’ve provided rough, experience-based estimates of average (again, spurts will be faster, slumps will be slower, or even negative) rates of progress at different levels of training experience – remembering that you are only advanced if you’re close to your genetic ceiling, not just if you’ve been training a long time. 

Importantly, these rates of progress are based on what most lifters can feasibly measure: gym progress. I’ve delineated between the ability to increase load and reps, in both higher and lower rep ranges. This is because load increments, especially on single joint movements, typically require a larger increase in force production capacity than adding reps. Further, it is a smaller relative improvement to go from 20 to 21 reps with a given load (+5%) than it is to go from 5 to 6 reps with a given load (+20%). If you’re thinking “but Eric, my goal is hypertrophy not strength”, I still think you should focus on gym progress. Gym progress tells you whether or not overload is occurring, which if this overload continues over a long term period, it should be at least somewhat due to hypertrophy – although likely not in a proportional, or linear manner (2). 

Further, as I discuss in this MASS video, measuring body composition to assess progress as an advanced lifter is impractical for most. The way most people try to assess body composition change is more likely to lead you astray, chasing random error, than to be informative. I don’t recommend it unless you have regular access to a high quality skinfold and anthropometry assessor (I’d recommend ISAK, and to only look at sums of skinfolds, not derived body fat percentages, and girth measurements) or a research grade DXA scan you get done no more than every quarter. Even if you have access to one or the other, you must also ensure you’re assessed with the same equipment and assessor, at the same time of day and proximity to your last workout, and in the same nutritional and hydration state (3).  

Simply put, in most cases, you should just focus on your logbook. However, even this needs to be put in context. While your training status influences your potential rate of progress, a lot of other factors do too. We don’t all have the same potential or starting point, or the same environment for recovery. No studies clearly define how quickly novice, intermediate, or advanced lifters can or should progress. More so, these training status categories aren’t truly distinct. In reality, training status is a spectrum starting at the beginning of your lifting career, to your hypothetical, unknown, full potential. For more context, if you trained your upper body from high school into your early 20s, but only then started training legs, you might be intermediate or advanced in upper body strength and muscularity, but novice for lower body strength and muscularity. 

I point this out so you understand the classifications in Table 1 are just based on my experience, and are malleable with real world context. These approximate rates of average progress by training status are just that – approximations. But, they are still helpful. If you don’t have realistic expectations of progress, with all else equal, you can falsely think you’re plateaued, when you might just be moving from intermediate to advanced. With decent guidelines for expected rates of progress as an advanced lifter, you can determine when you’re plateaued. Figure 3 is a representation of the “inside of the box” approach I take to assessing and addressing plateaus if they are not due to injury, logistical, motivational, or known psychological reasons.

However, for many advanced lifters, in my experience, this process is not a guaranteed plateau breaker. For whatever reason, “outside of the box” approaches are often needed for advanced lifters to move forward. Thus, in the following sections I present progression strategies for advanced lifters under the broad umbrellas of training, nutrition, and motivation.

Training 

Choose Better Exercises

If your goal is hypertrophy, you might not realize that some bread and butter exercises bodybuilders use leave a lot to be desired. For example, while capped delts with well developed middle heads make your v-taper more impressive disproportionately to their size relative to other muscle groups, the common dumbbell lateral raise is a less than great option. As I’ve discussed, in video, exercises which place resistance on muscle at longer relative lengths produce more hypertrophy. Dumbbell lateral raises have the longest lever arm, and thus highest resistance, when your arm is straight out to the side – when the muscle is shortest. This can be somewhat mitigated with cable lateral raises, which ensure some resistance occurs at the start of the exercise when the muscle is at a longer length. However, most people perform cable lateral raises with the cable set at the bottom position (Figure 4, left panel). When performing cable exercises, think of the line of the cable the same way you think of the pull of gravity. Thus, the resistance is highest when your arm and the cable make a 90 degree angle. Therefore, set the cable at the same height as your hand at the start of a lateral raise (Figure 4, right panel) so the resistance is highest when the muscle is longest. 

As a side note, a pre-print of a study that compared the effect of dumbbell versus cable lateral raises on middle delt hypertrophy came out shortly after I wrote this article, during our internal peer review (4). Importantly, it found very similar hypertrophy between both conditions in a within-participant, 8-week study, where trained lifters performed dumbbell lateral raises for one arm, and cable raises for the other. Importantly, they did also perform other upper body exercises, but tried to avoid movements that would contribute to middle deltoid hypertrophy. Despite the rationale that a cable lateral raise would theoretically be better than a dumbbell lateral raise, the similar outcomes in both groups may be because the delts are not that elongated in a typical cable lateral raise (it’s also the first and only study on this topic, and sampling variance or the small overall changes might have masked any actual difference – future research will clarify). Thus, I’d recommend a starting position with your arm behind your body, with your hand about even with your opposite buttock, or in front of your body, with your hand about even with your opposite pocket, whichever is most comfortable. 

This approach can be applied to any cable exercise, but broadly, consider your exercises and assess if they are challenging or easy when the muscle is longest – at the start of the concentric. While most classic exercises for the pressing musculature, quads, glutes, and hamstrings are challenging in the initial phase of the concentric, middle, rear delt and back exercises often aren’t. Try swapping these exercises with those that provide more resistance at the initial phase of the concentric like the lateral raise shown in Figure 4, a rear delt raise equivalent, T-bar rows, variable resistance machines that emphasize the initial range of motion (if you have access to them), or consider the targeted use of lengthened partials as I discuss in this article. 

Finally, while many classic exercises do provide resistance in the initial concentric phase, like squats, RDLs, and free weight presses, they take a toll. As someone who has competed in powerlifting, strongman, weightlifting, and bodybuilding, often in the same year, and who’s coached close to 100 dual-sport strength/physique athletes, I can confirm that you can build an incredible physique with these classic, free weight, compound lifts. However, if you’ve been a barbell purist or “powerbuilder” your entire career, or if you have a strength background and now you’re trying to build mass with a strength oriented approach, you actually have access to a big rock you can turn over. Try changing most of your free weight lower body movements to machine variants; but make sure the exercises you choose are hard at the initial concentric phase. Swap barbell squats for hack squats, full range leg press, Smith machine squats or pendulum squats, do a few more leg extensions, and swap deadlifts, RDLs and good mornings for Smith machine variations, and do a few more leg curls. You might be surprised how much fresher you are with these swaps. The barbell lifts are awesome, but once you get strong, and especially if you’re trying to do a fair amount of volume, they can create quite the recovery sink. With these swaps you may be able to handle more volume, train closer to failure, and go into other sessions more recovered.

Specialize

You might be advanced. But are your hamstrings? How about your overhead press? Your arms? Many advanced lifters aren’t advanced everywhere. Are you a powerlifter who hates benching because you have long arms, but you love to deadlift? Have you fallen into the common pattern of focusing on your strengths and neglecting your weaknesses? Are you a bodybuilder who trends towards minimalism, who’s done little direct arm, calf, or single joint leg training? If so, try putting the rest of your lifts and/or muscle groups on a training maintenance dose and see what happens when you do a specialization cycle on these neglected body parts or lifts. As per the linked guide, make a gradual increase in volume rather than jumping in with a large increase. The goal is to bring up a weak point, not develop tendonitis. For strength-focused lifters, this option pairs well with “Do it More Often” which I’ll cover next.

Do it More Often

The most recent meta regression on volume and frequency by Pelland and colleagues indicates frequency has a negligible independent impact on hypertrophy (5). However, that isn’t true for strength. Strength is as much a skill as it is a physiological quality. For this reason, advanced lifters with strength goals should also view training as a practice schedule to be adjusted. 

Specifically, Pelland reported notable increases in strength gains moving from a weekly frequency of one to two, and then rates continue to increase, but with diminishing returns moving from three, to four, to five, to six days per week – the highest analyzed frequency (5). However, the most meaningful effect occurs moving from a weekly frequency of one to two, increasing average rates of strength gain from ~13 to ~17%. But, from this point, diminishing returns are notable. To get a similar increase in strength gain rates as you get going from a frequency of one to two times per week, requires going from two, to six times per week! So, the lowest hanging fruit, if you happen to perform a stubborn lift just once per week, is to do it twice and split your volume up. But, if you’re an advanced lifter, you’ve probably already done this. So, it might be worth seeing how much more you can increase frequency. If your schedule allows it, try taking your current volume on the lifts you’re trying to increase, and spread it out over as many days as possible. Total training time will only increase a bit, as you’ll need more warm ups per week, but each session will be shorter. For example, instead of doing 4 sets for a lift on Monday and Thursday, try doing 1-2 sets six days per week.  

Do Less

While increasing or decreasing your training dose is an “inside the box” strategy in the Figure 3 flowchart, doing less in some contexts is a unique strategy. If you’ve viewed more volume – so long as you could recover from it –  always as a good thing, it’s worth assessing if increasing the quantity of your training came at the cost of its quality. In endurance research, pain, discomfort, and fatigue impact pacing – the intensity or work rate at which endurance exercise is performed. Thus, strategies which reduce pain, discomfort, or exertion result in better performance (6). In my experience, there are parallels to high volume resistance training. I’ve seen lifters increase volume as they become advanced, and sometimes this helps them progress. However, sometimes the lifter looks up one day to realize they’ve adjusted their “pacing strategy.” Sets are now further from failure, they are less intentional in execution, and they cut back on rest periods, all to “get through” their volume. Remember, the relationship between higher volumes and hypertrophy exists with all else equal. Further, volume only predicts about a quarter of the variance in hypertrophy (5). Everything else predicts the rest. Thus, if higher volume comes at the cost of proximity to failure, execution quality, focus, sleep, motivation, or literally anything that contributes to your gains, the volume may not be worth it. For many, there’s a volume “sweet spot” where they can maintain high training quality. At best, going past it is less efficient: similar gains with higher rates of burn out, injury, or deloads. At worst, it results in poorer gains. 

Do More

On the other hand, don’t make the mistake of believing your volume sweet spot is a fixed quality, and that doing more than you currently can will forever result in non-functional overreaching. It is possible to improve your work capacity and ability to recover. If you’re making decent progress on low volume, but you’ve largely stuck to low volume, high intensity training for years, and haven’t adjusted volume, try pushing your sweet spot up a bit. The trick is to get all your ducks in a row outside of the gym first, before making a gradual increase. Make sure you’re sleeping well each night, if you have a 7 hour sleep opportunity window or less, try to increase it an hour or two (MASS article). If you can’t, make up for the shortfall, add an early afternoon 30-60 minute nap opportunity (MASS article). Evaluate your sedentary time: try to get your daily steps up to at least ~8k, keep sedentary time to <6 hours, and stand up, move around, or stretch every 30 minutes to break up sedentary periods (MASS article). Finally, make sure you’re not in a deficit (MASS article) and consuming enough protein (MASS article), fruits, and vegetables (MASS article). Once you’ve done all of that (which will help on its own) increase volume ~20% (MASS article). Give it a couple months to see if you adapt. Worst case, it was too much and you can just cut volume back down while enjoying the benefits of the new habits you implemented!

Nutrition 

Don’t Stay so Lean

Speaking of non-training habits, one nutrition-related issue that crops up in weight-class restricted strength athletes, physique athletes, and physique-oriented lifters is staying too lean. As I’ve previously explained, it’s hard to stay truly shredded, and your body will give you obvious pushback (MASS article), so this is quite rare. But, staying just a bit too lean is common. The 2023 IOC Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) update presented the concept of “adaptable low energy availability” (7), which Mike discusses in his article this month. This concept describes eating less energy than your body needs to optimally support performance and physiology, but only mildly so. You can still operate within normal physiology and performance ranges, and you’re often just below your body fat lower intervention point (8). However, despite being somewhat sustainable, this state seems to constrain how much muscle you can carry. For some, this is a worthwhile trade off. Maybe you worked hard to build the habits that keep you lean, and you like the look of carrying slightly less muscle but at a lower body fat, and you’re ok with the minor downsides. But in some cases, this is taken too far, and holds you back. If you can’t sleep through the night, have a suppressed libido, high food focus, and you’re plateaued in the gym, putting on a bit of body fat might unlock progress. Try putting yourself in a small surplus and see how it goes. You’ll be able to train harder, and while you’ll gain some body fat, you may get more muscular. When you do, you can always try to cut back down while keeping that new muscle (or you might decide not to!).

Don’t Stay so Bulky

To be clear, I have no judgement about what you should look like. However, if you want to look muscular, and body fat is your barrier, I have potentially helpful advice if you relate to the following: Do you feel like each time you try to put on muscle you just end up higher in body fat? Well, if you’re advanced, you’ve been in the game a while. Thus, we might have come up in the same era. The bulking approaches circa 2000’s and prior led many lifters astray. The emphasis on “eating big to get big” can’t be understated. GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) was promoted by popular strength coaches, articles promoted that men needed to be over 200lbs regardless of height or starting weight, and I remember an article that literally promoted dumping half a bottle of oil on an extra large pizza for dinner, after a whole day of gorging yourself. Advice for offseason, open division IFBB pro bodybuilders and untested, superheavyweight, equipped powerlifters was haphazardly promoted to anyone interested in building muscle. 

Thus, many lifters still engage in bulks with weight gain rates that are too fast. Others from this era became advanced without developing, shall we say, more nuanced nutrition habits. If you engage in old school bulking, try slowing it down (MASS article). Likewise, if you want to be a leaner, but don’t feel like you have the habits, knowledge, or agency, so you cover up these gaps by eating a lot, you’ve got a lot of stones to turn over! Each non-training strategy under “Do More” is on the table. Eating lots of fruits, vegetables and protein, sleeping well, and reducing sedentary time not only helps recovery, but helps you stay relatively lean (but not too lean). While you’re developing these habits, focus on the day-to-day process, not just the outcome of getting leaner. See it as a daily win when you engage in these habits, and it will lead to the desired outcome.

Give Bulks a Chance

Some advanced lifters never actually bulked. Information on bulking from my era was almost never directed at women. Likewise, many start their journey relatively high in body fat, and spend most of their initial years alternating between energy deficits and maintenance. I’ve met many who started lifting and just let their natural increase in hunger put them at an appropriate energy intake. After the initial newbie phase weight gain slowed, they shifted to “recomping” and “gaintaining” and never looked back. Similarly, I’ve met people who had their newbie gains while steadily losing body fat, who’ve also been recomping or gaintaining ever since. If either scenario describes your situation, you might be near your genetic potential…but you might not. Thus, if you’ve never intentionally gained weight, it’s worth trying. Gains might be waiting for you on the other side of that energy surplus.

Motivation

Reevaluate Your Why

If you’ve lifted for years, it eventually becomes a habit, like brushing your teeth. While consistent training is the most important thing you can do, this is a double edged sword because intentional training is a close second. Are you bringing the same passion and fire to training that you used to? If the answer is no, ask yourself “why not?” More importantly, ask yourself “why do I lift?” As Dr. Trexler discussed, a thoughtfully constructed, interconnected goal hierarchy of superordinate, intermediate, and subordinate goals can supercharge your efforts. Simply put, at the center of your goals, should be your why. It should be connected to who you want to be and how you want to see yourself. Maybe your current training is a bit disconnected from what you really want. Or, maybe you’re just not as connected to what you really want because you haven’t thought about it for a while. Ultimately, to do the hard work of progressing as an advanced lifter, you need a strong reason to do so. Remember, “motive” is central within the word “motivation” – a social media reel with a clip from a Rocky movie won’t cut it for the long haul.

Don’t Always Train at Home

If you’ve committed to training for a lifetime, it’s a smart investment to get a home gym. In many ways this can be a hack. You can buy exactly the equipment you want, listen to the music that you want, remove time wasted commuting, you don’t have to wait for equipment, you can wear what you want, grunt, sing, and train in exactly the way you’re most comfortable without worrying about judgement or distraction. However, a big part of human motivation is relatedness (MASS article). Being surrounded by other serious, hard working people striving towards similar goals can be positively infectious. The movie “Pumping Iron” inspired so many people because it portrayed the bodybuilding gym culture of the “golden era.” Watching the greats push each other makes you want to travel back in time to train in that same environment. To be clear, not everyone needs or wants this environment. Many thrive in home gyms. But if you find yourself taking a break mid-session to change out the laundry, or to help your kids with something, and getting back in the zone is a challenge, ask yourself, “does my environment ever short-circuit my focus?” Only you know the answer, but if it’s yes, even 1-2 weekly gym sessions in a great gym environment can be a game changer.

Get a Training Partner

On a similar note, a good training partner makes any gym the best possible environment. The scene from Pumping Iron of Arnold pushing Ed Corney during a set of squats captured this perfectly. Healthy competition between two friends with a shared goal brings out the best in both people. A brutal leg day with a training partner can be a passionate, exciting challenge, where you push yourself past reps you might not have done on your own, and it provides a strong sense of camaraderie. However, that same session done solo can feel brutally hard, tedious, and you might have to bargain with yourself rep-to-rep just to get it done. Good training partners are hard to come by. Hold onto them like gold if you find one. As the saying goes “iron sharpens iron.” 

Make a Playlist

You may not be able to curate the perfect gym environment, or find the perfect workout partner. But, you can curate the perfect playlist. I’ve taken the time to find 30-50 songs that put me at the right arousal level, inspire me to be my best, and remind me of my “why.” A good playlist can be almost as good as a good workout partner. Not only does it cultivate the mindset to do hard work, but when you’re training in unfamiliar conditions it gives a sense of “coming home.” Further, as covered by Dr. Zourdos, music can improve lifting performance (MASS article). Many people listen to podcasts, audio books, or music they like without much thought of performance. It’s worth considering what music you like, that also puts you in the appropriate state of arousal. Some get too hyped and need something a bit calmer, others, need the opposite. The right song may depend on the lift, rep range, or your current mood. Curating a good playlist with these things in mind results in surprisingly intense sessions for those who’ve never done so before and if you really want to be motivated, try a MASS Playlist.

Conclusion

Depending on your goals, history, and circumstances, there may be a lot of stones left to turn over that you may not have considered. While this article outlines just a few of them, there are others out there if you look hard enough. Making gains as an advanced lifter is by nature quite slow, but that doesn’t mean you have to resign yourself to it. The process of being experimental, trying new strategies, and problem solving can be quite enjoyable, as it makes the fruits of your labors that much more meaningful. 

References

1. Latella C, van den Hoek D, Wolf M, Androulakis-Korakakis P, Fisher JP, Steele J. Using Powerlifting Athletes to Determine Strength Adaptations Across Ages in Males and Females: A Longitudinal Growth Modelling Approach. Sports Med. 2024;54(3):753-774.
2. Taber CB, Vigotsky A, Nuckols G, Haun CT. Exercise-Induced Myofibrillar Hypertrophy is a Contributory Cause of Gains in Muscle Strength. Sports Med. 2019;49(7):993-997.
3. Kasper AM, Langan-Evans C, Hudson JF, et al. Come Back Skinfolds, All Is Forgiven: A Narrative Review of the Efficacy of Common Body Composition Methods in Applied Sports Practice. Nutrients. 2021;13(4):1075.
4. Larsen S, Wolf M, Schoenfeld BJ, Sandberg NØ, Fredriksen AB, Kristiansen BS, et al. Dumbbell versus cable lateral raises for lateral deltoid hypertrophy: an experimental study. SportRχiv. 2024 [Pre-print].
5. Pelland, J.C., Remmert, J.F., Robinson, Z.P., et al. The Resistance Training Dose-Response: Meta-Regressions Exploring the Effects of Weekly Volume and Frequency on Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Gain. SportRχiv, 2024. [Pre-print].
6. Mauger AR. Factors affecting the regulation of pacing: current perspectives. Open Access J Sports Med. 2014;5:209-214.
7. Mountjoy M, Ackerman KE, Bailey DM, et al. 2023 International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) consensus statement on Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs). Br J Sports Med. 2023 Sep;57(17):1073-1097. 
8. Speakman JR, Levitsky DA, Allison DB, et al. Set points, settling points and some alternative models: theoretical options to understand how genes and environments combine to regulate body adiposity. Dis Model Mech. 2011;4(6):733-745.