Boost Your Strength and Bust Through Plateaus

Have you been stuck on your current lifts?

Has your bench press, squat, or deadlift stopped improving?

Is this keeping you from building lean muscle mass?

If so, here's something you might want to try. It's called ladders. Ladders aren't some new fancy gimmick. They've been around awhile. But, sadly, very few people know about them and you never see them used in gyms today.

Ladders are simply a form of wave loading (which you can do with your poundages as well and we'll talk about that in a future article).

Each set your reps increase, starting with one, then cycle back again to one, all with the same weight.

Let's use an example. Say you're using 175 on the bench press. You'd perform 1 rep, rest, then 2 reps, rest, then 3 reps, then rest and repeat for three to five cycles.

So it might look like this:

175 x 1
175 x 2
175 x 3
175 x 1
175 x 2
175 x 3
175 x 1
175 x 2
175 x 3

But strength and muscle building are all about progressive overload, right? Once you have this down cold, add a fourth cycle and eventually a fifth cycle.

Once you've achieved five cycles keep it at five but add a fourth rep so it becomes...

175 x 1
175 x 2
175 x 3
175 x 4

and repeat for five cycles. Now, it may take you a number of workouts. At first you may only get 4 reps on the first cycle. But build up until you've got five cycles of 1, 2, 3, 4.

The next step is to add a five rep set. Again, you may only get five on the first cycle but eventually you'll want five cycles of...

175 x 1
175 x 2
175 x 3
175 x 4
175 x 5

Keep in mind, these sets are not being taken to failure.

Yes, I'm a big believer in high intensity weight training but in this case we're looking to build up our strength so we can go back to more intense training with a big boost in training poundages and focus on adding muscle mass.

You can focus on building strength like this with one exercise without changing the rest of your routine. I recommend it be the only exercise you do for that body part.

A good way to implement strength training workouts like this is to perform it three days per week using the light, medium heavy system.

Monday - Easy (3 ladders)
Wednesday - Medium (4 ladders)
Friday - Hard (5 ladders)

So if you're up to five ladders on Friday you'd do three on Monday and four on Wednesday.

Try picking a big, compound movement you want to improve upon and give this routine some serious effort for 8 to 12 weeks. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the results.