How to Deal with Stalling

Stalling sucks. It makes you feel like crap. However training is just like life, there are ups and downs. I should clarify in this context stalling means that you've deloaded and worked your way back up but see no improvement. The first solution for being stuck on a weight (after attempting it 3 times) is to deload. If you've already tried that, continue reading.

There are several possible reasons why you are stalling. Let's address the most likely reasons:

• Your technique sucks. This is the most common and most likely reason for beginners. I've written posts about proper technique already so check them out. Technique is important, because it ensures that the barbell travels through the most optimal path, and as the weight gets heavier and heavier, this becomes more and more important.
• You're mentally not ready. Training strengthens your body as well as your mind. When going for a PR you need to be physically and mentally ready for it. You need to believe that you can successfully lift the weight for however many reps you're going for. Do you keep getting stuck at the same weight? Did failing once make you nervous to attempt the weight again the next session? Visualize yourself lifting the weight successfully in your head beforehand, then make that a reality. You are stronger than you think. If Olympic weightlifters and powerlifters take the time to get mentally prepared, so should you.
  

• You cannot recover in time. This mainly applies to the squat (this will eventually happen to the bench press and press too), since on Starting Strength or Stronglifts 5x5 you're squatting 3 times a week. This should be the first lift to plateau since you've been increasing the weight on this exercise the quickest. Increasing the weight every session 3 times a week isn't going to work forever. Eventually your body cannot recover from the stress applied to it from say Monday's session in time to be fully recovered for Wednesday's session. There are a few options at this point:

1. If you're doing 5x5 for squats every session, drop the volume down to 3x5. You're squatting three times a week, so 3x5 three times a week is still enough volume.
2. Add in a light squat day. So you can do 5x5 on Monday, then perhaps 2x5 at 80% of Monday's weight on Wednesday, and then 5x5 on Friday but adding 2.5kg to Monday's weight, provided you got all the reps successfully. Eventually this will stop working and you'll need weekly programming for the squat, I'll write up another post on this to focus on this in more detail.

Don't get the wrong idea, the two suggestions I've given above are not because you're overtraining and it's time to squat heavy less frequently. It's because your body just cannot recover from the volume in time. Olympic lifters squat heavy almost everyday but they slowly build up to that level, and they don't do 5x5; they do singles, doubles and triples. Different rep ranges stress your body in different ways.

• You're not training enough. When you see how Starting Strength or Stronglifts 5x5 are laid out, there's session A and session B in both cases. It's probably tempting to just train 2 times a week then (I would know I did it too). This may not be too much of an issue for squats and deadlifts, but the bench press and press would suffer in my opinion. Based on my own experiences, the bench press and press are pretty high maintenance. They need high enough volume otherwise they will not budge. When you follow the program as laid out, in a fortnight the bench press and press would each be trained 3 times. If you only train 2 times a week, the bench press and press would only be trained 2 times each in a fortnight. I think this is not enough for beginners. Remember the point of training is to adapt to higher workloads.
• You're not microloading on the upper body lifts. Since smaller muscle groups are primarily involved in the upper body lifts compared to the lower body lifts, it makes sense that the upper body lifts will stall easier. Taking 2.5kg jumps will eventually become too much. The solution? Take smaller jumps. You do this with fractional plates, pictured below. They weigh 0.5kg, so you can increase the weight on the bar by 1kg. Use these in between each 2.5kg increase of weight, and you'll reduce the chances of stalling; e.g 60kg, 61kg, 62.5kg, 63.5kg, 65kg, 66kg, 67.5kg, 68.5kg, 70kg. Fractional plates can be bought online and they're pretty cheap.
  

Get a pair of fractional plates

• You're not recovering properly. This is different to the previous point about recovery. Unlike the above point, this aspect of recovery is in your control. I'm talking about eating and sleeping. If you're not doing enough of both, your training will suffer. If you're bodyweight isn't steadily climbing, or you're not noticing any improvement in your musculature you need to eat more. Also make sure you're getting around 8 hours of sleep each night.

Well that's pretty much all I can think of, hopefully from this post you've identified possible reasons as to why you're stalling and now know how to address them.