Shock Training - Or How to Bust Through a Training Plateau

If you have been training any length of time, chances are you have run into one of them like a brick wall-things are going well and then blam! Of course, what I am referring to is the dreaded training plateau. Some people get really disgusted when their gains come to a screeching halt-heck some people even quit training all together. If you are anything like me, stopping training is not an option, but I would not mind my gains picking up again.

So what to do? Simple! Break out a shock routine and blast your body back into gaining mode again. Shock training is not hard or complex; it just requires you to get a little crazy, not so much that you get hurt, but just a little crazy.

SHOCK ROUTINE EXAMPLES

Pick your favorite shoulder exercise (for me it is overhead dumbbell standing presses) take enough weight where you can get a good solid ten reps with it and then do one hundred reps with it. Yes, one hundred, it does not matter if it takes you ten sets, twenty, thirty, or more, just keep pounding out the reps until you get to one hundred. Sure your delts will be hurting the next day-but this kind of hurt is good-chances are you just shocked your body into new growth. Next up is a full body shock routine, if you normally do full body workouts you can skip this, take your full training split and instead of hitting your body in say three days, do all the work in one day. Sure you will have to set aside a longer period to train, like maybe a Saturday, however, full body routines are great, because due to the sheer amount of work you are doing they elicit a greater hormonal response from the body than normal.

Please be careful with the above though, if you feel the need to knock a few sets off of what you normally do per exercise, go for it. After all the idea behind shock training, is to shock your body into new growth, not shock it into an injury. The final example I will give you is one that I consider the hardest and should only be attempted by experienced lifters. You are only going to be doing only three exercises, back squats, dead lifts (or almost stiff legged dead lifts-please leave some bend in you knees to prevent hurting your lower back) and stiff arm barbell pull overs.

The catch is you are going to be doing each for twenty reps and all are to be done back to back with no rest in between. If the barbell pull overs hurt your shoulders try doing them with dumbbells and if that does not work, try doing one set of twenty reps of dumbbell over head presses. By the end of this shock workout-which really will not take very long-your whole body will be spent and you should be totally done.

CONCLUSION

As I stated above shock workouts are meant to shock your body out of a training plateau and are not meant to be used at every work out. Also, please remember the goal is to do something so out-of-the-ordinary that your body is not used to it, however, not so much that you get hurt, so please use common sense on these. Lastly-especially after the last shock training example-please remember to take in some good post workout nutrition like some whey protein isolate and a good quality waxy maize product.

GOOD TRAINING!