Why Am I Not Getting Stronger?

If you feel stuck in your training and your strength just isn't moving, this episode is for you. Heather and Katie break down the most common reasons people hit strength plateaus and what to actually do about it. Spoiler: it's probably not your genetics.

What We Cover

Too much, too soon
Doing too much cardio, too much volume, or going all out six days a week without proper fueling and recovery are the most common traps, especially when people return to training motivated. Working out is a stressor. Add in life stress, poor sleep, and under-eating, and your bucket overflows fast.

You can't lose fat and get stronger at the same time (unless you're a beginner)
Chasing two goals simultaneously is physiologically impossible for intermediate lifters. Use strength as your tracking metric: if you're in a deficit and maintaining strength, you're doing it right. If your strength is tanking, your deficit is probably too aggressive.

Your program might just suck
No progressive overload. Too many isolation movements and machines. Not enough compound lifts. Changing your program too often or not often enough. These all stall progress. There's a sweet spot between doing the same movements long enough to adapt and progressing them in a way that actually makes sense.

Rest between sets matters
Skipping rest between sets turns strength training into cardio. You need a couple of minutes to regenerate ATP and actually perform on your next set. Junk volume + no rest = wasted time.

Sleep
Less than six hours and you're already fighting an uphill battle. Seven is the floor. Sleep is non-negotiable.

Protein and fiber
Stop overcomplicating nutrition. Focus on protein and fiber, and you'll naturally crowd out the junk. It's hard to eat like crap when you're hitting those two targets consistently.

Form and range of motion
Quarter squats, half reps, and cutting range of motion might let you load more plates, but it won't transfer to real life. You only get strong in the range of motion you train. Drop the weight, hit depth, and build real strength.

You probably haven't hit your genetic limit
If your bench is stuck at 135, it's almost certainly your program, your form, or your recovery and not your ceiling. Most people have barely scratched the surface.

Hire a coach — even just once a month
You may not need full-time personal training. Form-check in sessions can make a massive difference. Have them audit your squat, deadlift, overhead press, bench, and row. Full-body workout + full audit in one session.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to the Stronger Than Your Boyfriend Podcast. Podcast for anyone into fitness. Especially for all you weak Chads out there. We are Heather and Katie, owners of Bar Pet Fitness, here to help you sift through the bullshit and toxic misinformation that permeates the fitness industry. Today, we're answering the question, why am I not getting stronger? Why are you not? Yes. Why are you not? Why are you not? So there's a lot of times that we might hit a plateau in our training. Um, sometimes it's aesthetic reasons, sometimes it's strength reasons. Um, we're gonna focus on strength today, but I would even say a lot of these answers could happen for any plateau goal, right, that you're seeing. Um, this would be where I would start and why where we would point you if you just feel stuck.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yeah. I think that assessing your strength is always the most important thing, no matter if building strength is your goal, obviously, but building muscle, even your strength, and not necessarily getting stronger, stronger, but if you're trying to lean out a little bit, assessing your strength currently is a good indicator of how your program is programming is going, how your recovery is, etc. I think it's just a metric that you should always be tracking no matter what. Because, you know, if your strength is significantly going down, well, there's probably a bigger issue, and it's probably due to overtraining.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

So, but okay, we're consistent metric, though. I want to point that out because we do have a pretty recently we did a podcast. I remember talking about this where you have to give yourself some time, especially if you have a menstrual cycle. Your strength is going to go down sometimes and then it'll come back up, right? So this is a consistent measurement of strength continuing to go down. That's that's your sign.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah, exactly. So I always, I mean, no matter what, I'm always, you know, for my personal clients, where that's my job to track their their progress, I'm always keeping in mind their strength. So I think always keep it in mind. But again, if it's your if it's your main goal, whether you're trying to build muscle lean out, track it because if you track it more often, you'll probably start to prioritize it more, which obviously you know that we like better than prioritizing weight loss. So and then we've also talked about the stronger you are, the better you look. So, anywho, okay, what are some signs? We're gonna go over some signs. You know, they're not necessarily signs. You obviously know if you're not getting stronger or not, but what is going on? And there could be many different reasons. There could just be one of these reasons, or could they could be all of them. So the first thing that I see with people is that they're doing too much. They're either doing too much outside of their strength training, as in they're doing too much cardio, or they're doing too much strength training in general and they're just adding in a bunch of junk volume. And if you don't know what junk volume is, we have a whole episode on it, but essentially it's just more volume than needed to progress and just to maybe, I don't know, feel a pump or whatever. And when people get motivated, they tend to just throw everything, health and fitness, at themselves without properly fueling and recovering. This is more so when someone kind of gets back into training or they want to start training, they're just like, yeah, let's go. Balls to the wall, six days a week, cardio, you know, cut my calories, etc. So that could be uh the a realm that you're doing too much in as well. So you're just doing all the things instead of just trying to change one of the things.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

So that's again common with people getting back into training. So before starting out, a lot of people starting out have the same issue.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Yeah, they just go two other ones.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Even if you're eating enough, you if you're doing too much volume, too much intensity, too much cardio, etc., it will end up causing chronic fatigue. And you will overtrain. It might not be really intense overtraining, but you will. And the reason why I see this happen is, you know, you see the people who are doing all the things, strength training a lot, doing the cardio, and they're fine. But those people don't have a lot of stress in their life, and or they're probably like bodybuilders. So they have the time, the time to sleep, the time to recover. People don't take into account other stressors in life and add that to the stress bucket, which makes it harder to recover if you're working out and training almost every single day andor doing too much volume intensity because working out is a stress. It albeit it's a good stress, it still is a stress. So if you're doing too much and you have other stressors, your bucket will overflow and you'll just be chronically fatigued. And then you will definitely not get stronger. Also, here's a big one. People kind of just expect to lose weight/slash body fat and get stronger simultaneously. It doesn't work that way unless you're be a beginner at strength training. And that's why I still want to recommend to track strength if you are an intermediate lifter, at least, because you have enough time under your belt to get past those newbie gains, those beginner gains, which are awesome to start, but you will lose those eventually because your brain will have figured out what's going on. But if you're getting significantly weaker and you're in a calorie deficit, you're probably in too big of a deficit. So that's why I still like to keep strength in mind. But you know, I I wouldn't if you're if you're not feeling good, that's a I mean, there's no way you're gonna get stronger. So there's that. But yes, you have to eat less to lose weight and maintain and or eat more to get stronger. You can't do two things at once. Yeah, it's physiologically impossible. So you have to pick one, but still use strength as a metric to track your progress. Because if you're in a deficit and you're maintaining your strength, that's good. Yeah. And you're doing it right. So yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. And then yeah. No, I was gonna say one more, kind of along those lines, as far as nutrition goes, is if you're not eating enough, again, and maybe not necessarily you're not super into tracking and you don't know if you're in a deficit, you'll know because it's a surefire recipe for a hard strength plateau. Like you're stuck in that workout recovery trap and you have maybe just enough calories to work out and survive slash recover, not to adapt and grow and get stronger. So that was my last point on that. Yeah. You should track your food.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Other reasons that you might be in a plateau or not get stronger is you're not doing the right movements. You might be going to the gym and doing, you know, chest and biceps. You might be did you say leg press?

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Yeah, leg press for leg gains.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Yeah, yeah. You might be doing a lot of isolation movements or using a lot of maybe machines or things like that, instead of doing the compound lifts that actually show a lot more uh strength progress and help the whole body in a very functional way. Um, so maybe you just need to revisit the exercises you're doing, or maybe your program in general just sucks. Maybe it's not doing progressive overload, maybe there aren't good variations of the foundational movement patterns, maybe you're doing the same thing for too long, maybe you're doing the same thing for too little. There's a lot of things that could screw up your progress here. And that's why working with a coach is the the easiest way to figure this out. But also if you're on your own, just understand that there's always this sweet spot in training. There's a sweet spot between your training intensity and your recovery, right? And there's a sweet spot between doing the same movements long enough to show adaptation and actually get stronger at them, and changing them up at a rate that makes sense and in a way that makes sense. So hitting variations that actually do progress you versus changing your program every eight weeks or four weeks or whatever it is you're doing is great, but there should be a progression in there, right? Exactly. Obviously, changing it every week is not great. So do the movements long enough, then progress them in a way that makes sense depending on what your goals are.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Yes, yes. And again, oh it's the junk volume that I see all the time. Yeah. I mean, I see it, I see it from the a lot of the members of the gym that I train at, and I just want to just want to go up to them and be like, you can do so much better. Or just like rest. Rest in between sets. It's fine. That's another thing. It's not just about resting outside of your workout and recovering. It is literally about resting in between your sets. You can't really progress strength if you're not giving your body enough rest in between sets for that, for your, you know, for your body to just recover in the next, you know, couple minutes so that you can, you know, regenerate that ATP to do go do the lift again. Because you do need multiple sets of the same movement to get enough volume in. So that's another thing. People not resting, you're kind of just doing cardio at that point. And I understand you can you can vary your rest periods as far as you know, making it a different type of progressive overload, but for the most part, strength-wise, you want at least a couple minutes in between sets. Yeah. Definitely. Another reason is this is probably one of the more common reasons with most people poor sleep. I mean, you'll notice this fast unless you're, I guess, chronically undersleeping and the body is used to it, but I don't know. I think that if you're getting less than six hours a night, you're you're not gonna be as strong as you once were or could be. Yeah. I mean, bare minimum, I think six is it. And I mean, everyone knows when you have a shitty night of sleep, you don't want to work out, you barely even want to make good food choices. I mean, it feels really shitty. So try to sleep at least seven hours a night. And another thing, not eating the right things, aka protein and fiber. That's all I have clients focus on. I don't give a shit anymore about anything else because it's so complicated. There's so much information out there now. People are like, should I do this? Should I do that? And I'm like, no, no, no, just focus on protein and fiber and the right strength training routine. And this is always the right recipe for success. Because it's really hard to eat shit food if you're focusing on enough protein and enough fiber. Yeah. So very true. I mean, it's easy peasy. I don't feel like you need to complicate nutrition anymore. I feel like eat whatever the fuck you want. As long as you're getting that, I feel like you're fine. I feel like we're just kind of backtracking. Like, eat whatever you want, try to eat good food sources, but damn, just get the protein and fiber and you're fine. Yeah. Okay, another one, shitty form. Let's say you do have a good program. You're sleeping enough, your nutrition is on point, you're fueling, et cetera. You're doing your squats, you're doing your deadlifts, your heavy presses, your rows, et cetera. But how's your form though? Like for squats, are you getting your hips below parallel on squats? If you're not, you're shorting yourself on strength gains. Is your torso rigid during deadlifts or are you rounding your back? Probably shorting yourself on some strength gains. Although there's a time and place around the upper back, but that's more for the serious power power lifters. So we're not going to get into that. Are you getting full shoulder flexion at the top of your older overhead press? I mean, you'll get some results, but strength and mobility go hand in hand. And the more you the bigger range of motion you can own, the stronger you're going to get. So that's why I bring that particular example up because it's really, really important. Because you can have the bodybuilder shoulders where you're, you know, half, almost half repping, not fully locking the arms out, but strength will not follow. You might get more muscle, maybe. We might just get a nice little pump.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

So yeah, the rule of specificity applies here. And this is this is one of the problems with machines, right? You only get strong in the range of motion that you work. You can't get strong outside of that range of motion. So when people are like, oh, I'm not getting any stronger, and then I look at their squat and they're not even hitting parallel, it's like, okay, well, let's and then the answer is to drop the weight and to go below parallel. And you just increased your strength because you increased your range of motion. Like people don't understand that. They're like, well, the weight is less on the bar, but your range of motion, your time under tension is all longer. There are new neural pathways being built, there's new muscles being involved. Like you're getting stronger when you increase your range of motion for sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Yeah. I call this fake strength or fake reps when when I see people at the gym, you know, they're let's just say they're squatting and they're loading the bar up and they're going down a quarter of the way and they can they continuously add weight on the bar. Okay, cool. I could probably squat 500 pounds if I only bent my knee a little bit. But that's why I call it fake strength, because it's not, you're not, I can have someone quarter squat a shit ton of weight, but have them do anything else and they won't be able to. Put them on one leg, they won't be able to. I mean, it carries over into everything else or into all of your other movements and daily life if you're taking your joints through a full range of motion. So don't don't don't mistake fake strength for actual strength. I like it. Because I do I see this shit all the time, even from some trainers, and I'm just like, why are we doing this? Yeah. This is our anyways, this is our job totally to have real to have our clients get real strength, not fake strength.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Yes, yes. I sometimes see people ask, like, oh, have I just hit my limit, my genetic limit? Uh, probably not. Yeah, props not. No. Yeah. Um, obviously, some folks might, and then you know, there are drugs that you can do and all sorts of things that people might do. But uh most people have not hit that. Uh, and a lot of people will blame. Actually, when I was in uh London recently, uh our tour guide was asking us all sorts of questions about lifting, and he was just asking about benching. He's like, I can't get it to go, like my bench won't go any higher. Like, am I just at my limit? Like, is this just all my body's capable of? And it was like his number was like 135, maybe 145. No, I was like, bruh, no. Like I was like, what's your program look like? What does your range of motion look like? What's your form look like? Like, there's so many things here. Um, and I think a lot of people just don't think about, you know, all the things that they're missing before just assuming, oh, this is all I got.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Yeah, it's just like don't do bro workouts, you're not doing it right. And here's another thing. I really do think, even if you're experienced in your lifting, you are motivated, you don't need accountability from a trainer, hire a trainer, hire a very good trainer for one session. I would even recommend doing one session, one check-in session every month. That way, okay, cool. You're not spending an arm and a leg on personal training. Although if you need it, I think it's obviously worth it. Obviously, I'm biased, it's what I do, but I mean, I've seen the change in people's lives and in their results from their fitness routine. Have them check your form. Literally, take, tell them, I want you to check my squat, my deadlift, my overhead press, my bench press, and my row. I mean, you could get all of those done in one session and you just did a full body workout, and now you have all of your compound lifts managed by the trainer, and that trainer should give you cues to adjust, incorporate into your routine, and then you can check in. I think that is a great way to do it if you are motivated and you do have a pretty decent program. Totally. But again, you have to have a good program. So if you don't, maybe you should hire that trainer to write your program. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, also there it's not just about weight on the bar, too. Because if it were the case, you've been training for 20 years now, right? Yes. During training, I've been training for probably 15. Yeah. I mean, we'd be both squatting a thousand pounds if yeah, you know, if you could just continuously add weight to the bar, it doesn't work like that. So I guess when you're going back to that genetic limit, there is a limit. I don't know how much genetics play a role in that. I mean, I'm sure a little bit, but it's almost just like your body's limit. Like, hey, let's maybe not squat a thousand pounds because we might die. But you could own different weights more. So you can control heavier weights more. You can, you know, slow the lowering down for movements like a squat or bench press or something like that. You know, tempo, you could be more explosive with specific weights, you know, do different variations of the foundational movement patterns. That's another way to get stronger too. And, you know, I feel like when you're 30 years in, you're probably doing a lot of the same weights. It's just, is your mobility getting better? You know, especially 30 years in, you're probably shifting to focus on that a little bit more because you're old now. You're old and things are kind of achy, whatever. And maybe you do want to focus more on mobility and keeping in, you know, around the same weights, but that doesn't mean you're not getting stronger. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

So I guess the whole genetic limit conversation too makes me think like, because why would you want to push that far? I mean, if you're a competitor, I get it. Like I know a ton of strength competitors. I was a strength competitor for years, you were a strength competitor. Like, yeah, of course, you want to get stronger to a point to get this number, but do you know how many of my friends who are strength competitors, including me, have been injured and then either retired or had to shift or have gotten frustrated, or you know, there's so many things that happen when you chase pure raw strength and like it as far as number, where you could shift it a little bit and say, okay, that's probably enough load for my body, right? And my particular size. But let's try, like you were saying, a slower tempo. Let's try a different variation, let's try some pauses, let's be explosive, let's like there's so many other things you could be doing that will contribute to you being it may not be like pound for pound strength, like how much force can you put in one one go, but it's definitely functionality, like that in my mind is still getting stronger in a way.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Yeah, I mean, me, for example, switching, I mean, I completely switched the way I train, so you could do that too. Uh, you know, with the body weight gymnastics-y type stuff. Yeah, and just far as just strength, I don't like here's an example. I don't bench press a ton. Like, I think I recently tested like my heavy triple, I get about, I don't know, one 125 pounds, which I've benched a lot more than that in my powerlifting days. Maybe not a lot more. I sucked at bench, but with other moves, yeah, long arms. With other moves, as far as you know, like doing handstands or dips or you know, ring work, I feel so much stronger and more stable. So I think that stability component people don't take into account. Because if I can just get someone, one of my clients, who they have a really weak hip or something, and they can't stabilize on one leg, and I can get them to do that, you're way stronger now. And stuff like that's gonna carry over into daily life, which is what you want, really. Because, like I said, 30 years from now, you're not gonna give two shits what weight you're lifting. You want to be functional as you age. So things like that prioritize more because if you're focusing on just how much you're lifting, then it becomes a sport. And any sport, there's injury risk and you will get injured. I've gotten injured before doing powerlifting, you've gotten injured before doing powerlifting, I've gotten injured just doing other sports.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Not to say that they're not they're not good, but it's yeah, there's always value in doing a sport to a point. I think it's once you start getting really competitive, yeah. Then you have to realize that there's a trade-off. And if you're good with that trade-off, of I actually think once you're at the top of any sport, if you're good to trade your health for that performance, uh-huh, then go for it. That's that's maybe that's the way you're gonna make money, maybe that's what you want to do. But at some point in a sport, when you get good enough, there is a trade-off of your health. And so uh doing it for fun for a while is great. Even doing it and making it pretty far is great. But then once you get to the top, decide do I want to live longer and be healthier, or do I want to keep doing this? And you know, there are actually probably a few people in the world, there are a few, that can do it like forever. And they just there are some people who are genetically gifted and they they can handle all of that for years and be totally fine. There are a few cases like that, but the average person is probably at some point there's a trade-off. So yeah, I don't know. Strength number on the bar can only is only so you know important, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Yeah, number on the bar just doesn't mean much to me anymore. Yeah, it's just like great. I'm glad I could lift that. And honestly, I'll be squatting and I'm like, oh wow, nice numbers. Yeah, but I don't even realize it. I just kind of look at what I did the week before and I either try to do the same or a little bit more. So I'm just like, that doesn't matter to me, but that's me personally, and if it matters to you, that's fine. But it's there's a reason why the the the top athletes in the world are the top athletes when they're like 19. Yeah, you know, like you can't, it's just inevitable. We all age, it's it's gonna happen. Your body's gonna age and it's not gonna like that shit anymore. But again, that's why we always, you know, yes, do the compound lifts and try to lift heavy, but it's not all about that. You can progress a movement, you know. Let's just take a squat, for example. Let's just say you're doing 135 pounds and you did you could take that weight and progress it for like a whole year if you really wanted to, just changing up the tempo and the variation or the the pausing or use bands, you know, etc. So just keep that in mind for your program. Cool, cool, okay. Go get strong and join our Facebook group. Turn them stronger than your boyfriend. Yes. Okay.