The Dreaded Plateau: What Can Cause Them, and How to Overcome Them With Intensity

ByAaron Gee

It happens to all of us. We begin a training regimen, and after a few weeks we notice ourselves getting leaner, looking more toned and getting stronger. This continues for a while, but then sort of tapers off, until we hit the dreaded "plateau" in our training, where we feel like no matter what we do, there's nothing that can be done to improve our physical conditioning. We've hit the ceiling.

Can anything be done to reverse this trend? Of course. But first, let's take a look at a couple things that may be causing you to plateau.

The process of working out breaks down muscle. Over the course of the following days, the muscle rebuilds itself, becoming stronger and larger. From looking at this, one obvious culprit of stagnation is a lack of proper rest time. By breaking down the muscle even further rather than allowing it to fully recover and grow, you may actually be deteriorating the muscle.

A good rule of thumb is to only exercise a particular muscle or muscle group once or twice a week. If you are working out your chest by doing bench press one day, don't turn around and workout your triceps heavy the following day.

Another possible reason your training may have stalled is due to a lack of relative intensity. I use the term relative, rather than absolute, simply because of the fact that as your muscles grow stronger, the workouts you performed and weights you lifted as a beginner will not have the same effect as they once did. Your muscles can become accustomed to a certain routine, and, in turn, performing the same routine over and over again will break down the muscle less and less over time, allowing for less muscle growth.

So what can you do about overcoming plateaus in your training? All of these solutions revolve around one key theme: INTENSITY!

Try mixing up the style of lifting you do every two weeks or so. Used to doing bench presses every week with a barbell? Try it out with dumbbells for a few weeks. Experiment with doing squats in a wide stance and a narrow stance to target different areas of the thigh.

If you're comfortable doing a given weight for a desired repetition range, increase the weight. If you've been doing sets of 8 reps for the past few weeks, increase the weight incrementally and see how you do. You may also experiment with lower weights for a few weeks just to target the slow-twitch muscle fibers.

Probably the most important factor in overcoming training plateaus is pushing your muscles beyond failure. This is typically done by performing assisted reps or drop sets. With an assisted rep, a spotter can help you lift a small percentage of the weight so that you can perform a few more reps at a lighter weight. The concept of the drop set is the same, where you perform as many reps as you can at a given weight, drop the weight, and without any rest in between, continue pushing out a few more reps until failure.

Drop sets can be especially handy at the end of a workout. For my leg workouts, I like to get on a leg press machine and perform a drop set with 3 iterations. The first set I will do as heavy as possible for about 10 reps, the second set will be typically 50 pounds lighter for another 8-10 reps, and the third and final set will be about 50 pounds lighter for as many reps as I can push out until my legs can't move anymore.

You can also try lifts that use the same primary muscle but target different secondary muscle groups. For example, try performing a set of upright rows immediately followed by a set of military presses. In both cases, the primary muscle is the deltoid (shoulder), but the secondary muscles shift from the biceps to the triceps, allowing you to target your shoulders for just a little bit longer because the triceps are fresh. These are excellent at the end of a shoulder workout.

Try working in some of these into your workout regimen and say goodbye to your plateaus!

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-A G

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What were the causes of World War I? What made it a “world” war?

The causes that lead to the First World War were complex, and to follow their development, we need to look at the second half 19th century and early 20th century: the European nationalist spirit during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the political and economic rivalry between the states, the excessive arming after 1871 and the two hostile military alliances. Leading to the World War I - imperialism, nationalism, militarism, and defense alliances - was an accumulation of facts and event; however, the immediate cause was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife The Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 by Bosnian Slaves recruited by Serbian terrorists. Austro-Hungary blamed Serbia and declared war. The assassination in Sarajevo was only the pretense or the alleged reason of the war; the causes of this first global conflict were much deeper: economic competition, imperialism and nationalism.

At the end of the 19th century the problem of nationalism in many parts of Europe was unresolved, leading to strained relations between the regions involved and various European countries. The nationalist spirit was also manifested in the economic conflict. At the dawn of the 20th century, Europe was the most powerful region in the world. European colonial empires ruled over most of the world, and due to the Industrial Revolution, Europe was the richest, generating the need of a larger market for goods. The main field of economic development was Africa, and colonial interests in this area have clashed several times since 1898; the economic rivalry in Africa between Germany on one side, and England and France, on the other side, was slowly bringing Europe on the break of war.

As a result of these tensions, between 1871 and 1914 European countries have adopted measures that have increased the domestic and external threat of war. Convinced that their interests were threatened, European powers maintained a huge army.

As tension was mounting in Europe, the contradictions between the great powers increased, and the armed conflict for dividing the world power became inevitable. The major powers pursued a foreign policy of expansionism and conquest in search of new sources of raw materials and markets for goods. England occupied colonies in Africa and Asia, while France took possession of some countries in the same area. Russia occupied territories in Iran and China, generating the armed conflict between the two Asian countries. Germany and Italy were after the redistribution of their colonies in the developing countries and desired to strengthen their positions by all means possible, in regard to Russia, France, Great Britain and the Austria-Hungary Empire. Germany’s tendency to become the largest military power and to break Britain's naval supremacy caused great tension between the two countries. This lead to the division of the world powers into two blocs: the Central Powers’ Triple Alliance (Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy), and the Triple Entente (France, England and Russia). The Triple Alliance had as purpose was mutual aid in case of a Russian attack. The Triple Entente was a deterrent to the Triple Alliance and was part of France’s plan to surround Germany. Militant nationalism and the national issue turned into the Balkan area into a real powder keg ready to ignite at the slightest spark. With the Moroccan Crisis and Balkan wars, where Austria-Hungary and Russia were competing for power, peace was threatened and Europe was on the verge of war: this was the spark to ignite the conflict. The outbreak of war in July 1914 between the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente marked the unequal political and economic development in the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. England and France, old industrial countries with large colonial empires were overcome by countries like Germany and the United States, experiencing a strong industrial development.

On 8 May 1915, a German U-boat sank the British luxury liner ‘Lusitania’, killing 128 Americans, prompting President Wilson to reconsider the United States position towards the war. In April 1917 Wilson declared war on Germany, entering the world conflagration on the Entente side.

The World War I was a “world” war because major nations of the world are involved, affecting many countries on various continents.

Allan, Tony. The Causes of World War I. Chicago, IL: Heinemann Library, 2003.

Cojan, Vincent. World War I: A Military Timeline. Bucharest, Romania: The Didactic and Pedagogic Publishers, 1997.

Henretta, James A. and David Brody. America: A Concise History, Volume II: Since 1877. 4th ed., Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2010, 640-644

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