Progressing TOO fast

I've been wondering something lately about my training. Basically, I'm wondering if I've been going through the progressions TOO fast. This is coming from a place where I'm seeing a lot of plateaus. I'm now wondering if "showing mastery" is simply doing the required reps/sets needed, or if it's getting to a point where these aren't really that much of a challenge to do even at the mastery level.

I've been looking at my training methods a lot recently because of those plateaus and trying to locate my possible faults, and I think this might be one of them. I feel like my conditioning should be much better, even at the level I'm at. I just thought I'd ask you friendly folks what your thoughts about it was.

So what do you think is the right way to go here:

1- As soon as you show mastery by completing the designated reps/sets scheme for a particular progression, you move on to the next.

2- You only move on to the next progression when the mastery reqs for a progression no longer challenges you. Hence, you stick to doing the mastery reqs until it becomes somewhat of a breeze.

In a similar situation here. I do version 1, but when I hit a plateau I re-do all previous elements and have found that to do so is really beneficial - finding all sorts of nuances in the form which, when explored, increase mastery and hopefully improve your run-up to the next element.

A good question is: could I do one more half set?  could I do a full set?  

If you answer yes, especially to the second question, then your current progression has nothing left to give you.  However, if the thought of doing even one more rep causes you to shudder, you could probably gain more from another few weeks.

I think that if you test something for mastery and pass straight away that it is still valuable to do one micro-cycle on it.

I would say that as long as you can do the required sets/reps for mastery without showing any degradation in form then you are alright to proceed.

LateStarter@46 said:

In a similar situation here. I do version 1, but when I hit a plateau I re-do all previous elements and have found that to do so is really beneficial - finding all sorts of nuances in the form which, when explored, increase mastery and hopefully improve your run-up to the next element.

When you say you "re-do all previous elements", do you mean you do a mastery test all over again for those progressions to try and spot weaknesses, or simply 1 set with mastery reps? I'm curious because that was also the way I was thinking of going at it: going from the beginning and re-testing to find faults.

Yes, I do the 5 sets of mastery and spot any weakness or deviations from the form. Also, in a sense, I over-do them - contracting the active muscles really hard or doing the movement super-slow or extra quick.

I think FORM is where many of us miss the boat.