dealing with plateaus in foundation 1

Hi,

I've been doing F1 consistently for a year but have reached sticking points in push ups, ground rows and hollow body rocks around stage 5 and 6 for each having been oscillating around these levels for around 6 months each.

I do F1 in conjunction with H1, front split and thoraxic stretch and have been training consistently every week completing each course once per week for the whole period, with the exception of august which i took off. My training regime is typically regular but in recent months less so due to work commitments, training whenever I can.

What elements of my training should I be looking at in order to start moving forward with these again? My diet and sleep are pretty good (8 hours per night etc). Any suggestions would be good.

Chris

Hi Christopher.  There are multiple other threads on plateaus in the forums that you can check out if you'd like.  However, I would simply state there is no progress without stress and recovery. So if your recovery is good, which it sounds like it is, then it suggests you are not stressing your muscles adequately. You probably need to do F1 at least 2, if not 3, times per week to see progress.  You can try to fit in more reps by doing more sets and there are multiple ways to tweak the programming, but I don't think you need to go there.  Bump up your frequency and you'll get there.  Good luck!

Hi Douglas,

Thanks for the response. I know from personal experience that my recovery is not as fast as others but I thought that if I pushed myself sufficiently hard in that one session I should still generate a response.  I have been seeing progress in the majority of the exercises but will do a trial, uping the frequency for the offending exercises.

Thanks for your advice!.

Chris

My advice is to try and figure out why you fail. Is it that you are fine up to 6 reps but several sets at higher reps will result in progressively worse recovery? in that case two ways to approach it could be to either increase the sets very slowly, which I usually do. So instead of going from say 6-9 i would go 6 to 7 and perhaps only do 7 for the first 2 sets, but over time you will get to 9. An other alternative could be to increase the rest slightly and then when you can get through a stage fine, decrease the rest.

Hey Christopher, 

I agree with Douglas. Try adding an additional UB workout each week and, at the end of that workout, train your hollow body progression. As soon as possible, get to steps that you can complete without going to failure for these. Please keep us updated on your progress.