Hi Holmes.

I can understand what you mean about your loss of strength, and I can definitely relate as to what it's like just maintaining the same strength and not gaining any.

Personally, I could handle losing some strength when it comes to pulling movements i.e. Back, Hamstrings, etc....but I HATE IT when I lose strength with my pushing movements like shoulder presses, bench, tricpes, etc

I am now a U.S. Marine but I bring that up because before I left for officer training, I plateaued badly and was just lifting to maintain with out knowing it. So, I graduated from training and I was in great physical shape with the calisthenics and running long distances. I lost muscle mass but mostly strength. I used it as an opportunity to start from scratch, use the time off from the gym as a plateau breaker, and change up my workout.

When it comes to chest training, I am heavily involved with barbell movements before I use dumb bells, etc. I trained starting with bench press at each chest day and then moving onto incline bench. After three months I began to plateau again and changed my chest work out up slightly, but boy did it work.

I began my chest training with the barbell incline bench doing 5 sets of 8 reps and then moving on to bench press; doing my best there even though my chest was now fatigued. After 9 months of following this routine I was able to rep 225 eight times on the incline. I moved back to my old way of training, and I was then able to push more weight for more reps on the bench press like never before. Before, 275 was impossible for me to push, but after focusing on incline for some time, 275 on the flat bench came very easily.

**Sorry for the long story/post but this is something that definitely helped for me**


It was a small change that I had to be patient with, but

__________________
"For those who have fought for it,
freedom has a taste the protected will never know."
- An American Soldier in Iraq, 2003