Have you ever felt like your weightlifting workout was not giving you the results that you wanted? Ever feel like you are going through the motions in the gym? If you have, you have more than likely hit a point where you have hit a plateau or leveled off.

If you are an experienced gym rat, you probably have heard the phrase plateau before, however if you have not then this article is right up your alley. Going to the gym and lifting weights is all well and good, but if you have a goal in mind then you need to constantly re-examine your workout, test to see what's working and change it up.

When you go to they gym do you typically head over to the flat bench first when you are training chest or how about on arm day do you first go the dumb bell rack to do curls? Sound familiar? It is, because most weight lifters have it in their mind of the exercises that they will perform and for how many sets and reps. We get too comfortable in our workouts to the point where we are just going through the motions. You probably noticed that when you first started doing the workout you are doing now, that you were making strides and gains in the weight increase or in the way your muscles looked so you stuck with it. The problem is, our bodies are very smart and adapt to certain conditions. This is no different in weightlifting. Our muscles, like our minds have a memory and this muscle memory realizes what is going on and reacts. With no new stimuli, our muscles do just what it needs to and we hit a sticking point. No new strength or size.

It is at this point that our workouts get stale and we need to re-evaluate it. Let's use the following example as an illustration. Let's say that we had one magazine on our coffee table. After days, weeks and months of flipping through the same magazine, we anticipate what is next in the pages and get bored. The same concept goes for our muscles and muscle memory. We are hitting a peak because our muscles know what to expect and are getting bored. We need to introduce new stimuli to shock or trick our muscles to react.

What I mean, by this is that we need to re-examine our workout. For example, let's say that the first thing that you do on chest day is the barbell flat bench press and that your muscle gain and strength has hit a sticking point. I would change this up and try something new for the next following weeks. Instead of the barbell you could start with dumbbell presses or even change that up and start on an incline or decline flat bench.

You could even change the day of the week for training chest. For example, let's say that you usually train your chest at the end of the week on Friday, try training it at the beginning of the week on Monday when you have had the weekend to rest and recover from the previous week's lifting sessions. You could also change the amount of sets, sometimes just doing a warm up and three working sets is not enough, try adding an extra set to get the full work in. Also remember to cycle between doing heavy weight/ low reps and light weight/ high reps. Remember that our bodies adapt so we must always be changing it up to keep progressing.

You can change it up every week or every other week or every month, but the key is that you need to change it up in order for your body to respond the way you want it to. I don't usually do the same workout for each body part two weeks in a row. I may decide to do all machines on one week and then switch to all dumbbells the following or a combination of the two. You need to find what works for you and what you enjoy doing. Keeping these two things in mind will keep you on the right track of strength and muscle progression.