Free Guide
If you’ve been training for months and your physique still looks more or less the same, there is usually a reason.
It’s rarely because you need some secret exercise, supplement or advanced training method. Most of the time, one of the basics is being missed.
Here are 10 common reasons people get stuck.
A lot of people say they want to “get in shape”, but that doesn’t really tell you what to do.
Do you want to lose fat?
Build muscle?
Get stronger?
Stay roughly the same weight but improve your body composition?
Your calories, training and cardio should all depend on what you’re actually trying to achieve.
Pick a direction and commit to it.
You might think you’re in a calorie deficit because you’re eating “clean”, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re eating fewer calories than you burn.
Oils, sauces, snacks, drinks and bigger portions can add up very quickly.
The same applies if you’re trying to build muscle. If your weight hasn’t moved for months, you might simply not be eating enough.
You don’t have to track every gram of food for the rest of your life, but you should at least have a decent idea of what you’re consuming.
If you’re resistance training and trying to build or maintain muscle, protein matters.
A good general target is around 1.6–2.2 g of protein per kg of bodyweight per day.
So if you weigh 80 kg, somewhere around 128–176 g per day is a solid range.
You don’t need to obsess over hitting the exact same number every day. Just make sure protein is consistently high enough.
You see a new exercise on TikTok.
Then someone tells you your current split is rubbish.
Then you find another programme online.
Suddenly your entire routine has changed again.
If you constantly change your exercises, it becomes very difficult to tell whether you’re actually getting stronger or improving.
You need enough consistency to track your lifts and see whether your performance is moving forward.
If you’ve been bench pressing the same weight for the same number of reps for a year, you probably shouldn’t be surprised if your chest hasn’t changed much.
You need some form of progression over time.
That might mean lifting more weight, doing more reps, improving your technique, using a better range of motion or simply getting more control over the movement.
You do not have to add weight every session.
You do need your overall performance to improve over time.
Some people go to the gym consistently but never really push themselves.
They finish a set and could easily have done another eight or ten reps.
That might be fine during a warm-up, but your main working sets should actually challenge you.
You don’t need to train like an idiot or take every single set to absolute failure, but your muscles need a proper reason to adapt.
Turn up, train properly, then go home.
This is probably one of the biggest reasons people don’t progress.
They train hard Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Nutrition is perfect.
Then Friday comes around, the weekend starts and the whole plan disappears.
You don’t need to be perfect.
You do need to be consistent enough that your good days massively outweigh your bad ones.
One bad meal isn’t going to ruin your progress.
Repeatedly abandoning the plan will.
If you’re sleeping badly, constantly tired and training hard every day, eventually your performance is going to suffer.
Your body needs time to recover.
That means getting enough sleep, eating properly, staying hydrated and giving heavily trained muscles enough time before smashing them again.
More training is not automatically better.
Sometimes doing slightly less but doing it properly gets you further.
If you don’t know what you weighed last month, what you lifted last week or whether your waist has changed, how do you actually know if you’re progressing?
You don’t need a spreadsheet for every part of your life.
But track the things that matter.
Your bodyweight.
Your main lifts.
Your progress photos.
Your waist.
Even just those four things can tell you a lot.
Do not judge your progress from one random weigh-in or one bad day in the mirror. Look at what is happening over time.
Your weight doesn’t move for a few days, so you cut another 500 calories.
A workout feels bad, so you change the programme.
You don’t look different after two weeks, so you decide the entire plan is useless.
Give things enough time to actually work.
If you keep changing your calories, cardio and training every week, you won’t even know what was helping and what wasn’t.
Sometimes something genuinely needs changing.
Other times, the answer is simply to stop messing with the plan and follow it properly.
Go through these 10 points and be honest with yourself.
Do you actually know what your goal is?
Are your calories where they should be?
Are you eating enough protein?
Are your lifts progressing?
Are you training hard enough?
Are you being consistent?
Are you recovering properly?
Are you tracking anything?
If you already know what the problem is, fix it.
If you genuinely don’t know what is holding you back, that’s where having someone look at your training, nutrition and progress objectively can help.
Want Me to Build the Plan Around You?
With my 1-to-1 coaching, I look at where you are now, where you want to get to and what might currently be slowing your progress. From there, we build your training, nutrition and recovery plan around your goals and lifestyle, then track whether it is actually working.
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