Derailing the Sticking Point

Regulating the physiological processes for any athlete is a real issue, especially after a lengthy layoff. Once they return into the hard-core workouts, they gain muscle size rapidly. Especially for bodybuilders, where they can grow like crazy for a while, growth rate will slow down and finally stop altogether. You can continue to go all out, eat well, rest sufficiently, but the answer is always the same; you're stuck, nothing happens. Your muscles just do not want to grow bigger. This reaction is far from unusual. It is no exaggeration to say that 95 percent of all active bodybuilders are currently as a "sticking point" in their training.
Progressive resistance exercise is a stress, and when you first subject your body to this form of stress it reacts quickly, getting itself ready for further stress by strengthening and enlarging its muscles and tendons. But the body will only do so much. It will not continue to add muscle size unless there is a very good reason. Merely repeating what you first did to stress or shock the body is not enough to keep your body growing and growing. New stresses or shocks have to be found.
So what factors can assist with reactivating muscle growth, if you do not allow your muscles sufficient time to recover after a workout, you will dig yourself into an almighty staleness that will be difficult to shake. A person who is always on the go will never build super large muscles. If you are the type who plays tennis before your workout and goes dancing afterwards, then wave goodbye to those 20 inch guns you wanted for Christmas. They won't come this year, or next, or ever.
Of course, this applies also to extra sports activities. By all means body build and engage in sports, but when the time comes that you want to maximize your gains, and then your extra activities must go. Later, when you have achieved your goal, you can bring them back into your calendar. Even today with split and double-split routines, most bodybuilders find it most beneficial to train only every other day, leaving a complete day of rest after each workout.
Barbell and dumbbell training is the most severe form of exercise invented to punish muscles. Bench presses 200 pounds 10 times, and in a mere matter of seconds you have lifted some 2,000 pounds. After a complete weight training workout in which you will likely lift hundreds of tons via your repeated sets and repetitions, you will need. Rest.
Then there is shocking muscles, stubborn muscles must be subdue them out of complacency and get them to grow bigger and bigger, Arnold Schwarzenegger changed his exercises around from time to time and even performed them in a different manner, to shock his muscles into growing. Sameness leads to boredom. Variety will bring about reaction. Of course, one could try to shock the muscles by never performing the same routine twice. However, the general consensus is that one's schedule should be repetitive to some extent in order to stimulate regular exercise progression. It is when the fullest intensity has been extracted from a particular exercise that the muscle must be "shocked" into responding. You must, in some deviously planned manner, overwhelm it with a complete change of pace, a new exercise, considerably more or fewer repetitions, a change in your exercise sequence or in the frequency of your workouts, or some other new mode of training. The prime requisite is that the change be sufficient to make your muscles react.
Like anything else, lay-offs are good if used properly. If you lay off from training too frequently though, that will most probably doom you to failure, but there are many good reasons why you should lay off from time to time. A few days’ rest, a week if need be, gives your body time to accumulate nutritional and nervous energy. Your body's reaction to progressive weight training is what it's all about. You may train extremely hard and yet not gain for reasons other than exercise. Your reaction to heavy exercise may be nil, because you never give yourself a chance to benefit from exercise. Timely lay-offs can keep your muscles growing.
Gradually increasing the length of your workout (without increasing the length of rests between exercises) can serve to increase the overload on your muscles, and thereby make them grow bigger. Other things being equal, more exercise, more sets, etc., make for more progress. However, there's a point at which workout duration becomes too long, and results start to regress. At that point, you must reduce the length of your workouts considerable and adopt a new program. Then you formulate a new intensity drive in which, using your new routine, you gradually increase poundage and bring about sustained muscle growth.