Patience and persistence

This is something that makes more sense at an intermediate-to-advanced stage, but it’s importanf to acknowledge that gains won’t be evenly distributed from the start of your training journey. You may see gains in your arms or trunk, and vice versa, or maybe you may find yourself becoming stronger at a faster rate in your lower body.

Many abandon their plans when certain areas develop before others, mistaking this result for an ineffective routine. Yet, this pattern is a normal aspect of physical development when training. In fact, the body often responds to training with growth in some muscles more rapidly than others, due to a variety of factors including genetic predisposition and the specificity of training stimuli.

When faced with such plateaus, the solution isn’t to quit the workout and completely change what you were doing, but rather, it is to refine your approach to your specific needs, by assessing your priorities focus.

Continuing to work on the gains you’ve made is important, but now’s the time to intensify your efforts on those muscles that need to catch up. It’s a balancing act—maintaining what you’ve built while strategically increasing the volume or intensity for the muscles that are behind.

Importantly, at this stage you know what training hard means – and you see how that’s exactly what has brought specific muscle groups up, so you already know how to replicate it.

This process is long. Muscle development and hypertrophy are long-term commitments, reasons why results are measured in years, not months or days (unless we’re talking about fat loss).

With patience and persistence, you tailor your regimen over time, responding to your body’s feedback, ensuring all muscle groups are developed more harmoniously, but again, this takes time. This mindset shift—from frustration over short-term results to a long-term vision—will set the foundation for a sustainable, progressive training strategy, leading to continuous and balanced muscle growth.