As in if you don’t add any weight to what you lift for a while. But how long does this slump have to be in order to be considered a plateau? 3 months? 6 months? A year?
And what are you supposed to do once you reach a plateau? I’m pissed at not progressing at all this past week (I usually add 5-10 pounds, depending on the lift, every 1-2 weeks, but I didn’t even increase in repetitions this week), and I know that I shouldn’t be worried, but I just want to know.
And what do I need to continue improving? (such as 8+ hours of sleep, and a lot of food).
I wouldn’t worry about not adding weight for a week, it’s never going to be possible to add weight to the bar every single week. If it happens a few weeks in a row you can be concerned. You pretty much got it there, sleep lots, eat lots, work hard. I don’t know how long you’ve been working out for, but if it has been a while and you stop making progress, might want to change up your routine
You might be losing your ‘beginner’ gains. Most lifters will not add 10lbs a week to a lift, that is ridiculous gains not even possible on steroids. Most will never hit there natural plateau so don’t worry about it, and focus on what you can do to improve.
If you want to add weight every week - 2 weeks then as you increase the weight decrease the amount of reps by 2 on the first week and on the 2nd week put the reps back up to what you would normally do…
This may be bad advice I don’t know but it helps me.