You’ve been going to the gym religiously, eating really carefully but the initial weight loss you were seeing has plateaued. So what should you do to combat this workout plateau and kick start your body into the results you want? Read on to find out!
Doing the same workouts day in and day out without seeing any tangible results is boring and above all, madness. Initially you might have seen some promising results in your body composition, cardiovascular fitness and general health but if you feel like you’ve hit a wall, you’ve probably hit a workout plateau. There are ways to combat this in the correct way to get your body reving to hit the next level with a few simple strategies. But first…..
Knowing the basis of how we build muscle, strength and endurance is handy to be able to manipulate our own training approach depending on what our fitness goals are.
If we want to get stronger, or more toned or continually lose body fat, we need to give our bodies a constant adaptive stimulus. This is, you guessed it, in the form of resistance training.
This is where the concept of progressive overload comes in. Progressive overload is the gradual increase of resistance placed upon the body during training. This basically means the amount of weight, load or resistance, that provides a greater stress, or load, on your body than you would regularly use. This concept was developed just after WWII (1939-45) to rehabilitated soldiers.
Here are my top 5 strategies on how to break out of your weight loss plateau;
1 – Increase Your Resistance
It amazes me that I sometimes see the same people using the same weights in their workout for years without seeing any progress. Shake things up! A good rule I give my clients is if you ain’t being challenged in your last two repetitions of a set, it’s time to increase your current weight. This will quickly give your body the demand it needs to adapt to this new stimulus and develop the strength it needs.
2 – Increase Your Sets and Repetitions
When you become more advanced in your training, increasing the number of sets you perform for each exercise is a good tactic to bust out of a workout plateau. Instead of your regular 2 or 3 sets you can jump up to 4 or 5 sets per exercise. Instead of doing your regular 6-8 repetitions you might increase this to 10-12 repetitions. This increase in volume will most definitely give you a much needed boost!
4 – Decreasing Your Rest Time
By using this strategy of less rest after sets between consecutive sets you are conditioning your central nervous system to metabolically adapt more efficiently over time. This will mean priming your body to be more responsive with the by product of burning more body fat during your workout, as well for hours after that! What fat loss plateau?!
5 – Increase Your Intensity
Increasing this element in training is my favourite strategy and probably the most important. This means the effort you put into each repetition, whether that’s how explosively you row or how high you jump or how deep you squat. This makes your entire workout much more effective and productive as you’re muscles have been pushed to their true end range, which is turn will create an adaptive response and make you stronger, faster and more ninja like.
Here’s a great 20 minute workout to try to bust out of that rut and get the results you deserve.