Getting Through A Fitness Plateau

One of the most frustrating processes is hitting the dreaded progress plateau. This is when you’re maintaining your regular workout and diet program but then progress stops dead in its tracks. Rather than continuing to see the results you’ve been getting, everything is at a standstill.

Often you’ll question what you’re doing wrong. You are doing the exact same thing you were always doing before, so what’s changed?

Plateau’s are definitely a challenging time for anyone but with some sneaky tricks you can get past them and get back on the road to results. Here are some of the best ways to get past this plateau.

Change The Exercises You’re Doing

The first thing you can do to get through a plateau is to alter the exercises that you’re performing. The body responds best to constant change, so if you’re doing the same exercises over and over again, you’re not giving the body enough of a reason to change.

Instead do something new – push it past its comfort zone. This could be an entirely new exercise altogether or just a different way of performing a given exercise such as moving from a barbell curl to a set of dumbbell curls.

As long as something changes, that should make the body sit-up and start responding again.

Alter Your Rep Ranges

Second, another quick way to get results is to alter the rep ranges that you use throughout the exercise. If you have been working in the lower rep range lately of five to six reps, try bumping this up to eight to ten reps instead.

This also works the body in a slightly different manner, targeting your fitness level differently and working slightly more on size compared to strength when muscle building.

If you’re working towards fat loss, higher rep training can also increase the metabolic rate to a greater extent, which will help shed the fat faster.

Assess Your Nutritional Strategy

One thing that very often is the cause of the plateau in the first place is your nutritional strategy or more specifically, your calorie intake. If you’re aiming to build muscle and aren’t seeing changes on the scale, this is a strong signal you are taking in too few calories.

If you were to bump those up another 200 or so, progress should start happening again.

Likewise, if you’re aiming to lose body fat, take a good look at how much you really are eating. Often people have a tendency to underestimate their calorie intake, thinking they are eating fewer than they really are.

Since calories do add up quickly and will impact progress, this is something you must get in line. Always look at your diet whenever you’re struggling to see if changes can be made there.

Take A Short Training Break

Finally, the last way to beat a plateau is sometimes just taking a training break. In some cases the body is just in strong need of rest and is fighting your efforts. Taking a week or two off can often jumpstart progress again when you get back into it, so ask yourself how long you have been training very intensely for.

If it’s been more than three months without a solid week off, now might be the time to take one.

While plateaus may seem like the biggest problem you’ve encountered with your training, they can be beat. If you think smartly about how to address them and implement the changes that are needed, you can get back on track very quickly.