Workout Plateau!

Ways I’ve used to workout this past week:

So for those who may know know, I used to be in shape. I played tennis, took jazz, ballet lessons, and would walk for miles on end at the beach. That, of course, was then. That was before life piled up. A decade of graduations, working, saving, relocating, marrying, and general laziness began to take its toll, on my health and life. 

As the years wore on into my twenties, exercise became less important, less frequent. Injuries began to take their toll, starting with my ankle, then a diabetes diagnosis, and further limiting my activity, working from a home office upwards of twelve hours a day. The predictable result is that today I am but a shadow—a soft, blurry-edged, crusty shadow—of my 120-lb tones, svelte frame of yore.

While I’ve made my peace with my life-work-toil life at home, the overall dénouement of hitting the big 3-0 and beyond, occasionally when Facebook posts photos of “this was your life, many moons ago” wall posts, I can’t help wondering: What went wrong? And one night recently it occurred to me, my problem was not with consistency, but results. I hit a workout plateau. I knew I needed to make a few exercise tweaks, and I started to incorporate some of the tips I share in this post.

First, do we all know what exercise plateau is? If you have never hit a training plateau, consider yourself lucky! Generally most who workout, gym-nuts and newbies alike, will run into a point in their training when they have a stop in their progress whether it is muscle gain or just overall performance. A training plateau is a time when you are no longer progressing in your workouts. The worse part about hitting a plateau is that it could be due to a number of reasons which only leaves you feeling more confused than ever! 

Here are a new ways to overcome plateaus while working out:

1. LOSS IN STRENGTH: A common sign of hitting a plateau is when you suddenly experience a loss in overall strength. This is a tell-tale sign that your body has not been able to properly recover and grow more muscle tissue. To prevent this loss? Listen to your body. Do you need more rest? Rest. Do you feel dehydrated? Drink water? Are you mentally exhausted? Perhaps its time for a life, office, and home de-cluttering session. It’s time to give yourself the much needed grace to work on you!

2. FEELING FAILURE: Ever notice when you take a break from training, your body doesn’t give you that ‘pumped’ feeling? This could be from one of two things. First, a lack of exercise, for which case you already know how to correct this issue. However, this sense of failure could be due to overworking your frame. If this is the case, consider excising every other day. 

3. LACK OF MOTIVATION: Do you feel unmotivated to shake it up in the morning? When you lose motivation, it could be caused by a number of reasons such as personal matters, pursuit of different interests, personal and business, but if those are not your reasons then it is more than likely caused by hitting a plateau otherwise known as over training. When your body is tired, fatigued and does not feel like going to train with heavy weights. This is pure instinct and your body will tell your brain ‘We need to recover…STOP training’. Your body, your proverbial temple, knows better than you might think. In order to let your body recover properly.

4. NO PROGRESS IN AT LEAST 2 WORKOUTS: A good rule of thumb, is that when trying to constantly progress in your workouts, small, consistent goals are key. The progression doesn’t have to be much, but it does have to be enough to trigger new growth. This could be an extra couple of reps on your bench press, one to two pounds of weight loss, or the ability to walk one extra mile a week. All the little progressions WILL lead to new muscle formation, new determination, and new plateau reductions. Through the ‘adapt and grow’ principle is tough when working out consistently, eating nutritious, wholesome foods, packed with heart-healthy calories is also key to recovery, in terms of exercise plateaus. Listen your body. My best advise for ending exercise plateau is taking several 2-day rests from working out each month.