Sometimes, regardless of the fact how much or often you work out for whatever your goal is, the exercises you have been doing for so long don’t trick anymore. The condition is known as “plateauing” & it is the frustrating part when you try to get in shape. It occurs when the body adapts to a particular workout routine. Nobody starts an exercise out routine for getting so-so results. Exercising daily is a good and healthy practice, but sometimes your workouts stop being effective. It’s the time when you should make some smart adjustments. Doing certain things can make the training session more effective knowing that makes your session efficient and helps in building muscles.
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Training Plateaus
Wherever you incorporate a new approach in your life, initially you see the results, doing the routine workout in your regular workout clothes is a good approach to stay healthy. But if you have some bigger goals such as weight loss, muscle building, or increasing your athletic performance it’s not efficient practice. Your body adapts to routine workout and develops endurance. Training Plateaus does not only stall the progress but works in the opposite direction for reaching your fitness goals.
In an exercise program, it is the sudden & dramatic decrease of noticeable results that the regular workouts have been giving you. These plateaus can manifest themselves in strength, cardiovascular, and weight loss training as well. Human body has mastered the art of adaptation, it is equipped with an efficient capability of adjusting itself for meeting demands of workout. If you do not evolve your workout routine after a certain period there’s a high probability that plateaus will happen.
1) Change the Approach
Periodic & strategic change of workouts keep the body away from adaptation, thus avoid training plateaus. So, switching up your workout routine is the first thing you do for hitting the trackback. Consider increasing your training intensity over time. It can be done by increasing weight amount, the number of reps, resistance-type workouts, altering recovery period between sets. Easiest way of shifting things is following “FITT”.
- Frequency: Workout 3 to 5 days per week.
- Intensity: Defined by how hard you hit the gym. The more you start getting in shape, the more intense your workouts should be.
- Time: Perform the workouts for 20 to 60 mins per session.
- Exercise Types: Vary the intensity and types of your exercises. Consider breaking up a year plan in three cycles, with distinct objectives such as building strength, increasing endurance, speed & muscle tone.
2) Allow Body Recovery
Giving your body optimum recovery time plays a great role in breaking the plateau. People usually do not give your body adequate amount of rest between exercise bouts. And this trend is progressing as people are busy in their lifestyles more than ever and like to do things that are more challenging and popular. We forget about giving our bodies proper rest they need. One should listen to his body. When your body does not get enough time for adjusting the training, you will start noticing a decline in the performance. Repeating the same workouts of a certain intensity everyday makes you less enthusiastic too. If this starts happening, back off and take a little recovery time or shuffle what you have been practicing.
3) Settle for ok
Avoid exposing your bodies to high pressure. Lifting more weights for longer time periods might appear right to boost your training. But they can cause injuries that will snap back your motivation. Performing moderate intensity workout is ok too. Doing a gold medal performance in every gym session isn’t necessary. Sometimes what you need is going easy on your bodies and play smartly to extract more out of your gym sessions. Everybody has its own limits which vary from person to person. You can’t continue to be challenging, only if you perform high intensity workouts. We would recommend you to hit the gym vigorously once a week and perform moderate intensity exercise for the rest of the days.
4) Retrain the Metabolism
For losing fat and staying healthy you should necessarily consume less calories than you shed during the whole day. Experts agree that you just can’t exercise off your bad diets. Clean eating is the essential component of having a healthy lifestyle. Taking fewer calories is more likely to adjust your body to low energy needs which leads to plateauing. Losing fat and getting through training plateaus requires a balance between your diet and workout. It trains your metabolism to catch up the new habits.