Bell’s Broadcast: Plateauing in fitness? How can you overcome this phase?
Are you stuck in a fitness pothole and feel like you’ve stopped making progress?
It can happen in anyone’s fitness journey, so don’t feel discouraged if you feel like you’ve hit a roadblock on your fitness journey. Once you understand how your body adapts to training, you can make changes to your routine to break through the plateau, continue making progress and start enjoying exercise again.
Today, Annabel and the Longevity Exercise Physiology teams at Drummoyne, Edgecliff, Marrickville, Bella Vista, Randwick, Pymble, Balmain, Neutral Bay, Coburg – Melbourne, and Barrie, Ontario – Canada examine what causes the fitness plateau and how to overcome the mental and physical aspects of this phase.
What exactly do I mean when we say we have hit a workout plateau?
A workout plateau occurs when your body adjusts to the demands of your workouts. You might start to feel unmotivated, bored, or find you just don’t feel like working out. This is a sign that you may be ready to try a new training style. You may be constantly in the gym, eating right, and lifting weights, crushing your healthy lifestyle. However, as time passes, you notice that you aren’t making the gains like you used to. Fortunately, there is nothing to worry about. You’ve just hit a fitness plateau. This can happen with aerobic or resistance exercise training (“6 Ways to Bust Through a Workout Plateau”, 2022).
“You might start to feel unmotivated, bored, or find you just don’t feel like working out. This is a sign that you may be ready to try a new training style.”
If you are constantly not changing or progressing the exercises you are completing each week, this can lead to a fitness plateau. Workout plateaus can also happen due to overtraining, insufficient recovery time and burnout. Some other specific reasons that could lead to a plateau in fitness – ineffective training routines, not pushing yourself enough, failure to progressively overload muscles, inconsistent training, unhealthy diet and lifestyle or lack of sleep (“How to Break Through Your Fitness Plateau | Fitness Nation”, 2022).
How can we overcome this plateau?
One of the easiest ways to overcome a plateau is to make your muscles work harder rather than longer. To break out of a rut, aim for a program with high weight and low reps rather than one with low weight and high reps. Additionally, you’d be surprised how quickly a muscle group adapts to a specific exercise. While varying the intensity of an exercise can help overcome a plateau, changing your exercise routine is just as important. There also may be exercises in your routine that you’ve outgrown. Or there may be some that have become redundant as you’ve expanded your workout.
“When your exercise program fits your lifestyle, you’ll find it much easier to maintain”
We look at these plateaus as a good thing. They are a sign that you’ve progressed so much that it’s time to try something new. To continue to see improvement and to break through your plateau, you must make changes to your fitness routine. When your exercise program fits your lifestyle, you’ll find it much easier to maintain, and knowing when it’s time to intensify or take a break from your training will help you to keep seeing results and steer clear of a plateau (“How to Successfully Overcome a Workout Plateau”, 2022).
Are you in the plateau stage of your fitness journey? We have the tools and tricks to get you out the other side.
Give Longevity Exercise Physiology Drummoyne, Edgecliff, Marrickville, Bella Vista, Randwick, Pymble, Balmain, Neutral Bay, Coburg – Melbourne, and Barrie, Ontario – Canada a call on 1300 964 002!
Written by Annabel Bergman
References:
6 Ways to Bust Through a Workout Plateau. (2022). Retrieved 3 August 2022, from https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/workout-plateau#bottom-line
How to Break Through Your Fitness Plateau | Fitness Nation. (2022). Retrieved 3 August 2022, from https://fitness-nation.net/2019/10/29/how-to-break-through-your-fitness-plateau/
How to Successfully Overcome a Workout Plateau. (2022). Retrieved 3 August 2022, from https://www.byrdie.com/workout-plateau-5090487