You’ve been doing a great job getting your workouts in consistently. You’ve found a routine that you enjoy and have seen some results in how you feel and how you look. But, this starts to taper off and you feel stuck where you are, not seeing any increased benefits with your routine. You’ve hit a plateau. Don’t worry, it’s not you. This happens to a lot of people.
When you try something new and challenging your body has to adjust and work harder. Once your body adapts to the challenges it becomes more efficient and won’t have to work as hard as in the beginning. Therefore, you’ll see little to no results after a period of time. When this happens, then you know it’s time for a change. So, what can you change to start seeing results again?
Change Timing To Break Plateau
If you’re not looking to change the way you currently workout (you really love that Zumba class or are set on your 3 day a week weight lifting) you might just have to tweak your current routine. One way to start seeing results again is to increase duration. If you’re taking a class, you don’t really have control over the duration of the class, so you will have to add some additional exercise after class (maybe a run or brisk walk). Adding extra sessions more frequently might work for you too. If you lift weights as part of your regular routine, which I highly recommend, increasing the duration would involve adding more reps, sets, or different exercises to your current workout.
Intensity
Sometimes increasing the duration of our workouts just isn’t an option. There’s plenty of people that say they don’t exercise because they don’t have the time. Most people have busy schedules and can’t spend half their day working out, so at some point continuing to increase the time just isn’t going to be plausible. Another option is to increase intensity to break your plateau. Lacking motivation to increase intensity? Try adding music to your workout. If you’re doing cardio, you’ll need to push yourself to a higher intensity than you’re used to. Think about making your workout faster, more powerful, and increasing your heart rate. When you’re lifting you’ll need to increase the amount of weight you’re lifting in each set to increase the intensity. You can also add in some some more difficult or compound lifts. A compound lift involves using more than one body part in each rep, for example, combining a squat with a bicep curl. If you haven’t been doing any HIIT training, I highly recommend it.
Change
Maybe you’re not set on keeping your current workout routine. Maybe you’re bored with what you’ve been doing and don’t even feel motivated to do it anymore. That’s when you want to start changing things up, because who wants to do something boring for longer? There’s all kinds of different ways to move (exercise). Movement should be fun and make you want to do more of it. So, if you’re bored start looking for new challenges.
Not everybody enjoys the same things. It might take some time to figure out what you like. In today’s technological world it only take a few clicks to search for new options. It could be as easy as trying a new class at the gym, maybe trade your Zumba class in for a kickboxing class. If you usually go running, try spinning or a HIIT workout. When you find something you like make sure you stick with it long enough to see the results.
When you find out what works for you I’d love to hear about it! Did you find a new activity that doesn’t even make you feel like you’re working out because it’s so much fun? Tell me about it.
