Fitness tip - Hit a plateau? Change things up...

In my two decades of fitness training I've witnessed hundreds of people come in and out of the gyms I've worked out and owned who seem to be literally on a treadmill as far as their fitness regimen goes.

Here's the fact of the matter folks. You have to change up your fitness routines every so often to see continual results.

I found, when I was a personal trainer, that the funnest time in my relationship with my clients was when they were first starting out.  That is when they saw the most significant results from their new found fitness regimen.  After about six months though is when the real work began.

You see, our bodies are very efficient machines.  They only want to burn as many calories as is absolutely necessary.  This hardwiring probably goes back to our caveman days, when food was scarce.  Our bodies did not know when the next meal was coming so they conserved as many calories as possible just in case there was a long drought between feedings.

Well here in America, food is plentiful.  So we don't need to worry about when our next meal is coming.  More than likely it will be within a few hours.  However our biological/genetic code does not know that.

So what do you do to break those plateaus that we all reach in our training regimens?

Basically there are three variables you can change in your fitness regimen;

1. Frequency - how many times you work out in a week;

2. Duration - how long you work out each session;

3. Intensity - how hard you work out during your sessions.

Since most people are too busy to increase the frequency or duration of their workouts, the intensity of the workout is usually the best alternative.

Now, when I say increase the intensity I'm not telling you to go so hard in the gym that you lose your breakfast/lunch/dinner (depending what time of day you workout).

No, what I am suggesting is just incremental changes in what you do.  For instance, if you like to walk/run on the treadmill, increase the speed a bit. Maybe a 1/2 mi. an hour faster.  Or raise the elevation so that you are in essence climbing up hill.  Try interval training whereby you run/walk at a very quick pace then slow it down to a more comfortable pace, doing several sets of intervals during your normal training time.

If you lift weights, try increasing the weight you use on particular exercises and dropping down the number of reps.  But be cautious.  Don't go so heavy that you hurt yourself.  If you're already lifting heavy, go higher reps/lighter weight.  Add different exercises.  All you have to do is replace one of your current exercises with something different.

What will happen is that your body will say, "whoa, we haven't done this before! This is different.  I need more fuel if we're going to be doing this." And you'll start to see results again.

But you have to continually change your routine, because eventually your body will get used to the new routine as well.

Good luck and good training to you.

 

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