Overcome Your Exercise Plateau

Have you become frustrated with your workout program? Let me guess, you started a program, got results, and improvements stopped. There are many ways to eliminate the plateau and ensure you are always progressing.

The human body is incredibly effective at adapting to change. The inability to progress, low motivation, and fatigue are all signs of a plateau, are all usually caused by over training.

Rest

Taking at least one day off a week is vital for full recovery and allows the body to make gains or changes. After three to four months of steady exercise, evidence suggests taking a week off is beneficial for re-setting the body. Getting the appropriate amount of sleep is equally important. The body regenerates and repairs muscle tissue the fastest during sleep. The average adult should strive for seven to eight hours to ensure the body is properly rested.

Don't Over Do It. Train with intension. Technique is more effective than lifting heavy weight. Too much strain on the muscle will only cause injury and inability to rebuild.

Nutrition

As you increase your workout time, intensity and weight, you must meet your body's caloric requirement for recovery and daily needs. As your intensity in training increases, so does your metabolism.

Challenge Your Muscle

Don't try a different workout program each month. Stimulate the muscles by keeping the body guessing and preventing muscle adaptation, by focusing on changing frequency, intensity and time under tension of a muscle. The purpose of physical training is to stress the body so it improves its capacity to exercise and is beneficial only as long as it forces the body to adapt. If the stress is not sufficient to overload the body, then no adaptation occurs. If stress cannot be tolerated, injury or over-training results. Muscles must be overloaded to hypertrophy and improve strength.

Muscle can do two things: 1. Grow and/or stronger and 2. Shrink and/or weaken. To build muscle, change the frequency, intensity and time of your training to break down the muscle fibers and re-build the muscle tissue. When lifting weight, changing the rate at which you perform the different parts of the lift. Training with varying tempo and rest can help you overcome the dreaded plateau.

Tempo

Weight lifting tempo refers to the number of seconds it takes for you to complete a full range of motion of one repetition, usually called a lift. The importance of "time under tension" determines the amount of stimulus a muscle is exposed to. Let's take an olympic style lift in which we use explosive ballistic contractions. The lift here may be around 1 second up and 1 second down. If use the 10 rep range, our muscle will be under tension for a total of 20 seconds. Now, try a slow 2 second up and 4 second down lift, and we have 60 seconds time under tension. That is a big difference.

There are four numbers represented when using tempo:

The first number is the eccentric or down motion of the lift, also known as the "negative"phase. During this phase, the muscle is being stretched. When trying to build muscle, this number is usually slow and controlled to fatigue the muscle and stimulating growth.

The second number is the pause or hold before the concentric phase or upward motion (the third number). The concentric phase, or "positive" phase, contracts the muscle while carrying the weight or load. Here, use a faster momentum to return the weight to the start position.

The fourth number represents the starting point of the movement. Here you can either pause or immediately begin the next repetition.

Once the muscle has adapted to a certain tempo, change the tempo to stimulate the muscle, increase fatigue and get better results.

It is important to note that using proper form is most important element when weight lifting. When momentum is introduced, there will be less tension on the muscle, which will lessen your gains. Use slow and controlled movement with the proper form, while focusing on the muscle being worked. If these techniques are not in place, you will not sufficiently work the muscles.

Flavia Del Monte is a Registered Nurse, Certified Physical Trainer, Certified Nutritionist and the creator of Full-Body-Licious. You can read more about her training programs, nutrition advice and general fitness on her women fitness blog.

Break Even Your Most Stubborn Exercise and Weight Loss Plateau

They say you can be a jack of all trades, but a master of none. Your goal is not to do everything under the sun, but instead to master a handful of exercises.

The first thing to do is to select a handful of exercises that you want to master. I recommend selecting 5-9 basic exercises that become your bread and butter movements. Such examples could be squats, pushups, chin ups, dead lifts, any sort of kick, running a mile, rowing 1,000 meters and so on.

Now that you have your exercises, your goal is to become more proficient at them. In our cosmopolitan fitness culture we tend to have goals around how we want our body to change. While this isn't bad, I find that those who focus on becoming better at what they do, rather than how their body changes, tend to have the most success.

If you focus on running a faster mile or lifting more weight you might just discover that those physical image goals take care of themselves.

One great way to accomplish this is to attempt to do more work in a given amount of time or the same amount of work in less time.

Like I mentioned before, you can aim to constantly run a mile in a faster time, or you can run a greater distance in 15 minutes.

This also works great for strength training. I like to use a kitchen timer and I set it for 5 minutes. My goal is to see how many reps I can do of the exercise within that 5 minute period. Then on my next workout I try and break my old record.

This is a great way to help you push yourself to that next level.

Of course, using this method will also result in a plateau at some point. No matter how hard you try you are just not going to be able to run a mile any faster or do more than 100 pushups within that 5 minute period.

When this happens you simply change either the work load or the time limit. For example instead of seeing how fast you can run a mile, you now see how fast you can run 1.5 miles or maybe how fast you can run up a long hill.

When it comes to weight training you can add more weight, or even lower the weight to change your potential rep range. You can also use a different time set so instead of using a 5 minute time limit use a 2 minute time limit to make things a little more urgent.

Whatever you do, don't get caught up in the details. Simply remember that your goal is to become as proficient as possible at a handful of exercises and to not stop looking for new performance potential.

Be fit and live free,

Matt Schifferle

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Get Past Your Weight Lifting Plateau Using Negatives

Have you ever experienced the perplexing phenomenon that occurs despite going to the gym week after week, month after month, and year after year, to find that you are plagued with only being able to max out at lifting the same weight that has been haunting you in your dreams? And no matter what you do you are unable to lift one pound more? Well alas, there is a way to put that nightmare to rest, step over your plateau and move your weight lifting exercises to the next level. The technique is called Overloading.

What is Overloading? Let us use the bench press exercise as an example. Say that you have been stuck at 225lbs for the longest time and have not been able to get passed that weight. The way to develop a muscle to make it stronger and bigger is to put more stress on it than it is accustomed to supporting. In this case you need more than 225lbs. So in order to overload that muscle you need to go to 230lbs or more to add more stress on the muscle than it is used to bearing. But you cannot get passed the 225lbs so what should you do? You should do Negatives!

Caution: Always use a machine when performing negatives unless you are with an experienced person that has done it before.

How to do a Negative exercise?

So, with a person that I trust to spot me I add, let us say, 235lbs on the bench press station. Now, by myself, I would not ordinarily be able to perform even one rep, which would be good! But with a spotter I can get the weight up and down. The objective of the exercise is to focus on controlling the negative part of the lift by yourself as much as possible, for a 4 to 5 second lowering count to your stopping point. Start by lifting the weight off the rack (with your spotter's help) and controlling the weight as it is coming down to your stopping point for a (1 one thousand, 2 one thousand, etc.) count until you get to 4 to 5 seconds at the stopping point of your lift. Your spotter should help as little as possible on the negative portion of the lift, if at all. Once you get at the bottom of your lift, at your stopping point, you allow the person spotting you to help you lift the weight back up to the starting point. You will then repeat this exercise until you cannot control it well on the negative phase of the lift by yourself.

Why add weight that you cannot push for even one rep?

Because on ALL lifts you are stronger on the negative phase of the lift and you can utilize this Overloading technique on any body part. So, get those negatives in so you can make more positives!

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Overtraining: The Most Common Cause for Hitting a Plateau

Over-training is one of the most common causes of hitting a plateau in your bodybuilding program. If you are not making progress from your bodybuilding workouts, the first thing you need to determine is if you are over-trained or not.? Now, how do you know if you are over-trained?

If you notice that your energy levels are very low. you lack motivation to go to the gym, your pulse in the morning when you wake up is higher than normal, your muscles constantly ache, you are not recovering, your strength is going down at the gym, and your immunity is low, chances are that you are over-trained.?

If you are over-training, the solution?is to simply take a couple of days off to allow the body to completely rejuvenate itself and then ease back into training. This works amazingly well.? Also, by using a periodized bodybuilding workout?as well as following the right bodybuilding diet you minimize your chances of ever getting over-trained again.? Always remember the need to periodize your training because if you choose to do high volume workouts all of the time, eventualy your body will reach the point that it can no longer recover.? That is why periodization varies the training by alternating weeks of high volume workouts with weeks of higher intensity/heavier work.?

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