You’ve been exercising regularly and eating right, but you’ve noticed your results are stagnating. What’s the problem? You could be facing the dreaded plateau, where your muscles adapt to your exercises, and your fitness progress slows. If this sounds like you, check out the best ways to push past a workout plateau.
Track Your Fitness Progress
First, you have to know that you’ve reached a fitness plateau before you can figure out how to overcome it. It’s best to track your fitness so that you have actual data to examine. Start by determining your fitness level, then adjust your workouts around your results. Through tracking, you can pinpoint which muscles are plateauing and adapt accordingly.
Focus on Nutrition
Fitness is about more than just exercise; nutrition is as crucial to your muscle growth as lifting weights. If you think you’ve reached a fitness plateau, changing your diet could get you the progress you want. Sometimes all it takes to push through is taking a nutrition plan more seriously or adjusting it for more protein or vegetables.
Progressive Overload
Progressive overload is the act of subtly increasing your workout over time so that you continuously push your muscles to their limits. Increasing the number of reps, sets, weights, intensity, or sessions in your workout can keep your body guessing and avoid stagnating. Sometimes it’s as simple as switching the order of your exercises. Be careful and take it slowly, though; you don’t want to push your body past its limit and risk injury.
Get a Personal Trainer
Getting another set of eyes can be the best way to overcome a plateau in your fitness. Hiring a personal trainer, even if it’s only for a one-time consultation, can help you see things you didn’t realize about your fitness plan and offer ideas on how to change your plan for better growth. Plus, trainers can critique your technique to ensure you’re performing exercises correctly for maximum output.
Get More Rest
Fitness and exercise can become addicting, and taking a rest day may feel like a missed opportunity for growth, but you mustn’t skip them. Rest days let your body replenish its energy stores and repair muscle tissue, leading to muscle growth. Give your body an extra break or take a weeklong hiatus for recovery. When you come back, you’ll marvel at how much your body’s grown!
Your body is unique and will respond to different strategies meant to provoke a training response. If you feel your fitness is stagnating, this article has hopefully offered you some ideas of the best ways to push past a workout plateau and reach a new level of fitness.
