"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them"
Bruce Lee
Today I’m going to get a little more technical, but hang in there because this is one of the biggest secrets to getting rapid results, sticking with exercise and avoiding injury.
In mistake #1 of the 10 Biggest Workout Mistakes we talked about having a plan and structure to your workout. There is a catch. You can take this too far. Some believe following a circuit of machines in the gym or the same routine is having a plan. While this is better than nothing, it usually leads to no longer seeing any progress, boredom, overuse injury and ultimately a lot of frustration.
Having the right plan and structure that constantly progresses is the key to finding the right balance of a good plan that avoids the dreaded plateau. A good plan and structure actually gives you a baseline to be able to adjust your routine and progress your workout with a new stimulus.
A common fad out there that is even perpetuated by some personal trainers is not ever doing the same workout twice. In other words, every time you workout it’s something new and random. The rationale behind such a program is keeping the workout “fresh”. While this may sound good in theory, the problem is never having a baseline to gage your progress and systematically make adjustments that create specific physiological response to keep you progressing. In other words, you are working out every day doing something different and HOPING something good happens.
The chart above represents the relationship between having a workout plan that constantly progresses creating a new stimulus that helps you avoid a plateau and ultimately decrease your body fat if that is your goal (or increase strength, endurance or just about any other goal).
The chart represents what happens when trying to improve your fitness or decrease body fat over the long term. You see, plateaus are necessary for our survival. They are your body’s natural mechanism for adapting to the physiological and psychological stimulus you impose on it. Your body has no idea you are on a treadmill or running on the road. It has no idea if you are lifting heavy box or dumbbells. Its goal is to adapt to this new work if you continue to repeat it.
The bad news is that we don’t want it to adapt to our workouts if we have not achieved our fitness or fat loss goals yet. We want our body to continually adapt and change to new workouts. This continual adaption can be an improvement in strength, cardiovascular conditioning, body fat loss and more.
You can see by the graph that each plateau includes a period of no progress, followed by a slight "sliding back" before you progress again. Additionally, each subsequent plateau occurs at a faster rate than the previous one, and is usually a smaller progression each time. This phase length varies from novice to experienced trainees. Novices can likely progress on the same program for far longer than an experienced trainee - although changing the routine can be useful psychologically.
The key to "breaking" plateaus is to manipulate your nutrition and exercise programs SLIGHTLY. A subtle change is often enough to 'kick start' progress. The progression of a single variable like load (weight or resistance) used in an exercise can keep forcing adaptations even when other variables remain the same. Other variables can be reps, sets, rest periods, tempos and exercise selection.
A good coach is always trying to stay one step ahead of any plateaus by manipulating the training variables to ensure continued progress. For example, we change repetitions, sets, rest periods and tempos sometimes once a week for our clients and at the least every two weeks. During a particular workout phase typically lasting 4 weeks we will also progress their exercises slightly depending on how well they progress and we absolutely make sure to completely change workouts every four weeks. Depending on a clients progress and our monitoring of heart rates and respiration we change the resistance (example: weight) every workout, the nutrition program as needed, cardiovascular exercise prescription and energy system training.
The bottom line is to keep your program progressing to avoid physiological and psychological plateaus. Don't get stuck on the circuit of machines just because it was the "program" they gave you when joining the gym. But remember that eventually hitting a plateau is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, our ultimate goal IS a plateau - to reach a favorable body composition range and stay there. We just don’t want to hit a plateau before we achieve the fitness and body composition we would like to maintain!
In good health,
Pete Piranio BS, CSCS
Owner/Fitness Consultant
Fitness Together
www.FitnessTogether.net
P.S. If you would like us to design a program for you, schedule an Introductory Session and Consultation. We’ll assess you current fitness level, ability level and personal situation, then give you a recommended program to get you to your goals. You can learn more here: www.FitnessTogether.net/freeconsult.html
