Have you hit a plateau in your training and don’t know how to make it more challenging? 

As we go through different phases of our fitness journey, we can hit plateaus. A plateau is when your body adapts and gets used to the demands of whatever workouts you may be doing in your week to week fitness routine. You go from progressing and excelling for some time, whether that be with lifting heavier, moving faster or increasing stamina, before that progress levels out. You can feel stuck and as though you’re no longer making improvements or seeing growth in your training. It definitely can be frustrating but shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a bad thing! Hitting a plateau can give you that boost to make a change in your routine and push you to set new goals so you can keep reaching new heights and challenging your body in different ways to keep that excitement alive with your fitness!

Here are some helpful tips to help you overcome a fitness plateau! ⬇️

•Increase your repetitions/volume/weight👀

•TUT (Time under tension)/Tempo- Slow your roll and feel that deep burrrrn

•Progress a specific exercise! (e.g. For a push-up you can do a more difficult variation like adding a weighted plate on your back, resistance band, go on a decline, lift a leg, add a clap, etc)

•PAUSE (You can pause at the bottom of the move or the most challenging position which forces your muscles to stay under tension for a longer period, eliminates momentum leading to rely purely on muscle strength to initiate the next phase of your lift, helps improve mind to muscle connection and can target weak spots during your lifts)

•Track your performance (sometimes it helps to take note of weights you’re using, or your heart rate and zone you’re usually in on a cardio day. This way you can look back over the weeks and see areas where you can step it up a notch and push a little harder in)

•Look at your nutrition and sleep patterns (Are your meal choices supporting your fitness goals? How is your protein/water intake? Are you getting enough sleep and rest?)

•Decrease how much you rest in between sets OR increase duration time

•PULSES (Limiting/reducing your range of motion to intensify the engagement of your target muscles by placing constant tension on it)

•Combine exercises (e.g. instead of just doing a bicep curl you can do a reverse lunge into bicep curl + shoulder press! Get fancy with it)

•Increase your range of motion (This can allow your joints to move to a deeper range and help increase mobility!)

•Drop Sets! This is an effective training technique where you perform an exercise to failure at any given weight and then reduce the weight while continuing to perform reps until failure again. This helps to increase time under tension, push muscle past it’s fatigue point while induing muscle growth!

Don’t be afraid to step outside of your comfort zone and find ways to push and challenge your body in the gym! This is what’s going to ultimately help you get stronger and break through those plateaus!!