Disclaimer: I am not a fitness professional, and it is not be used as fitness advice.
Regular exercise is important for your physical health because the more fit you are, the quicker you will recover from illnesses, and everyone can benefit from better health. If you are consistently showing up at the gym, there is nothing worse than hitting a plateau and feeling like you aren’t getting as much benefit from workouts. Plateaus are frustrating make you not want to exercise, but they have happened to most people who have been exercising for a while. People sometimes get discouraged and give up when they hit a plateau, but you will never see progress if you quit every time you have a minor setback. Plateur are not a sign that you should quit, and it’s a sign that you may not be pushing yourself as hard as you think, and need to make adjustments to your routine to start seeing progress again. What should you do if you hit a fitness plateau? In this post, I am going to share what I would do if I hit a fitness plateau and stopped making progress in my workout.
Increase the intensity of your workout- If you are consistent with your workout and do exercises correctly, you will get stronger the more you exercise. Fitness is something that you should always be improving on because it doesn’t matter how fit you are; you can always improve your physical health. If I were exercising consistently and all of a sudden my exercises felt easy, I would take that as a sign that I have improved my strength and need to increase the intensity of my workout. If your exercises are no longer challenging you, it might be time to increase the duration of your walk, do more reps during your weight-lifting session, or lift heavier weights. When you are consistent with your exercise routine, your strength will improve, and exercises that were hard three months ago might not be as hard now. It is so important that you are consistently increasing the intensity of your workout because if exercising is easy, it’s probably not benefiting you as much as you think. Once a month, I increase the duration of my walk by about a minute and do a few more reps when I am lifting to ensure my body never gets used to my routine. You never want to get too used to your workout because over time, your body will adjust and you’ll stop making fitness progress.
Take a rest day- People often think that when you hit a fitness plateau, it means that you need to do more. Fitness plateaus can sometimes mean that you aren’t pushing yourself hard enough, but it can also be a sign that you are pushing yourself too hard and need a rest. Rest days are just as important as the workout, and if you are pushing hard seven days a week and hit a plateau, it is likely that your exercise frequency is not the problem, and it’s the lack of rest days. Rest days do not ruin fitness progress, and they help you gain it because our bodies need time to rest and recover to continue to gain strength. If you are struggling to gain fitness progress and have been consistent with your workout routine, take a rest day to see if that helps. Sometimes people push themselves too hard during exercises and start to lose progress because they aren’t having enough rest days. I have had moments where I have pushed myself too hard during exercises and started to lose fitness progress from lack of rest days, and as soon as I took a rest day, I started to see progress again. You will not have the energy to push yourself to the absolute max if you are going hard seven days a week because our bodies can only handle so many high-intensity workouts before they become too much.
Take a look at your nutrition- When it comes to fitness, a lot of people think that all you have to do to improve your physical health is to be consistent with your workout routine. Consistency is important for improved physical health, but nutrition plays a major role because if you aren’t eating in a way to support your goals, it may be difficult to make progress. Good nutrition is what gives you the energy to push hard during your workouts, and if your nutrition is not on point, it may start to negatively affect your workout. I am a strong believer that not everyone is going to benefit from the same types of diet, and it depends on how hard you push yourself, because people who do more high-impact workouts frequently are going to need more calories than those who don’t do that. If you hit a fitness plateau, take a look at your nutrition because sometimes your exercise frequency isn’t the problem, and it’s poor eating habits. I used to struggle to have the energy to exercise, and it wasn’t until I made tweaks to my nutrition that I had the energy to do more exercise. Nutrition plays a major role in fitness progress because if you eat terribly, you won’t have the energy to push hard.
Do a different type of workout– There are tons of different types of exercises that can give you a lot of benefits, and I don’t think there is one specific exercise everyone should be doing. If you feel like you hit a plateau in your workout routine, try doing a different type of workout, and instead of walking on the treadmill, maybe try taking a spin class if you are able. As a disabled person, I am a lot more limited on the types of workouts I am able to do, but I do try to do a variety of different exercises because it prevents me from getting bored and keeps my body challenged. Sometimes you feel stuck because you have been doing the same type of workout for too long and need to change things up. There are benefits with every type of workout, and it’s good to occasionally try something new because it challenges your body in a slightly different way than you aren’t used to.
Don’t change your workout routine too often– When I first started exercising, I struggled to gain fitness progress because I was doing a different type of workout every single time I exercise and my body was confused. I am a strong believer that variety can help improve your fitness, but if you change it too often, it can backfire. Pick one workout and work on improving that for at least a month before you change things up, because changing your workout too often could be the reason you aren’t making progress. It can be very hard to get good at a specific type of workout if you are doing something different every single time. It is good to change up your routine, but you don’t have to change it every single time you exercise because consistency is important for maintaining and improving fitness.
Fitness plateaus are frustrating, and sometimes it makes you feel like a failure, but fitness plateaus are nothing other than a learning experience. You can get yourself out of a fitness plateau and start seeing progress again by simply making tweaks to your routine. Don’t get discouraged if you hit a fitness plateau, because often it is a good thing and is a sign you have improved strength and need to do something harder. Fitness is something that you always need to be improving on because if you do the exact same thing over and over again, eventually your body will get used to it, and it will become easy. I never increase my workout routine so much that it’s unachievable, but at the same time, I never want it to be easy because if I am going to cause myself pain, I want to get results from it. How do you avoid a fitness plateau? If you liked this post, please leave a comment below and share it with your friends.
Subscribe And Never Miss A Post
My Rockin Disabled Life 