Dec 09
15
How to avoid Plateauing
Chances are when you first went to the gym, started a new workout, or did any new exercise you were pretty sore for the next few days. But if you stuck with whatever new exercise you were doing you saw some pretty significant gains in the first few weeks. This is due to 2 reasons:
1. Neurological: The first few times you do something you will be a bit shaky until your body adapts and “figures out” how it should go. Once your body has learned the new exercise you will do it better without any new muscle growth.
2. Physiological: Any new type of stress you put on your muscles is going to cause muscle growth in muscles that weren’t used very much before. This means that there will be a quick adapting period in the first few weeks of doing an exercise with large amounts of strength gain.
But what about after those first few weeks? You probably noticed you weren’t very sore anymore, and the shakiness had disappeared. Whatever the exercise was, you most likely stuck with it for several weeks to several months. But even if you worked hard you found that the gains were nothing like in the beginning and over time the resulting strength gains slowed down and may have even stopped.
This is called plateauing. It’s a pretty common term in weight lifting circles, and refers to a point when a certain exercise fails to deliver any benefit no matter how hard the person tries. It can also refer to a specific level of fitness that a person is having trouble moving past.
There are several ways you may plateau, and depending on the way, there will be a different solution to overcome this.
Stopped losing weight: Your body has reached an energy balance. As I’ve described before, you have as much energy coming into your body as is going out. Either cut the calories, or increase your level of exercise. Or, you can increase the amount of protein you are eating (Protein powders are great for this)and increase your exercise. This will allow your muscles to grow and burn more calories at a resting rate allowing you to lose more weight.
Stopped gaining strength: Again you have 2 options. The first is to increase your eating and let your muscles grow bigger and stronger. Or, change the exercises you are doing. Frequently changing your exercise routine enables continual “fast growth” like what I described in the beginning of this post. People often call this “muscle confusion” and many multi-week exercise plans use this method.
In summary, the 2 best things you can do for yourself when exercising and/or losing weight is to make sure you are getting enough food to fuel your muscles, and to continually change your exercise routine every few weeks. This will ensure that muscles are always growing at a peak rate and that they have the supplies they need to do all that growing.