How to Break through a Fitness Plateau

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Hitting a plateau, whether its weight loss, muscle gain or overall cardiovascular fitness can be incredibly frustrating, and it can lead to a loss of motivation which can even cause you to lose focus on your goals. Recognize that reaching a plateau is actually a good sign – it means that you’ve made real progress and your body is showing it. It’s important to know that there is almost always a way to break through that plateau though, so let’s have a look at what it is and how to break through a fitness plateau.

What Is a Fitness Plateau?

A fitness plateau is really just a term for when you stop making noticeable gains to your fitness level or goals, whatever they might be. For cardio fitness, you might find that you simply can’t improve your running or cycling pace, or for weight loss, you might have stalled and stopped losing weight. It’s important to accept that it’s impossible for you to make the same level of progress constantly over an infinite amount of time because when you first start out, you’re much less fit or have a much higher body fat percentage. As you improve, making improvements becomes more difficult. It’s why the very best athletes work for hours every day for months to shave off fractions of a second in their running pace.

You Can Increase the Intensity

When you work out, you’re putting strain on your body. This might be cardiovascular strain, muscular strain, or a combination. Improvements come when your body becomes better at dealing with this strain by getting fitter or stronger. If you find that you are no longer getting fitter or stronger, it’s probably time to increase the intensity of your workouts. There are a lot of ways to do this and knowing how to safely increase intensity is important. Spend some time with a fitness coach or researching before you do. Some basic things you can try include adding more weight to your resistance training, or more distance at your top speed for cardio workouts.

You Can Vary or Change Your Routine

If you hit the gym and do the same workout routine every day, it might be time to mix it up and add some variety. Your body is learning how to use less energy and do less work to complete the tasks you give it so over time your normal routine becomes ineffective. Varying this routine will add additional strain on your body and that’s what we want. Change your normal gym machines for different ones, or do a different exercise completely, like signing up for a yoga course or a HIIT session if you don’t normally do them.

You Can Examine Your Diet

Good gains in your physical fitness and strength start not in the gym, but on your plate at home. Examine your diet carefully, looking at the different things you eat and in what quantities and consider looking into how changing this diet might benefit you. It might be that you need to add more protein to your daily nutrition, or you need to eat less fats. Perhaps the addition of good quality supplements for workout might make that difference you need to break your plateau. If you’re looking for a supplement, then Turkesterone could be a great choice.

Breaking through a fitness plateau can be frustrating and ultimately affect motivation. Understanding how and why it happens and how to get through it and continue to make progress is usually just a case of identify and actioning a change in your workout routine or diet. With a little extra push, you’ll be through the plateau and back to making meaningful gains on your fitness goals in no time.