5 Ways To Break Through Your Fitness Plateau!
1. Get more sleep
Sleep is the best form of rest and recovery that you could possibly do, and it's free. This is when your body grows and heals. This happens because while we sleep the body releases hormones that are vital to recovery, mainly HGH. Research shows that a surge in growth hormone occurs about every 2 hours during prolonged sleep. HGH acts on many tissues to promote recovery, healing, and growth. It also helps raise other hormones vital to recovery, such as insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1). Proper sleep also influences the body’s response to stress and nutrition and can even play a part in increased metabolism. A study was done that shows sleep-deprived men had impaired glucose metabolism, decreased testosterone, and increased afternoon cortisol. On top of that, the impaired glucose had the greatest decreased response after breakfast, which potentially reduces the optimal effects of the nutrients ingested. Researchers have also found that men and women deprived of sleep are much more likely to make poor nutrition choices. The participants in the study showed a much stronger neuro response to junk food when they were sleep-deprived. Since nutrition is so important for recovery, a sleep-deprived diet is not likely one that optimizes tissue healing, performance, or fat loss. I know this is easier said than done for parents but for most of us, making 8 hours of sleep a night can and should be a top priority. Think of it as free and safe medicine.
2. Eat more protein
The word protein is derived from the Greek word meaning “of prime importance.” Eating enough protein will also aid in recovery and growth throughout your fitness journey. It will help you feel full and strong. If you are not eating enough protein then you might not realize how much it matters until you increase your protein intake. It’s hard to say how much protein you should be eating because everyone is different but The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for protein is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. Keep in mind that the RDA is the amount of a nutrient that you need to keep from getting sick, so it is the bare minimum. If you are physically active, let alone doing a strength training program, you are going to want more than the bare minimum. The most commonly used protein recommendation in the fitness industry is that you should consume 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. That may work for some people but it’s probably not going to work for someone with a lot of weight to lose. If you are a 160 lb woman and your goal weight is 135 lbs, it would be extremely difficult for you to all of a sudden start to eat 160 grams of protein each day. Not to mention, if you did eat that much protein immediately you might not feel great. That’s unrealistic and it’s certainly not something that I would ask of my online coaching clients. A better approach would be to eat the number of grams for every pound of bodyweight that is your goal body weight, instead of your current body weight. That would be 135 grams of protein in a day which is much more realistic. Another way to increase your protein intake is to make sure to have it with every meal and for your snacks. If you are someone with the typical diet then you probably eat a lot of foods that are high in carbohydrates and fats. Making the adjustment of adding protein with every meal will increase your grams per day significantly. You’ll notice great benefits like increased energy, feeling more full, and recovering from your workouts better.
In my experience, a lot of people can benefit from eating more protein. Sometimes we think we are eating more protein than we actually are and that’s why I think it’s beneficial to track our protein intake. If you are looking to break through a plateau of strength or fat loss and you don’t know exactly how much protein you eat each day I highly suggest you track it for a few days to find out. Once you know what you are eating you can adjust if you need to. If you increase your protein intake and start to have more energy, feel stronger, and recover better, you know where you were lacking.
3. Rest longer in between sets
With poor fitness mindsets like "extreme workouts" or "no rest for the wicked" it's very common for people to rush through their sets and finish a workout in 20 minutes. If that's you then I can already tell you that you aren't strength training. There's a big difference in cardio, HIIT, and strength training, you want to make sure you are doing the right thing for your goals. If you are doing 20-30 minute workouts and not making any progress then it's time for you to double that time. And I don't mean to do that workout at the same intensity for another 20 minutes. I mean it's time to slow it down. Take 2 minutes rest in between each set to let the main muscle group being worked recover as much as it can for the next set. That way you can output maximal power in the next set and create the strength changes that you want.
You don’t always have to be moving to get stronger or burn fat. Resting in between sets is more important than doing things back to back. Say you are training your pull-ups and you have 3 sets of 5 reps to do. You’ll want to do your 5 pull-ups and then rest for 2-3 minutes to let all of the muscles you used for the pull-up to recover for the next set. But if you go right into a set of burpees or shoulder presses then your muscles don’t have any time to recover. They will be more fatigued and as a result, you will have less strength to exert during your next set of pull-ups, and ultimately you won’t get as strong as you can as quickly as you can. If you don’t like to sit still in between sets for 2-3 minutes you have a couple of options. You can take a less strenuous route by walking or doing active flexibility exercises in between sets. If you want to push yourself a little more you can use a traditional superset format but don’t use the same body part. If pull-ups are the main exercise you could superset them with a lower-body exercise like lunges so the arms can rest while you are still working the lower body. If you want to increase that time even more then you can do something like upper body, lower body, core. By the time you finish the core exercise, your upper body has rested enough to exert full strength on the next set.
4. Make your exercises more difficult
If you are doing 12 -20 reps in a set or 50+ reps of an exercise in one workout then you are training to failure and that's not strength training. Can you get stronger with this method? Yes, you can to an extent, but it's certainly not the best way to get stronger. If you want to get stronger than you have ever been then a set should be challenging well before rep number 10. Your last two repetitions should get pretty difficult around 5 or 7 reps. When you start to get upwards of 12 or more reps then you are in the endurance-building phase. When it comes to building strength, stick to sets of 5 to 8 reps and make sure they are difficult reps with good form.
Take the push-up for example. If you can do 20 push-ups and just keep practicing them until you can do 25 and then 30, are you getting stronger? Technically, yes. But that strength won’t translate to much more than being able to do more push-ups. To increase your overall push strength, you will want to make that pushing exercise more difficult so you can only perform between 5 or 10 reps. To do this you have a couple of options. You can use a different exercise that requires the same muscle groups and same movement pattern, like a dip, or you can use the same exercise but in a more difficult variation. The latter would be elevating your feet on a box or doing diamond push-ups. This would make the exercise more difficult which will increase the stress on the muscles and create a change in strength relative to more than just the movement being performed. When you are lifting weights it’s easy to make the exercise more difficult, just increase the weight when it becomes too easy. So if you are doing the bench press and a weight that was once hard for you to do 5 reps becomes so easy for you to do 12 reps, don’t just keep adding reps on with the same weight. Instead, add a few pounds of extra weight so now doing 5 reps is as hard for you with that weight as it was with the weight that you first started on. Always aim to make things strenuous to build strength.
5. Sign up for my StrongFit Foundations Online Coaching Program
This is an individualized program that takes the guesswork out of training so you can get the right exercises with the right amount of reps and sets to help you reach your goals. That way you can spend less time racking your brain on what you are doing or what you should be doing, and you can spend more time with your family and friends doing what you enjoy. You will receive a personalized workout program each month, nutrition guidance, my favorite protein-packed recipes, and all of the accountability you need in order to become the best version of yourself you have ever imagined. This program is launching on October 25th and will be 20% off for 1 week only!
Thank you for taking the time to read this article, I hope it serves you well.
Much Love,
Patrick
