WHY YOUR FITNESS HAS PLATEAUED

I see it time and time again. A member joins our gym, falls in love with fitness, attends classes consistently and makes tons of progress. They are able to lift more weight, they are faster, their body composition has changed and they have become a stronger version of themselves mentally and physically. 

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After consistent training 4-6 days per week for 2+ years, most people start to reach a plateau in their fitness. This can become mentally and physically discouraging due to all the progress they have made in the first few years of consistent training. This happens to everyone, including myself. Everyone will start to reach their natural physical capacity. When this occurs, it becomes more imperative to analyze the details that will continue our growth within our fitness. Below are five areas to analyze when your fitness has plateaued.

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Nutrition  

If nutrition has not been a priority in your fitness journey, it will need to become a priority for you to continue to progress in your fitness. Signing on with a Nutrition Coach can be the first step in the right direction. The coach will analyze your current habits, along with your fitness goals and will work out a plan to start building new habits that will improve your fitness.

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Not Prioritizing Your Fitness  

You may have made tremendous progress over the past few years. You were making progress in all areas of your fitness. You are stronger and faster than before. When you reach this point, you need to start attacking specific areas that you may want to improve. If you are looking to obtain a pull up, you are going to have to tailor your training to that specific modality of fitness. If you are looking to get better at your power lifts (squats, deadlifts, bench press) you are going to want to prioritize those movements during your fitness and not focus as much on other areas. For some it may be prioritizing their mobility to obtain a greater range of motion in particular movements to render greater results. Talking to your Coach about your goals is the best way to gain traction in specific areas of your fitness. Remember, if everything is important, nothing is important. You have to prioritize what is important to you at this moment of your fitness.  

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Prioritizing Quantity Over Quality  

If you are attempting to approach your workouts with an inappropriate scaling option (training with too heavy of weight or too challenging of movements) you will hinder your opportunity for growth. Reducing the weight or adjusting the movement to appropriate scaling options will allow for more quality within your movement patterns. If your movement patterns improve you will find more success as you attempt heavier weights or more challenging movements. Taking two steps back to work towards an additional step forward. 

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Your Genetics 

We are not all created as equal in regards to our physical capabilities. In regards to our genetics some people are built with more strength and explosive power making them stronger at heavy lifting, others have a stronger gymnastics base providing them the ability to move their body through space with ease (push ups, pull ups) and others have the ability to sustain long distance cardio vascular exercise for long periods of time. That does not mean that we can’t get better at these different domains of fitness. All it means is we are genetically predisposed to being stronger in some modalities more than others and we need to adjust our training to get better in specific areas.

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Previous Fitness Experience 

From birth, your life experiences build upon each other and create the person you are today physically and mentally. If you are someone who was exposed to a diverse range of athletic endeavors through fitness, recreational activities, sports and play, all of those previous experiences will transfer over to your current participation in fitness. Sometimes more time with your fitness will support you building new movement patterns that take thousands  of hours to develop. Give yourself some grace if you are just starting your fitness journey.

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As we move along through our journey of health and fitness, we should not look at plateaus in our fitness as permanent,  but as an opportunity to become self-aware of our current fitness levels, re-assessing our goals and choosing a few key priorities to start to move the needle forward in our fitness. 

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Coach Patrick Stone

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