My Granddad was a great man. He worked incredibly hard, enjoyed life to the full and proffered countless nuggets of wisdom. He also came out with bewildering comments that left my juvenile brain confused, annoyed and primed to jump up and down in a mega strop.
Exactly what research supports the correlation between barnyard births and a tendency to leave the living room door ajar? Surely none. And, thanks for that other great pearl Gramps, but it’s actually no startling revelation that if something were half the price it is now, it’d be considered cheap. Cue: childhood rage and mega strop.
And yet when I look back with the benefit of age (and Google) it seems his wisecracks, often aimed at changing my behaviour, had a little more to them. Apparently farmers used to unlatch the barn door in the morning and leave it open all day until the herd returned in the evening (seemingly my inclination to merrily skip out of the living room and take the hearth heat with me was more bovine than first suspected). And ‘cheap’ didn’t mean ‘inexpensive’ in the context of his well-worn exclamation; it was actually a medieval term for ‘goods’ (perhaps a more bullish investment in tinned meat really would have led to a more satisfying student experience?).
What on earth does this have to do with a stalling exercise routine? Absolutely bugger all at first glance. But maybe by the ninth or tenth you might reluctantly credit a tenuous link.
Understanding why you have hit a plateau involves taking the time to question what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. If someone has provided you with a programme to follow, you might feel pretty strongly that it’s their strategy that’s flawed, not you. But before you rip it up and start again, my advice would be to go back to first principles and look at whether you’re overlooking some things that, if tweaked or more fully explained, might reignite your progress and start to make the programme make sense.
Get to know your plateau: three simple things to review
1. Revisit your goals - When you set out, what were you hoping to achieve? If you were looking to increase muscle strength and lose weight simultaneously, your issue might be expectation related. Operating on a calorie deficit is not conducive to ramping up the number of kilos you squat with; instead you might want to focus on maintaining the weight you lift until you’ve reached your target on the scales. If your goals are endurance or cardio focused, you need to make sure you keep your workouts fresh and varied. Ensuring your current regime includes high intensity intervals and resistance training should help you to maintain improvements in pace and distance.
2. Look at your nutrition – It sounds obvious but sometimes we overlook the intimate link between what we put into our bodies and what we get out of them. If you are getting up every morning and training hard but going to bed every night after snacking harder, your workouts are going to be affected. Likewise, if you expect your fitness to progress on a diet of green juice and wheatgrass, you’re in for a hefty dose of disappointment. Your diet should be rich in vegetables with a steady balance of lean protein, good fats, complex carbohydrates and a healthy serving of antioxidants for good measure.
3. Assess the nature of your plateau, including whether it’s really a plateau at all - When did you start to feel like you had stalled? This is really important. If you consider your progress over the course of your programme – can you identify the point at which you think things started to go awry? What, if anything, between then and now has changed? Think about the frequency and intensity at which you are training, the time allocated to each session, and the type of exercises you are doing. If any of these have shifted off course, you probably need to roll back your programme to get back on track. That said, don’t mistake an off week for a training stall – a bad few days does not a plateau make. Stay positive and don’t be tempted to throw away a perfectly good programme because you’ve felt a bit bleugh since last Sunday. Expecting tangible changes on a weekly basis is not always realistic.
It should go without saying but, if you’re working with a trainer, you should feel comfortable raising your concerns with them and discussing all of the issues above. If you feel you’re plateauing, be confident about querying your sessions and asking questions. Ultimately that is what you are paying for. In terms of the response you get, whilst I’d be wary of anyone recommending you bulk buy canned meats, I would advocate taking advantage of that professional knowledge and experience before harnessing it to help you reach your goals!
