People who barely started working out tend to be amazed, or even shocked by the gains from the strength training they performed within the first few weeks. The body starts responding to the stresses and therefore slowly adapts to these changes by constructing more muscles, assuming proper rest and nutrition follows hand in hand.
Sometimes complacency sets in, people assume that performing the same exercise at the same weight over and over again would yield the same astonishing results. Unfortunately the body would eventually adapt since the stress stimuli remains the same, and eventually the expected growth will gradually decrease and start to disappoint gym-goers with high expectations. In addition to this, the same monotonous exercise will eventually bore you to death; the workout inspiration for a better health slowly fades, and POOF you're back on the couch eating pringles and watching Prison Break.
A workout is more than just heading to the gym and doing something on the fly, it has to be properly planned out by periodizing your training into different segments e.g. strength, hypertrophy, and endurance. You have to consistently challenge your body and throw it off, keeping it on it's toes.
Sometimes complacency sets in, people assume that performing the same exercise at the same weight over and over again would yield the same astonishing results. Unfortunately the body would eventually adapt since the stress stimuli remains the same, and eventually the expected growth will gradually decrease and start to disappoint gym-goers with high expectations. In addition to this, the same monotonous exercise will eventually bore you to death; the workout inspiration for a better health slowly fades, and POOF you're back on the couch eating pringles and watching Prison Break.
A workout is more than just heading to the gym and doing something on the fly, it has to be properly planned out by periodizing your training into different segments e.g. strength, hypertrophy, and endurance. You have to consistently challenge your body and throw it off, keeping it on it's toes.
My basic Rule of Thumb for breaking plateaus:
- Always challenge your body with different variation of workouts e.g. switching barbell bench press to dumbbell bench press, or even switching the number of sets and reps, changing workout intensities, and so on and so forth.
- Periodize your training into different segments, e.g. week 1-12 hypertrophy, week 13-24 strength, week 25-36 endurance, and then rinse and repeat.
REMEMBER to always challenge yourself, never be complacent with what you do.
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