Finding Your Motivation When Progression is Plateauing
If you stay on your fitness journey long enough, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll hit a plateau at some stage - and how you react to that can make or break your long term progression when it comes to reaching your goals.
Plateaus are when you no longer seem to be making any progress towards your goals; you’re not moving backwards, but you’re not moving forwards either - leaving you to just go through the motions and really starting to see the motivation dwindle.
It’s all part of something that I like to call 'The Progression Cycle’; and it looks a little something like this:
The Progression Cycle
Now I’m sure that looks familiar to most people, and as frustrating as it may be - it’s a completely natural cycle. However, once you learn to recognise the plateau phase, the easier you’ll find it act early, and skip the last two phases of the cycle completely, meaning you don’t have to keep starting your journey all over again.
So how exactly can you take a proactive approach?
First of all, you need to always keep in mind that consistency beats perfection in the long term. The best way to guarantee consistency is to find a programme you enjoy. If you’re doing something you enjoy, you’ll rarely need motivation to get up and do it as it’s something you genuinely want to do anyway.
That however still won’t stop the plateaus. Plateaus are caused most often by two different thing:
Fatigue - you’ve been following a programme for six weeks or more without any break from it, leading to mental and physical fatigue, which eventually leads to you not being able to make any more progress.
Lack of stimulus - other than reps and weight, nothing in your programme has changed for eight weeks or more - you’ve been completing the exact same session without any adaptations and your body is no longer being forced to adapt under different stimuli.
With that in mind, it gives a couple of very simple solutions to identify when you’re falling into a plateau and how to make sure that doesn’t send you on a downward spiral of demotivation and stopping working towards your goals completely:
Don’t be afraid to break from routine - sometimes your body just needs a reset. Having a programme you can stick to is fantastic, but even the most dedicated of us need 3-5 days every so often where we just need to reset and let our body and mind recover, before kicking on again. Have a week where you’re still moving, throw in the odd lighter intensity workout here and there without it being too strenuous and incorporate some active rest - use the time you’d normally get your workouts in to get a few more steps in, stretch a little more and allow your body to move in a different way to normal.
Make adaptations to your programme - now I say this one with caution; and the reason being is I don’t want you to fall into the trap of changing everything about your workouts and your programme every other week - that really isn’t necessary and can actually be counterproductive. However if you do get to the point in your programme when it feels like you’re just going through the motions, then just make some slight tweaks. It could be as simple as using a cable variation of an exercise instead of dumbbells; or merging some of the exercises in a session together to form a superset - anything that doesn’t stray away from the movement patterns in your set programme, but just challenges your body to complete them in a slightly different way, hence keeping the stimuli fresh and allowing you to continue your progress.
It really can be that simple.
Fitness plateaus are always going to be frustrating, but if you know how to spot the signs early, you can deal with them in a way that keeps you on track and keeps you motivated throughout - allowing you to break The Progression Cycle before you get to the phase of stopping your journey completely.
If you need any help getting back on track towards your own fitness goals, get in touch with us to find out how the Inside Out Fitness Coaching team can help you!
