Fit 050 Plateau Busters
We all hit plateaus in our training or weight loss. Some people call this a “rut” . Either way, it can be frustrating to deal with this seemingly loss of progress.
In this episode ( and the next 2 ), I am going to give you some tools to bust through your plateaus! A three step plan of attack works best to getting past these bumps in the road. You need to think about a plan for these 3 categories:
- focus (mind set)
- diet (nutrition)
- exercise (consistency)
I explain some easy techniques to analyze what may be keeping you from losing weight or getting out of your rut. These are valuable tools that take little time but make a huge difference in your workout program and progress.
Announcements:
- I am working on a new cardio training coaching series! These are mp3 workouts that you can load into any media player and take me with you to coach you during your cardio session or interval training!
- Body Blast Bands (Band Sculpt #3) is complete and I have been debating whether to release on dvd or make for digital download. This is a workout of giant sets for each body part, hence the “Blast”. It also gets the heart rate pumping too!
- Availability on both coming soon.
- Wow! This is podcast number 50!!!! Thanks to everyone for your comments and feedback!
Check out the “makeover” of both my websites
Fitness Makeover and All In One Workouts
Link to Fit 050 Plateau Busters
All for now! Keep training hard and stay healthy!
Full, unedited transcription below:
Episode No. 50.
In today’s episode we are going to talk about overcoming plateaus and how you can get yourself out of a rut if you stop losing weight or progressing in your workouts. We’re going to have a three-part plan to get you back on track and on your way to reaching your goal.
First of all, I can’t believe it’s number 50. Yes, that means I’ve had 50 podcasts already. My husband said, “Oh, jeez, you’ve been yapping for 50 different episodes?” Well, yes, I have. And I really appreciate all the comments and reviews you guys have made for me on iTunes. It’s really nice to know that this information is getting in the hands of people who are using it and getting some good results from it or at least saving themselves some time and some heartache by avoiding some of the pitfalls that a lot of people do when it comes to exercise.
The other thing I want to let you know is that I’m actually working on a series of cardio workouts that are audio workouts with music where I coach you through the entire cardio session. And these will be for the treadmill or outdoor walking or the bicycle so that if you’re doing these things you can actually work on intervals, work on speed, work on different levels with me basically telling you what to do and timing the intervals for you. So you don’t have to think as much, which is always a good thing. I have a couple of people that are testing them for me right now so as soon as they are ready for release I’ll let you know. I’m kind of easing towards the download side of doing some of my business, making it a little bit easier and faster to get things out, and that’s also true for one of my next videos that actually is something that we had filmed a long time, just hadn’t been released yet. And this is Body Blast Bands. It’s Bands for Body Sculpt No. 3 and it’s a bunch of giant sets for each body part so you really completely fry each body part before going on to another one. So that’s something I’m going to be making available from a digital download, and as always, I’ll let you know when that’s available.
Okay, now let’s talk about when you hit a plateau. Now, how do you know when you hit a plateau? Is it when you stop losing weight for a week or two weeks or a month or you start gaining weight or you just don’t feel like exercising anymore? There’s many different ways that a plateau can affect you. And for most people it stems from not losing weight at the same pace as they were originally and that’s going to happen because the closer you get to your body’s set weight the harder it’s going to let go of some of that body fat. And again that’s where you want to use your measurements. That way you’ll know if your measurements are going down little by little you’ll know you’re hitting in the right course and the weight’s going to follow.
Now, if you still think you’re in a plateau because your measurements have stayed the same, your weight has stayed the same, you’re working really hard and you don’t know why you are changing, then you might be in a little bit of a plateau. Now, some people also like to call plateaus a rut, meaning that they are stuck in a rut, they don’t like feel like going to exercise, they’re tired of doing the same thing over and over again, they’re bored with what they’re doing, or they’re finding excuses not to go exercise, you know, that’s the way of being in a rut. So there is a little bit of a difference between a plateau and a rut, but regardless, you need to set yourself a plan to get out of either one of them or you’re going be stuck in there for quite a long time.
So you need to have a plan if you’re going to get out of your rut or over your plateau, and that plan really needs to have three parts to it. You need to have focus or use your mind to help you decide what is actually getting you in that rut or what is actually causing your plateau. You need your nutrition or your diet, and you need of course your exercise plan. So of course if it was as easy as everybody likes it to be then there would be not an issue at all. But it’s not. It’s a three-part thing you have to focus on, three-part plan. So you have your mind, your diet, and your exercise.
Now, for most people the easiest part is always the exercise. They actually enjoy exercising or at least they feel like if they put the time in that’s easier to do than to change their diet or change their eating habits or change the way they think. And that’s not always the case because again, if it was just about exercise then it would be a no-brainer, that’s all you would do. But it’s not; it’s the three things combined.
So when you’re looking at a rut or a plateau you need to stop and say, well, what got me here? What are my eating habits now? What are my exercise habits now? Look at your calendar and I hope you’re recording the days that you go to the gym and the days you do weights and cardio, at least on a monthly calendar because then you can look at it at the end of the month and look and see if you really were consistent. And sometimes you have a concept in your mind that, yeah, I’ll go every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but then you look at the calendar and you realize, “Oh, I missed Monday and Friday last week and I missed Wednesday and Friday the week before.” And you start realizing that you’re not as consistent with your workouts as you think you are. So use that calendar, even if you just print out a monthly calendar sheet on your computer or even if you just mark it down on your regular calendar, but when you have that month format, that really helps put everything in perspective.
So that will be the first thing, look at your exercise. Have you been consistent, have you been consistent with both your cardio and your weights? Same thing with your diet. Now, you may or may not want to write down everything you eat. Obviously if you do you’re going to be able to analyze it a lot better and take it a lot further. But if you don’t, a simple checkmark on the days that you were pretty good, maybe a smiley face on the days you were really good and maybe a frowny face on the days that you were, well, pretty bad, okay, with your eating. And you know what I’m talking about. Bad could be that you didn’t get all of your meals in on time or didn’t get all your meals in at all. It could be that you were eating some of the foods that you know are not going to get you where you want to be. It could be that you forgot to eat. So things like that could lead to a bad food day. And again, keeping it on track on the calendar, you can look and see, well, you’ll say, “Well, maybe I’m just bad on the weekends” or you – maybe you think you are. And you look at your calendar and you realize, “Oh my goodness, I was bad” – that you had such and such a party on Tuesday and then on Friday went out for drinks and then on Thursday it was so-and-so’s birthday. And now you start realizing, “Oh, diet is not as good as I thought it was.”
So although it may be easy for us to think that we’re doing the right things everyday, you don’t really remember from day to day what you do. So a simple checkmark, a simple system to help you know if it was a good day or a bad day, whether it was for exercise, dieting, or nutrition intake or just your self-talk and the way you’re feeling about yourself – are you a very negative person today, are you being very positive, are you using your self-talk to overcome some of the negativities that may pop in your head? These are all things you have to consider. And again, using that monthly calendar – and most people do have one; if not, you can actually get them, you know, free at some places, and if not, a dollar or two. I mean, you can certainly afford to help keep your mind on track by looking at your exercise over the course of a month. And of course, you know, I’m telling you this because I have done this myself for many, many years and it makes a difference, it really makes a difference when you look over the long haul of everything and you can see you start to see your patterns, you start to see if you end up missing those workouts on the weekends, or you start to see if the Friday workouts don’t quite work for you because you don’t make it. And then you can really be a little more thoughtful and realistic about your schedule and where you’re going to actually fit your workouts in.
Now sometimes, you might have to say, “Well, I have to get them on such and such a day” and that’s the only way you can do it. I know a period for me when I was working in a different situation, I kept saying, “Okay, I’m going to do my workouts on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.” And for quite a while that worked out very well with the way my schedule fit in. But then things changed and job positions changed and things like that and even though I was trying to stick to that Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, it wasn’t happening. The Saturdays and Sundays I was not getting the workouts in. So I had to stop and say, “Well, wait a minute, okay, let me reanalyze. Okay, I’ll try Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday,” because I knew that the weekends I just was not getting the workouts in, so why fight it? So I was doing that for a while. And then of course, something else happened, schedule changes again, and that wasn’t quite fitting. So you know, what I did this time around is I prioritized the workouts and I said, “Okay, for right now, I’m saying this is the day for this workout and this is the day for that workout, I’m doing a cycle of two-days-on-one-day-off kind of thing.” And that way I know what days I have to get the workout in, what days I can kind of get away with it, I can move the workout if something urgent comes up. And other days when I don’t feel like doing it and I know I’ve got to go because I have no choice, otherwise there is no make-up day and there is no – it will mess everything else up. So being realistic about what your schedule is and what you’re making in as far as your workouts. You’re not getting them in, that schedule is not working, and you need to check it and change it.
Now, one of the other things that are easy with exercise to get yourself out of a plateau would be to change what you’re doing. If you’re doing weight training, then change around the body parts you’re doing, or change around the number of sets or the number of repetitions or the actual exercises. Change around the cardio that you’re doing. Do more of the cardio at the end, which you’ll want to do anyway for better fat loss. Maybe even take advantage of the nice weather if it is in your area and go outside for a walk. I mean, you’d be surprised how it feels to get some fresh air every now and again. Also playing games on the treadmill or the bike as well as intervals and changing paces – and that’s one of the reasons why I’m doing the cardio workouts. The hardest part of course was finding the music with a good beat that was quite palatable.
So that helps to keep you out of the rut because you – with your intervals you could change them each time, you can increase them each time and you can push yourself each time and you don’t actually have to keep a record of it, but you could if you really wanted to. Now, if you have not been recording your workouts, now is the time to do it. If you feel like you’re in a plateau or a rut, take out your calendar, put it right in front of you wherever you might see it every single day and start marking the days you get your weights in, the days you get your cardio in, and maybe how long you get that cardio session. You know, maybe your goal is to get 45 minutes of cardio and you’re only getting 10. Maybe, you know, you want to get 30 minutes everyday and you’re only getting 30 minutes once a day and the other days are 10 minutes, or you know, whatever the case may be, looking at it on a piece of paper is going to give you the reality of what you are doing. So that is one part of the three parts to getting yourself out of a rut.
And the exercise part is always the easiest part. If you are not sure of what type of exercises would add to your variety, I have several suggestions in previous podcasts, and of course, how to design your workout program is one of the previous podcasts. We also put that all together in the Fitness Makeover Kit so that you have the different exercises if you were doing it at the gym or you were doing it at home, which ones are going to be most effective for a good, intense workout. That doesn’t mean that other ones aren’t, it’s just that these are probably your biggest metabolism boosters, and they might also be the hardest for some people. So if they are not comfortable, then either work on them slowly and just do a couple of reps at a time rather than trying to keep going and going and going because you don’t want to get into the habit of doing something incorrectly, or get a trainer or someone that you know that is very well-versed in how to do these exercises so you can learn properly. And if you haven’t checked out some of the video podcasts that I have or the other podcasts that are actually previous from my workouts, at least you can get some good idea of some exercises there, then go ahead and do that. Of course the www.allinoneworkout.com has some different previews already put into the site now. Remember, I said I redid the site and if you haven’t seen it, the new one, you’re missing out, because I got the previews right there by the information and that just makes it a whole lot easier to understand what’s going on and to see what the workout’s like. But regardless, you don’t have to buy the workout to get an idea of what the range of motion for certain exercises. And any little reference point you can have is always a good thing.
Another thing you can do with mixing up on your exercise is your cardio training. You can do it – instead of intervals or speed, you can focus on your heart range. And you can focus on staying in your heart range for 10 full minutes, 20 full minutes, or whatever it may be. It shouldn’t take you more than 5 minutes to get through a warm-up when you’re starting on your cardio. And if you’ve already done your weight training first, which is what you’d prefer to do, then you’re going to be warm already. So you might even take like 3 minutes to get your body into the heart rate zone. But that’s pretty much how quickly you want to get in on your cardio training and you might have to pull out a calculator. Some machines actually have it written on them and some gyms have charts that show you what is 55 percent to 85 percent of your maximum for your age. Just take 220 minus your age and then multiply out what 55 percent to 85 percent would be and try to work within that zone for that cardio session. And you might find that you can only handle about 5 minutes of it at say 60 percent of your maximum rate. And that’s okay. See if you can get up to 10 minutes or 15. And if you can then see if you can take it a little bit higher, so instead of 60 percent of your maximum heart rate, you would be taking it at like 65 percent or 70 percent. The reason why you don’t want to really go over 85 percent is because that’s a full-on spread and that’s more anaerobic, kind of like your weight training was, so it might not do the best benefit for your cardio training and for your fat-burning. It will burn some fat, but it’s not going to be the best for you in the long run.
So sprints and intervals are going to do you some good, but it’s not something at a level you can maintain. So try the heart rate training to mix it up a little bit. Now you can figure out your heart rate and then divide it out so you that you’d have to take a 6-second pulse or maybe a 10-second pulse. If you find that you can’t find your pulse, and you should be taking it from your neck or your wrist – but you should definitely be able to feel it from your neck, because that’s usually going to be your most accurate – then I’ve got to tell you, if you can’t find your pulse, you’ve got problems. No, actually what that means is you’re probably not working hard enough, you’re probably not working in that zone yet, because when you are in your target heart zone, even if you are in the lower range, your heart’s pumping and you should be able to feel your heart rate. Now, a lot of machines have a built-in heart rate monitors and that’s actually one of the things on machines that works correctly. The calorie count, forget it, it’s not going to be right, it’s – there’s too much to take into consideration with the calorie counts, your age, your metabolism, your body weight, your lean mass. All of these things play factors in how many calories you actually burn doing an exercise. And that little display on there is not going to be accurate at all. So just forget those numbers.
What you want to focus on is just getting the good hard workout in – or I shouldn’t say “hard” but strenuous, vigorous. Some of the newer machines are even set up that if you have a polar heart monitor, the kind that you strap around your chest, it will automatically read in touch with that machine. So you don’t have to have the actual heart rate monitor watch on you. I mean, you can if you have it. But it’s just one of those things that makes it easier. Or the handles. Now, if people get on the handles, you know, the shiny silver ones that take your heart rate, if you get on those, and if you’re like, “I can never get my pulse rate on there,” well, a couple of little tricks would be check to make sure your hands are not too sweaty because if your hands are sweaty or if they are wet from drinking from your water bottle, that can affect whether you get a heart rate reading or not. So kind of wipe them off a little bit if you’re not – if you’re having problems getting the reading.
The other thing is don’t squeeze them too hard. You want a nice, gentle, squeeze on them. So you’re holding them firmly, but you’re not giving them the death grip, okay? And then the third little tip, if you’re still not getting it after doing those two things, if you’re still not getting your heart rate, then turn your hands around so that your thumbs are definitely on the silver parts, because sometimes that can make a difference too. So one way or another, you should be able to find a heart rate, and that’s another fun way to get yourself through a plateau on your exercise.
Oh, you didn’t think I was going to get through all three parts today, did you? No, then what am I going to talk about next time? Next time I’ll talk about your mindset and your self-talk and using those tools to keep you on track and to pull you out of that rut or get you over that plateau. And yes, I’ve saved the best for last, the one that everyone thinks is the major problem but isn’t always, and that would be your nutrition, your eating, your diet, whatever you want to call it. It’s all about fueling your body for fat loss. So you’ll have that to look forward to as well.
So I’ll give you a quick review. When you’re in a plateau or a rut there are three things you need to check out to make sure that you’re on track or to get you back on track. And that is your mindset or your focus, your diet, nutrition, and your exercise. Now, your exercise you can do things like change the type you’re doing, change the exercises you’re doing, the repetitions, change the cycle of things as far as your workout days, change your workout days, change your workout cycle, maybe do every other day a workout, change your body parts that you are training, there’s a lot of different things, incorporate some new exercises. So there are a lot of things that you can do mix up with the exercise. And of course the heart rate training is a great way to challenge yourself as well.
I still want to know from you if you train at a gym or at home or both, so that poll will stay up for quite a while on the blog because I would really like to find out what a lot of people are doing. And I’d like to thank everybody for hanging out with me and helping me get to the 50th episode. I’m certainly looking to get to 100 or more. And then when our new cardio workouts come out and the other download workouts I will let you know. And of course, if you have any suggestions about workouts you’d like to see me talk about or even do as far as on a video download, well, let me know. Send me an e-mail; it’s kira@allinoneworkout.com and you can find that somewhere on the website I’m sure.
And if you have seen my new websites, then you’ll know that I work with a group of teachers at my daughter’s school that do a fitness makeover, and right now there’s only 6 weeks until the Halloween. So we all want to have some candies and goodies on Halloween, so we’re going to buckle down for these next 6 weeks and I will keep you posted on their progress and at the end of that time hopefully I’ll be able to stick their pictures up on the website if they’ll let me, but I will at the very least tell you about their success. So that might be a little extra motivation for you too to push yourself a little bit, knowing that there’s only 6 weeks until Halloween. And then only 4 weeks after that until Thanksgiving and then only 4 weeks after that until Christmas. Yeah, I figured it all out for them because I figured that would actually give them set times and this is something you can do to help you with your mindset. Oops, I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? But you can work on your mindset by saying, “This is a short period of time.” And right now at the end of the year, it’s perfect; 6 weeks, 4 weeks, 4 weeks. You can handle it. They are short periods of time. But you know what, we’ll talk more about that next time. So until I talk to you again, stay healthy and train hard.
As always, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I look forward to giving you all the insights to help you reach all of your goals and to help you get the body you want and keep it. To receive automatic e-mails of when these podcasts are released, subscribe to the podcast by going to www.allinoneworkout.com and at the top of the homepage you will find a place to subscribe for automatic updates.
Have you ever wished there was a manual for fitness? A manual that tells you what to eat, how to eat, how to do your exercise programs, what exercises are the best ones for each body part, a manual that teaches you how to stay motivated, how to get in control over your time and your life? That manual is here. It is available, it is the Fitness Makeover Kit, and it is all of the information that I have learned with my clients and put into action and seen work, to get you in your best shape possible. If you’ve ever wanted a step-by-step system that gives proven results, then the Fitness Makeover kit is for you. You can get all the details of what the kit includes at www.fitnessmakeover.com. You can even sample some of the content by listening to my podcasts on the Weight Loss Workshop. This miniseries tells you all about the things that will be covered in detail in the Fitness Makeover Kit. Control, nutrition, exercise, exercise instruction, it’s all there in the Fitness Makeover Kit. This is the manual and blueprint for getting in shape and staying in shape. You can get the body you want and keep it with the Fitness Makeover Kit. Visit www.fitnessmakeover.com today to get started.
