Is your fat loss progress slowing down? Are you stuck at the same weight, the same body fat, or the same pant size?
Inevitably, everyone comes across a fat loss plateau. For some, it sticks around longer than others, but no matter how long it lasts, a fat loss plateau is always frustrating.
According to Tom Venuto, one way to burst through plateaus is to increase the intensity of your training.
After all, if you aren't getting results, it might simply mean that your training is not stimulating your body to change (so you can't expect last month's program to work again this month - that's why the best workouts always recommend changing your program every 4 weeks).
In addition to changing my client's fat loss programs regularly, we use another training rule every workout to make sure that they are continuing to get results and avoid the dreaded fat loss plateaus.
The rule:
Try to set a personal best in each workout.
Now the personal best can be accomplished in any weight exercise, bodyweight exercise, or even interval/cardio exercise.
For example, for many of my female clients, we are often trying to set new records in different kinds of push-ups and chin-ups. Just Monday I challenged one of my gals to get 15 chest-to-the-floor real pushups. I knew she had it in her. And she did. 15 perfect pushups, smashing her old record by two. It's no surprise she has the best, leanest arms of almost any woman in the gym.
Even in my own workout today, I smashed a personal record in the flat DB chest press, getting 6 reps with the 110 pound dumbbells (my training partner and I had to drive half-way across the city just to find dumbbells that heavy!).
And even if you are having a lousy day, and don't have much energy, you can still try to set a personal record in a low-intensity ab exercise like the plank or side plank.
The great thing is that even with a normal 6-exercise strength and interval workout, there are at least 36 opportunities to set a new personal best.
First, you could set it in any of the 6 exercises.
Second, there are at least 3 ways to do every exercise. So you could have a record for regular push-ups, close-grip pushups, decline push-ups, close-grip decline push-ups, etc.
Third, you can set a repetition record or a weight record. I.e. You could aim to get 2 more reps than last week in your db row exercise, or you could use a heavier dumbbell (all with good form, of course).
So that's at least 36 possible ways to set a record with your strength training. And that doesn't even count the ways that you could set a personal best in your interval training (increasing the distance covered, the time of the interval, the speed of the interval, or the number of intervals). You can even set a new record by completing one of the bodyweight circuits faster than ever.
All it has to be is one personal best per workout. Keep a little spreadsheet at home and record your exercises, all the variations, and your rep record and weight records, and the date on which you set the record. Come back to that every week to update it and motivate yourself for your next workout.
The "personal best" rule will increase your motivation and sense of accomplishment and get you back on the fat loss track. At the end of each workout, you'll know that you still achieved progress - even if the scale hasn't changed in a couple of days.
Interesting article on the subject
Springtime in London for the Nature Lover
