13.19 How to Overcome a Fitness Plateau

If you continue to do the same exact exercises every time you workout, then you’re likely to hit a fitness plateau, a point at which fitness is no longer improving. If continual improvement is your goal, your muscles, heart, and lungs need to be continuously challenged to work harder than the point to which they’ve already adapted.

To avoid or move beyond a fitness plateau, you need to change your routine every month or so to surprise and challenge your body. For resistance training, this might mean lifting heavier weights, doing more repetitions, or changing the exercises you perform for each muscle group. For cardiorespiratory endurance activity, you could incorporate interval training—adding intervals of greater intensity by increasing to a faster pace or adding hills. For example, you might walk or jog for two minutes, sprint or run for 30 seconds, then repeat five times. You could also try cross trainingby going to a new fitness class, finding a new workout on the internet, trying a new sport or activity, or working with a certified personal trainer; each might challenge your body in new ways. Interval training and cross training are highly effective and efficient forms of training and both improve overall fitness (Laursen, Shing, Peake, Coombes, & Jenkins, 2002; Tanaka, 1994).