How to bust through an Exercise Plateau
Whether you exercise on your own (at home, outside, or in a gym), or enjoy group classes and activities, consistency is key. It is a gift to honor your body with movement.
But…
Exercise ruts happen.
People who like to exercise and move often stick with the activities we are good at or we don’t have the bandwidth to change up what we do and change habits. But the evidence is clear: you will plateau in strength and flexibility gains, and you may experience overuse injuries if you don’t switch things up.
How do I change my program? What do I do?
May of us go to the internet to find new exercises. If you go that route, find an instructor who gives top notch cues and gives you great understanding of what you are supposed to do. See below for two recommendations!
Help! I’ve been injured!
Consult a physical therapist to help you figure out what your body needs. If you have specific goals in your rehabilitation (such asrunning a race, improving your golf/tennis game, planning an active trip), get expert advice and rehabilitate your injury while working towards your goals!
Cultivate Exercise Awareness
Understand your body’s specific capabilities, goals, and responses to exercise. Develop practical strength, not just showy muscles. Get feedback from a professional to help you develop movement awareness.
Focus on Function!
Empower yourself! A functional exercise program uses exercises that mimic real life movements and/or wake up muscles that are vital to muscular balance and proper joint mechanics in your body. Enhance your performance with your daily and sport activities.
Is functional exercise about the Core? What is the Core?
It’s not just the abdominals.
The core is the entire trunk, from the pelvic floor to the neck and everything in between, front side and back. The whole trunk needs to be trained to move in all planes and coordinate with the arms and legs. If the arms and legs are over trained on a proportionally weak trunk, back pain will result.
Nix the heavy emphasis on crunches.
If I had a dollar for every spine injured client I have seen injured from practicing crunches on a regular basis, I could retire now. In Hawaii.
Triplane motion and eccentric training: the keys to efficient movement:
(hang with me here, because this is academic but really important information!)
The ability to move in the world with balance, strength and efficiency comes down to the ability of your entire body being able to move with good coordination, strength, muscle balance, and mobility in three planes, sagittal (front/back), frontal (side/side), and transverse (rotation).
rotation gives you power.
Picture any sporting move and it involves rotation. Agility in the transverse plane is the most ignored in traditional exercise. It is the first to go in an injury, and the last to return in rehab. Good transverse plane training involves the entire body in upright positions, mimicking functional movements.
Use the force (of gravity)
Eccentric training focuses on muscle lengthening, which,d is our muscle reaction to gravity. When you slowly lower a dumbbell from your shoulder to to floor, or slowly sit down, you are working your muscles eccentrically, Eccentric activity is harder than shortening the muscles (concentric) and adds function to your program! An additional note: body weight exercises, such as push ups, count as strength training!
Get a personalized plan
Start a program that meets you where you are and helps you build forward!
Recommendations If you prefer Prerecorded video format:
Sometimes you just need someone to tell you what to do but on. your time in your space.
Adrienne challenges me in yoga without my having to show up and show off in class
To get out of my plateaus, I, like so many others, turned to Youtube for exercise ideas/classes. And amongst an overabundance of highly questionable content, I found a gem, Yoga with Adrienne. She is a friendly, accepting presence, (the cute dog does not hurt). Her cues are perfect. I have done her 30 days of yoga, and many other classes. I have recommended her YouTube channel to countless clients.
To get out of my plateaus, I, like so many others, turned to Youtube for exercise ideas/classes. And amongst an overabundance of highly questionable content, I found a gem, Yoga with Adrienne. She is a friendly, accepting presence, (the cute dog does not hurt). Her cues are perfect. I have done her 30 days of yoga, and many other classes. I have recommended her YouTube channel to countless clients. But she didn’t get me out of my plateau. As I mentioned, I have been a yoga student for over 30 years. My body knows yoga. For me, it wasn’t enough of a change.
Amoila Cesar is trying to kill me. Even though he has no idea who I am.
My daughter asked me work out with her doing a couple classes from Amoila’s “The Prep” and I was …. muscle fatigued! The classes are anatomically and functionally based. He knows and honors the planes of motion and preaches what I preach: trunk control and function, buttocks muscle facilitation, and eccentric control. I was intrigued. Best of all, he avoided every checkbox on my reject list. I did a another class that he offers for free on Youtube (most of his content is behind a paywall) and thought, why not, let’s give his programs a try for 3 months and get out of my own TRX, Pilates, yoga, and weights rut. I have found my muscles shaking by the end of his video classes. As I said, he is trying to kill me.
Good-bye plateau!
The home gym set up
For those of you who like to work out at home, like I do, a home gym is simple and inexpensive to set up. For those looking to create a home gym to supplement a walking, biking, or swimming program (or a cardio machine such as a bike or treadmill), the key ingredients are:
Weights
Resistance bands or tubes
Roller
Swiss Ball (also known as a Yoga Ball, Pilates, Ball, etc, generally 65-75cm.
Mat
Yoga block
And for those of you ready to splurge on a couple higher priced items:
BOSU
TRX
NOTE: After getting this equipment, it is important to get instruction on how to use each item with proper form. One can sustain an injury with improper form.
About Deanna Savant, PT:
I am a physical therapist with over 30 years of outpatient orthopedic practice, certified Pilates instructor, >30 year yoga student, and lifetime fitness enthusiast. I have a dance background and now take tap class, and regularly hike on the trails near my home. I love movement. I am a stickler for proper form and a firm believer in function - each exercise needs to add to an individual’s health and ability to move in the world. It’s not about looks, although aesthetics helps with motivation. The true benefits of regular exercise include improving balance, proprioception, movement efficiency, safety, and joy.