6 ways to get past a weight loss plateau
6 ways to overcome a weight loss plateau:
Get past your weight loss plateau
The people I usually begin training, many times, started their weight loss journey on their own. They may have taken tips from a magazine, signed up for a gym membership, done a 60-90 day workout video program, and though they may have seen some results, they feel they need a stronger direction. They feel as though the results have ceased and they need something new. The following tips are just a few of the things a Training Aspects personal trainer will include or consider to help a client get over their weight loss plateau.
Personal Training tip#1
Correct the form/focus: Videos, magazines, or people that look like they know what they’re doing in the gym are not the ways to learn exercises. Many times, the focus of the exercise is missed when it is self-taught. Many times, people assume that as long as they are training intensely, their heart rate is up, they’re sweating, and they feel tired that they got a good workout. Not understanding the focus of the exercise can drastically change the effectiveness of the exercise and in many cases, cause injury over time. For example, due to poor form, many people who squat do not engage their gluteus, nor know how to. Many people will squat and forget to push their hips back, thus putting the weight on their knees and ignore the use of their gluteus. The gluteus is a huge muscle group! By neglecting them, they lose half the effectiveness of the squat!
Stop doing exercises incorrectly! Solution: get a few sessions with a Training Aspects personal trainer and learn the fundamentals. Many times, three sessions can be all you need to correct your form!
Personal Trainer Tip #2
Figure out your training goal: if your goal is to lose weight, then that should be your
focus (May sound like common sense but this happens often). Do not fall into a body building program. Your goal is to lose weight, more importantly, the body fat. You will see results with those programs, but there are much more effective training programs out there. The more muscles you work in one day, the more effective the workout.
Personal trainer tip #3
Nutrition Timing: this is an advanced technique, however understanding what your body needs before and after the workout is very important. Your body needs certain nutrients pre, during, and post workout, it is essential to incorporate this into your program.
Personal Trainer tip #4
Reorganize the training plan: when you just begin working out or are getting back into working out, doing something is better than nothing. However, as you plan to progress 
in your fitness goal and lose more weight, increase lean muscle, or increase muscle size, exercise organization becomes important. If you start your workout with bicep curls, crunches, calf raises or any other supporting muscle group, then you need to reorganize your plan. If you begin with leg presses before power exercises, or you do 45 minutes of cardio and then go to the weights, reorganize your plan and I promise you results. (The next article will give you more information on this.)
Personal trainer tip #5
Shock the system: many times, doing the same thing will lead to a plateau. Your body adapts to your fitness program and no longer feels challenged. This goes back to the principal of overload. To get results, you must challenge your muscles. You can do this by changing the type of exercises. For a basic example, instead of a bench press, try a variation of pushups, or use dumbbells and slow the rep scheme. If you are doing squats with a bar, do squats and add a jump into them (not with a bar, at least not at first).
Personal trainer tip #6
Doing too much: believe it or not, you could be doing too much! You just started working out, you go to the gym religiously because you are trying to achieve your goal and your body begins fighting back. This is called overtraining. There are ways to monitor overtraining. A plateau, or even losing results despite working harder, increased resting heart rate, feeling restless or having trouble falling asleep, getting sick more often, and not feeling well after big workouts are all symptoms of overtraining. More to come on this next week.
“Success doesn’t come to you, you go to it!”
–Marva Collins
By: Kirill Vaks
Fitness and exercise specialist
BA, CSCS, ACSM-cpt, NFPT-sns
Suggested articles:
* 7 Training myths
* 3 Reasons for your weight gain
Suggested video:
* 15minute challenge
Take action… Now!
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week, just isn’t enough time. I get it, we live in a fast paced world. We all strive to be better than the next person, so we multitask to create more time. Eat as we run out the door, have Siri type up our meeting notes as we drive, I’m sure you can think of plenty of other examples. In this article, although I could just use Nike’s slogan “Just do it”, I will try to be more informative and proactive.
addition, you don’t need to do a whole 45mins-one hour workout in one sitting. Do 3minutes here, 10 minutes there throughout the day. (Check 
treadmill to the elliptical doesn’t mean you are changing the workout. Nor does it mean you’re just burning fat. Doing cardio for extensive periods of time depletes muscle as well. The body starts using the more readily available energy that is supplied to it once all carbohydrates are used—that is, protein. Also, low intensity workouts such as jogging or swimming do not burn nearly as many calories as the quicker, higher intensity workouts. During fast paced, high intensity workouts, more of the body exerts itself under more resistance in a shorter amount of time. Therefore, heart rate increases more than during cardio and the body burns more calories.
important. You can have a list of exercises and attack it however you’d like, but there are guidelines for a more efficient routine. Just like starting a routine with a large muscle group and moving to the small, there are other aspects of sequencing your workout.
to give ourselves a mechanical advantage so the repetition can be completed. Don’t be nice to yourself; the reason you are in the gym is to challenge your muscles. This doesn’t mean increasing the weight beyond your capabilities. Proper technique will make resistance training difficult enough. Why skip out on the toughest part?
muscles and make training tough. A “real” pull up involves entirely straightening the arms, then pulling your chin above the bar to complete the range of motion. We have the least amount of leverage when our arms are straight. Conversely, correct technique for the bench press includes lowering the weight and bringing your elbows to 90 degrees, changing the momentum with pure strength, and pushing back to starting position. The bar should not bounce off of the chest during a bench press. This is dangerous for the reason of fracturing your sternum, but it is also improper technique since it helps the chest immensely in putting up that bar. When using heavy weight, the joint needs to be protected and once again, we have leverage within the muscles past 90 degrees. The same idea applies to squats. Protect the joints and bring the hips and knees to 90 degrees.
bodybuilders, a.k.a. steroid users. They go to the gym twice a day, isolating one muscle group per visit. They, however, don’t need to worry about the physiology involved with overtraining or recovery. They have other problems. But I digress. What the non-user has done is modify the routine and taken out one visit each day. By the time we come back to the same muscle group the next week, we’ve lost some of what was gained. And when a non-user has the same type of workout format as those on supplemental drugs which improve recovery time, there is more harm done to the body than good.
immediate energy to return back to the muscles. “But Zak, I already do that.” In that case, supersets will eliminate the problem. For an upper body day, superset bench press and rows. For the lower body equivalent, superset squats and calf raises. During the supersets, take 30 seconds between each set. For example: set of chest press, rest 30 seconds, set of rows, rest 30 seconds, next set of chest press, and so on. By the time you start the second set for chest, 90 seconds have passed (taking into account the time spent on the set of rows). An eight exercise workout should only take 45-60 minutes to complete. More time than that means you are no longer having a productive workout, and it becomes endurance based rather than muscle development.
Personal training excuse #4
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