Crazy Uncle Ralph (Waldo Emerson) said that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. My mind appears to be hobgoblin-free, because I try not to be too foolish or too consistent. Why am I thinking about this? I was thinking about workout plateaus and how to deal with them.
Workout plateaus, those times when we don’t seem to be making progress, can be incredibly frustrating. We look resentfully at the numbers on the weights, which are not going up, or the numbers on the run time, which are not going down, or the numbers on the scale, which seem to be frozen entirely. So how do we break out?
It depends.
Sometimes we hit a plateau because we are not working as hard as we think we are. We’ve actually been coasting a bit on the cardio, or skipping workouts here and there. It’s also possible that we aren’t eating as well as we think we are. This is where it is good to renew our commitment to tracking, because that will reveal what is really going on. Then we can adjust as needed.
Other times, we are hitting the plateau because we have been overtraining. As hard as it is when we are really motivated to DO things, we need to choose to rest a bit at that point. Easing off gives our systems time to catch up with all the good work we’re doing.
We have to check in with ourselves and gently inquire what is going on. If we are slacking off, we can nudge ourselves back into the work and if we’re overtired, we can treat ourselves with love and take a nap.
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