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The Making of a True Martial Arts Master >>

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Ram Muay: Thai Boxing's Calm Before the Storm >>
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Martial Arts and Your Health: An Interview with Scott Schmaltz >>

Articles by Scott Schmaltz
Overcoming Fitness Plateaus >>
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Genetically Modified Foods >>
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Toxins In Meat >>

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The Wisconsin Martial Arts Camp Experience >>
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Growth and Expectation in the Martial Arts >>

Overcoming Fitness Plateaus:

Understanding training plateaus and how to overcome them can be frustrating as well as confusing. There are different reasons why someone will hit a fitness plateau, but there are three main reasons that I will cover.

When understanding this subject, it is important to know the difference between weight loss and fat loss. What I will talk about is fat loss. I am going to assume that most people want to look and feel better. (After all, you could sit in a sauna and lose a lot of water weight, but this will come back as soon as you hydrate. This is the same as doing an intestinal detoxification program, but hopefully you don't add all of this weight back either. There are benefits to having your organs running efficiently when it comes to fat loss.)

Three main reasons for a plateau: 1) Non-Compliance

2) Physiological adaptation to the current food intake and/or workload type (the LAW of S.A.I.D. - specific adaptation to imposed demands)

3) Incorrect protocol for the goal (Not understanding how to change your diet/ exercise to overcome the adaptation)

The first reason for the plateau is behavioral. The second and third reasons, which are physiological adaptations, are the focus of the following paragraphs.

A properly designed and executed resistance-training program will significantly affect your fitness level. However, the significant changes will eventually slow or stop altogether as the body adapts to the workload. As you perform a systematic repetition of exercises, the body adjusts to the increased level of energy expenditure by conducting an intricate system of structural and metabolic adjustments such as increased strength and aerobic potential in muscle and increased myoglobin, mitochondrial and capillary density. These adjustments protect the body from injury and enable increased levels of performance.

If you execute a training program which was designed to meet a specific goal, you will eventually hit that goal. Thus, you have successfully adapted to the program (you, the organism, have adjusted to your environment). If the environment changes, you, the organism, change to better survive in these new conditions, and this will ultimately lead to a fitness plateau. In order to overcome your present condition, you will need to continuously create a stimulus to which the body is unaccustomed. (This effectively creates a new environment for the organism.) Overcoming plateaus can be accomplished through the use of appropriate training variables. There are many ways to change training variables, and to understand them, it is best to contact a trained fitness professional.

You also have to look at your food intake when overcoming a fitness plateau. Your body's structure continues to change throughout the training regiment, and a good training regiment will focus on increasing lean body mass and decreasing fat mass. In order to maintain or build muscle tissue, proper resistance training and nutrition is vital. Because each pound of muscle tissue burns 30 to 50 calories per day, you cannot afford to lose muscle tissue since it will eventually slow or stop weight loss. This vicious cycle always leads to hunger, a slower metabolic rate and ultimately a rebound.

Dr. Andrew Weil has been quoted as saying, "The body has a natural equilibrium, and your body's tendency is to come back to that equilibrium." Your diet should encompass how many calories are needed to maintain your body's lean tissue mass based upon current activity levels and specific goals. (Keep in mind that calories in versus calories out is a myth. If that were true, then it wouldn't matter whether we ate 1500 calories of vegetables or Twinkies. The human body is a very complex organism, and when we consume food, the resulting calories are used for energy, growth, and repair. Some calories are not digestible, and some food content will contain water that has no calories. This is the reason that you will want to have a meal balanced with the proper macronutrients. These macronutrients are carbohydrates, protein, and fat.)

Your body will destroy the new lean tissue if you are not adjusting your calorie intake appropriately. This is the body's way of maintaining that equilibrium. Because there are not enough calories to feed the new muscle, the body removes it to have a balance with your current food intake. Thus, you start to lose your ability to metabolize fat. This can cause your weight to fluctuate and lead to frustration. Therefore, it is vitally important that you know what your fat mass and lean body mass are. The scale can be so deceiving. (i.e. If you lose (2) pounds of fat and add (2) pounds of lean tissue, it will look as though you haven't lost any weight, and this can lead you to make drastic and inappropriate changes.) The best way to understand how to adjust your food intake is to talk to a trained health professional.

These recommendations can be helpful as a whole or by integrating in whatever piece fits your comfort level and lifestyle.

Feel free to contact us if you need more resources on overcoming fitness related plateaus:

Precision Fitness LLC

(877) 675-3703 www.precision-fitness.net Precision.fitness.co@gmail.com