Bust through a Plateau (Part 3)

Unlike the first 2 reasons that may have caused you to plateau, this third reason is produced from the best of intentions.

You probably thought you were doing yourself a favor by hitting the gym hard for 2 hours or so a day… it turns out though that all that working out has left your body a little run-down.

You may have heard it called "over-training."

Think of your body adapting to this process the same way as eating too few calories per day. In both situations your body compensates by burning less calories on its own, such as in non-exercise energy expenditure.

Basically, you've become determined to burn a ton of calories during your workout sessions and your body responds by limiting the amount of calories you burn when you're outside of the gym.

Here's the solution.

Take a couple of days off to stretch, take a gentle yoga class, go for a massage, and eat well. You've been training hard and you deserve a break…

After a couple days of rejuvenation you can pick back up with your workout program, but aim to keep all your workouts to about 60 minutes. This is still plenty of time to accomplish all you need to get great results and it will be far less than what you may have been doing.

In my next post I'll show you the difference between over-training and over-reaching and how to structure your program to avoid both of these unhealthy repercussions to working out too much.