How Do I Get Motivated To Workout? 4 Tips for Busting Through a Workout Plateau
Have you suddenly hit a fitness rut or workout plateau on your weight loss journey, and you're not sure why? If you’re consistently working out and eating healthy, but you’re no longer seeing the results you want, it can be super frustrating. If you feel like you’ve stopped making progress and have hit a major roadblock on your fitness journey, don’t worry, this is totally normal and happens to a lot of people! The key to overcoming a workout plateau is understanding how your body adapts to certain styles of training so you can make changes and continue making progress while enjoying exercise again. If this sounds like you, read on for 4 tips to help you get motivated to workout again and blast through your fitness plateau.
What Is A Workout Plateau?
First off, it’s important to understand what a workout plateau really is. A workout plateau occurs when your body adjusts to the demands of your workouts and stops making progress. Workout plateaus can be frustrating and lead you to feel unmotivated and bored with your workouts. You may start to dread going to the gym or working out and start skipping workouts or phoning it in when you do show up.
When it comes to workout plateaus, the ONE THING you want to remember is that our bodies are SMART! If you do the same workout or exercise routine over and over again, your body is bound to get used to it and expect what’s coming. Then, it adapts to that workout and stores calories in an effort to conserve energy instead of burning them.
How Do I Get Motivated To Workout And Break Through A Plateau?
Now that you know what a workout plateau is, you may be wondering, “so what do I need to do? How do I get motivated to workout and bust through this plateau?”
First off, you need to make sure you are changing up your workouts. This is SO important to keeping your body guessing so it doesn’t adapt to a certain style of training. Change up your workout routine every 30 days so you never get stuck in a fitness rut. In our VIP community, we never do the same workout twice, and this is why!
Plus, when you continuously change up your workout routine, it helps you stay motivated so you can have fun in your workouts instead of getting bored and going through the motions.
4 Tips to Help You Bust Through a Workout Plateau
If you’re struggling with a workout plateau, the key is to shock your body (in a good way!) so you can keep burning calories and fat and building muscle. Check out these 4 tips that you can put into practice right away to kickstart your fitness results again!
Tip #1: Do Combination Exercises
Combination exercises are exercises in which you combine lower body, upper body, and core work all in one exercise. This is something we practice every week in our VIP community to keep our bodies guessing and progressing. Combination exercises serve as functional training, meaning that when you coordinate movements between your lower body, upper body, and core, you connect them to each other, making them work as one unit. This helps with coordination and prevents injury. However, when it comes to preventing workout plateaus, combination exercises use a lot of body parts, which means a ton of heat will be generated in the body leading to more calories burned and more fat lost!
Here are a few combination exercises you can try at home:
→ Squats with bicep curls.
→ Side lunges with upright rows.
→ Squat to overhead press.
→ Forward lunges with hammer curls.
Tip #2: Dedicate One Day Per Week to JUST Cardio
In our VIP community, we strategically dedicate one day per week to focusing ONLY on cardio training in our workouts, specifically, high intensity interval training (HIIT). This style of cardio spikes your heart rate for short periods of time, which helps “shock” your body and allows it to burn more calories in a shorter amount of time.
Our Fuel For Fat Loss HIIT workouts focus on performing cardiovascular exercises at high intensity for a certain amount of time, like 20 seconds, and then having a period of rest, or lower intensity exercises, for say, 30 seconds.
When doing cardio, you want to try not to maintain the same speed the entire workout. This keeps your heart rate at the same pace, which leads to stagnation and workout plateaus. It also causes your body to store calories instead of burning them. HIIT workouts alternate periods of spiking the heart rate and recovery, which keeps your body guessing and builds stamina.
Tip #3: Add a Dedicated Leg Day To Your Routine
Your leg muscles are the biggest muscle group in your body and include your glutes, hamstrings, quads, and calves. Your legs provide the foundation of the body. Therefore, strengthening them improves your overall body symmetry and athleticism, which allows you to perform other activities easier.
Working the larger muscles in your body requires more energy, which means you keep your heart rate up and burn more calories during your workout and long after during the day. Your legs can handle more intense workouts, which is why in Fuel For Fat Loss, we add a dedicated leg day to our weekly workout routine. Not only does this help you tone your leg muscles, but you’re also strengthening them and burning more calories and fat at the same time.
Tip #4: Include a Dedicated Day For Strength Training To Your Routine
Just as it’s important to dedicate one day per week to cardio, the same is true for strength training. Strength training burns more calories than cardio (shocking, I know!). Cardio and strength training both burn about 10 calories per minute on average. However, what makes strength training so much more efficient is that even after you are done working out, you continue to burn calories for the next 72 hours. Yes, you can even burn calories after a strength training workout while laying on the couch and watching Netflix.
Not only that, but you will burn 25% more calories in the process! So for every 3 pounds of lean muscle you build, you can burn an extra 125 calories per day. THAT is called smart training if you ask me!
By keeping these 4 tips in mind, you can prevent workout plateaus and stay motivated to workout and keep getting stronger and fitter. Focus on making your workouts fun and keeping your body guessing so you can continue to see long-lasting results in your fitness journey!
If you’d like to spice up your workout routine with different strategic workouts each week, all while surrounding yourself with an amazing community of like-minded women, check out the Fuel For Fat Loss VIP Program, a monthly membership for Fuel For Fat Loss clients who are ready to advance deeper into new components of the program and keep getting results.