It’s hardly uncommon to run into a point in the leveling process or particular fight that kicks your butt for weeks on end (your hosts here, during one memorable period during The Burning Crusade, beat our collective heads against The Curator for about six straight weeks). When it comes to fitness, these tend to be innocuously called “plateaus” rather than “OMG WHY DOESN’T ANYTHING CHANGE?” or, as Scott called them, “Hell Levels.”

That’s probably to save on typsetting costs, but still.

Being stuck can take on a bunch of different guises, but they’re all frustrating. Of course, the easiest to identify is the whole being stuck to the couch thing. Curiously, that study makes no mention of video games, though we’ve all seen a pile of research claiming various evils stemming from those.  Mike pointed out that simply engaging in marathon television viewing sessions is actively bad for you (not to mention shortening your life), so that’s one more reason not to veg out in front of the tube.

But when it comes to busting the plateaus that happen in our fitness lives, what can we do?

Routine: “A rut is a grave with the ends kicked out.”

Our bodies are wonderfully adaptable when we subject them to new and interesting stimuli. However, that same adaptation means that if we don’t keep changing and challenging them, they get really good at coping with what we’re asking them to do, and we stop getting much benefit from it. If you’re getting a base tan in advance of going someplace sunny for Spring Break and spend 15 minutes every day in the sun, you’ll get a tan that is perfectly suited for coping with 15 minutes of sun. Spend an hour on the beach, and you’ll still be a crispy critter.

The same principle applies to an aerobic or strength routine – if you do the same workout every time you go to the gym, eventually, you’re not going to get any further benefit out of it. Sure it’ll be easier to do, but that’s exactly the problem – you’re not challenging your body enough to trigger an adaptive response (getting stronger, or faster, or fitter). The training maxim goes, “Everything works…. for a while.” If you’re stuck, shake up your regimen by doing new exercises, changing your tempo, or even just adjust the weight and number of repetitions. For instance, if you usually do half an hour of cardio at a steady pace, mix it up by doing intervals.

Gravity Sucks

Similarly, it’s not uncommon to get stuck at a certain weight, whether you’re on your way up or down. For most folks, it’s when we’re losing weight, we make progress, then hang out at a certain poundage for a while, before resuming the downward trend. There are some folks who posit that our body gets “set” at certain weights if we’ve been there for a while. While this does make some sense at the gut level, there’s not a lot of research supporting this right now. The thinking is that, once you move your body weight far enough, then hang out there for a while, your body re-acclimates to the new weight, and that becomes your “regular” weight.

To break through these plateaus, it’s a matter of doing the same kind of system shock to your metabolism that changing your workout does to your exercise. Taking a brief break from your regular eating habits, as with a temporary but extreme program like the Velocity Diet’s “all protein shakes, all the time” regimen, or just taking a week off (while you’re on vacation) – the change in routine will make your body react, which is your chance to bust through the point where you’ve stagnated.

Combining the change in eating habits with the change in workout routine may just be the one-two punch you need to get to the next level.

We finally kicked the Curator’s butt, by the way. And there was Much Rejoicing.

Related posts:

1. Santanic influences
2. Tripping out
3. Insulating the six-pack