FAQ

Have you ever trained your body for weeks or months at time and you see where you are getting the results you want, but then all of a sudden the results stop becoming noticeable ? This is called a plateau. When mentioning the body plateaus can be noticed in size, endurance, strength, or mayber even some other areas of your health and fitness that you’re looking to change. A plateau is simply a noticeable decrease in change when it comes to your strength or Cardiovascular workouts. Plateaus can be both good and bad.

Aaron Abrams

Plateaus can occur for various reasons, but the most common is repetiveness. It isvery common for people who do the same routine over and over again to see performance levels stay the same after weeks or months of training. Initially when you’re working out you are sending a shock to your muscles when you train and your body is forced to compensate for the stress and tension being placed upon it. This means you will see things such as improvements in your cardiovascular endurance, muscle size, and strength. The problem is once your body adapts to the stress that it was not used to before your body gets comfortable with what you’re doing and you stop seeing growth. You will then again have to venture outside of the comfort zone in order to see results again. 

Aaron Abrams

There are various waysto get over the frustrations of plateaus when it comes to the Human Body. Here are a few of my favorites that really work

Increase your weight and/or repetitions (reps) – Don’t stick with the same weight if you’re training a particular muscle group every time it comes around. For example, during a chest workout if you are used to doing your Barbell Benchpress on a Flat Bench for 3 sets of 12-15 Reps make a conscious effort to change it up with either weight and/or reps. Instead try increasing your weight by 10 to 15 pounds (lbs) and instead of doing 12-15 reps go for 10-12 reps. This is also known as progressive overload. Gradually increasing your weight to shock your muscles to grow. In summary plateaus can be annoying and frustrating and can discourage a lot of people from continuing their fitness journey. These plateaus can be overcome with consistency and a good conscious effort. If you want to succeed you will. Remember results don’t happen overnight, but if you refuse to give up they will find you.

Aaron Abrams

Time Under Tension (TUT) – TUT methods are perfect and can help you to increase your cardiovascular endurance as well as muscle size and strength in the strength training aspect of things. So what is TUT and how do you use it ? TUT is simply keeping your body under tensions for a specified amount of time in order to improve the mentioned areas above. A great example of TUT when it comes to improving your cardiovascular endurance would be 30 60’s. This was something we did in the Army to help increase our endurance and lung capacity. If you have a track or even a treadmill this works perfectly the goal is to do 10 rounds. You jog at a medium pace for 60 seconds and then sprint for 30 seconds. If you continue to do this you will gradually be able to run for longer time and farther distances.

Aaron Abrams

If you are doing some strength training the same method can be applied to your exercises as well. An example of TUT using strength training would be using an incline bench to do incline dumbbell chest flies. Grab a good weight that you feel will give you a challenge so by the 4th set your muscles feel like they will fail. Perform the exercise for 40-60 seconds,rest 30 seconds, and then go again. You are forcing your muscles to perform outside of their normal comfort zone and will gradually increase muscle size, muscle endurance, and strength.

Aaron Abrams