Are You stuck in a rut? or training and not seeing any results?

Well, life isn’t always comfortable, and the same goes for exercise.

Put simply, If you are comfortable during every training session, you’re not doing it right.

See, while our comfort zone is a nice place, nothing ever grows there.

Whether you have five or fifty kilograms to lose, or whether you’re looking to gain strength and performance, you need to ensure you’re giving yourself the correct stimulus, in order to see results. 

Whatever you’re doing right now, let me ask- is it working for you?

Without sounding condescending, my guess for most people is, it’s not working too well at all, which is probably why you’re reading this.

To achieve your fitness goals, whatever they may be, the body needs to experience some form of stress. Exercise is supposed to stress the body, enough to make it adapt to new circumstances. This stress is what will cause a stimulus. The stimulus is what will cause a re-action. 

This doesn’t at all mean, you need to stress your body to the point of absolute exhaustion during every session. I’m not saying this at all. In fact this feeling of exhaustion should purely be a bi-product of the actions, and not the goal. 

What do I mean? If you’re goal is to get toned, ripped, strong etc, then feeling “wrecked” should not be the goal, but on some occasions it will be a bi-product to let you know that you have pushed quite hard. But so too can other indicators.

Adding stress, in this sense could simply mean, increasing the weights you lift or, increasing the time spent under tension (TUT). Rather than aiming to get as many reps as possible in as short time as possible. Look to change the stimulus by increasing weight with increased rest periods. Increase the time of each rep from 1 second to 4 seconds with a 4 second pause whilst maintaining tension. You’ll learn a lot more about your body and your body will have a new stimulus which it will have to react to. 

By actively creating a mind and muscle connection; linking your cognitive thought to your physical movements, we can tell exactly what muscle is being worked, and how hard it is being worked.

It may be tough to hear, but hard work is, exactly what is needed in order to experience changes in our bodies.

Hard work is something we can expect in every other aspect of our lives, so why should our training be any different?

Remember; the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Some tips to get you out of the rut;

• Take it outside/ change of scenery

• Change up your workout. Look for more time under tension and control of muscle groups. 

• Focus on your food; we’ve all heard it before but if you don’t have time for nutrition you simply don’t have time for results

• Stop ‘going through the motions’ and actively’ connect your mind and muscles during your training session

• Take a recovery day; another one we all know we should do, but don’t do enough of. Recovery doesn’t necessarily mean you need to sit on the couch the whole day; go for a walk, do some stretching or try some yoga.