There are a number of key elements you must incorporate into your workouts if you ever want to skyrocket your metabolism and melt away fat while building a lean, strong body.  These key elements are a mash-up of High Intensity Interval Training, Circuit Training, and Strength Training that integrate as much of your core as possible, giving you incredible results quicker than any other training method or modality.

Many people fall under the false illusion that they need to spend countless hours on treadmills, ellipticals, bikes and other forms of cardio equipment in order to burn fat.  The reality is that virtually all pure cardio types of training will eventually cause your body to reach what is known as a fitness plateau.  As the name would suggest, a fitness plateau is when after a period of exercise, your body suddenly stops changing – either to gain strength or to lose weight.  It is just as common in men wanting to gain size and strength as women wanting to lose weight and become toned.

Reaching a plateau can feel very frustrating and demoralizing, and many people try to combat the problem by pushing harder or spending more time in the gym.  But the problem isn’t in the lack of training effort of duration, but in the type of training and static duration.

Why doesn’t my body want to burn it?

There are a few common mistakes that people make when it comes to exercise that cause them to reach a fitness plateau.  But ultimately, the bulk of these mistakes fall under the same category – habit.

Although you may want your body to use as much energy as possible during exercise and lose as many calories as possible, you body wants to do the opposite.  It wants to do things as efficiently as possible, and expend as little calories as possible during movement.  You may be asking why, but it all makes sense from a survival perspective.  Your body’s number one priority is to make sure that you live.  If you were walking through a desert rather than walking on a treadmill, you’d appreciate the fact that your body will do what it takes to reach a plateau, and the sooner the better.

Creatures of Habit

As you are wanting to lose weight and or gain strength however, you want to do everything to prevent your body from reaching a plateau.  So it might be useful to first understand what makes the body reach a plateau.  Simply put, we are creates of habit.  Anything physical action that you repeat over and over makes you predictable, and your predictability allows your body to prepare itself and work as efficiently as possible.  This is why programs and exercise routines cause the body to hit a plateau – because they are repetitive and predictable.

But as good as we are at adhering to exercise routines, we are often terrible at sticking to regular meal intakes.  And when we do, we often don’t give the body the nutrition it requires.  But this is an area where we absolutely want to form a habit in order to prevent hitting a fitness plateau.

When the body does not receive regular meals and proper nutritional intake, it goes into alarm of the possibility that it won’t receive its nutritional needs when it needs them.  This causes the body to slow its metabolic systems down and hold onto its fat stores for a rainy day.

Low Intensity Aerobic vs. High Intensity Anaerobic

The second common reason for reaching a weight loss plateau has to do with training type.  Most people believe that in order to lose weight they must do cardio training – the more the more weight will come off.  But the problem here lies with not stimulating all of the metabolic pathways.  The body has 3 metabolic pathways that provide the energy for all human action.  When we perform cardio training, we train at a low to medium intensity.  This stimulates only the aerobic metabolic pathway.  For the other 2 metabolic pathways to become stimulated, we must perform highly intense anaerobic training.  Repeated bouts of high intensity exertion cause all three of the pathways to become stimulated.  This is not only superior for burning fat, but also dramatically improves power, speed, strength, muscle tone and muscle mass.

3 Steps to Avoiding the Plateau

1 Eat what your body needs when your body needs it

It may seem counterintuitive, but you may not be eating enough.  As you increase your fitness level, your body’s metabolism increases and so do your nutritional needs.  If you don’t give your body what it wants, it will store what it gets.  You need to eat more nutrient dense foods when you are active than when you are not.  This is because your body is doing more breaking down and restructuring processing of your cells.  If you find you are often hungry despite eating recommended portions, it is a clear sign that your body is craving nutrients it is not getting from the foods that you are eating.  Eat plenty of fresh whole foods, and keep foods high in refined sugar, processed, packaged and frozen to a minimum.  Sorry to say, but lean cuisine is a sham.  If you’re hungry because you’re starving yourself in the battle to lose weight – stop it.  It will cause you to store the only food group the body can store – fat.

So start eating foods such as:

meat (non-processed)

For those who follow a lacto-ovo-vegetarian  diet; beans, seeds, legumes, leafy greens – but these are great for non-vegetarians too.

nuts and seeds

fruits and vegetables of all colors

2 Mix it up

Routine is the enemy.  Vary your workouts regularly – the more variation the better.  This means varying:

training type

training intensity

training duration

sets

reps

rest periods

Keep the majority of your workouts short and intense lasting between 20-35 minutes.  Practice and train fundamental lifts and their variations:

squat

deadlift

clean

presses

clean and jerk

snatch

Similarly, practice and train the gymnastic basics and their variations:

push-ups

holds

pull-ups

dips

levers

3 Get plenty of zzzz

Ensure that you’re getting enough sleep.  Getting your mind and your body in a state of deep relaxation is important to allow time for your muscles to recover from exercise.  It is in this time that your muscles receive the benefits from the stress that you put them through during your workout, so make sure you give them the best of both worlds.

If you have reached a fitness plateau, it may be time for an active rest.  Every now and again, it is important to take a week off from structured exercise, and engage in light activities. Active rest rejuvenates the mind and the body and allows for overworked muscles to rest and rebuild.  When you return to exercise, you’ll come back stronger and eager again to push through some pain, throw up a lung, and fight through some new challenges.

Happy core strength and fitness training,

Karl

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