Workout Plateaus – 3 Ingredients to Avoiding Them and Continue Gaining Optimal Fitness

Where do I begin? Well, I have often been asked, “What do you do to stay in shape?” Well, I pretty much reply with “Its my job.” People often shrug or laugh, but the fact is our bodies are our responsibility or job. It doesn’t matter if you are a world-class athlete or an average housewife. I have worked with both and all of us are only given one body at birth to work with for a lifetime. So this is how the fittest athletes, business executives, neighbor down the street, and myself avoid exercise plateaus and continue to burst through and continue gaining OPTIMAL FITNESS.

To begin, I want to explain the concept of multi-joint or multi-purpose exercise. Yes, it is what it sounds like. Multi-joint or multi-purpose exercise involves doing exercises that involve more than one joint, therefore more than one muscle is working at one time. When creating an effective exercise program this is going to be a huge ingredient in your quest for INSANE BODY CONSTRUCTION! Yes, it will make a huge difference in your exercise program. An example of a multi-joint exercise is a push-up, squat, or dead lift. What sense does it make for me to try to strengthen my quadriceps muscle (thigh) by doing a seated leg extension, or my hamstring muscle by doing a lying leg curl when I can accomplish both by doing a free standing squat. The same goes for every other body part.

Second, I have explained the key ingredient of multi-joint movement, but you are probably wondering well, what is next? To continue, the key is that the human body is basically capable of two basic movements. This involves either a push or a pull. When we look at a push movement a good example would be a push-up, bench press, or squat. Pull movements would involve pull-ups, dead lifts, or rows. Again, notice that I use examples of multi-joint exercises only. Now the key here in starting an effective exercise program is to start out your program by combining the push and pull together in what we know as a superset. This is where you will execute a push movement exercise first and immediately without rest you will execute a pull movement. By doing this while your push-oriented muscles are working, your pull-oriented muscles are at rest and vice versa. The key point that you will discover here is that the one muscle that does not rest here is your heart!

The third and final ingredient in obtaining OPTIMAL FITNESS is to progress your program into eventually doing a form of circuit training. This is where you may involve 3 or more exercises in a row without rest. If you are dealing with 3 exercises you may be dealing with a push-push-pull or push-pull-push complex. It doesn’t really matter the order as long as you try to vary your workouts every session so you don’t overtrain on a particular movement. At this point of your program you will discover that your overall workout has been intensified drastically.

Finally, by adding these principles and restructuring your daily workouts you will see that you have consolidated your resistance training and cardiovascular training into a single hard hitting workout. Remember, you have to be willing to make the change for success. Your body is your job! Show everyone that you are good at it!