Have you been working out for a while and seemed to have hit a plateau? This article will help to explain why your results may have slowed down.
In order to reach our health and fitness goals we have to get uncomfortable. We need to create stress in the body for adaption to happen. The easiest way for me to explain is to give strength training as an example.
Let’s take the humble squat. When you are new to strength training and you use the barbell – the 20kg bar is heavy.
You do a few reps and sets and cause some (good) damage to the muscle. Over the next 24-48 hours your muscles heal and repair and adaptation happens because the muscle gets bigger and stronger. Soon moving the 20kg bar becomes easy.
In order to create more change you need to now increase the load and the cycle continues. You create tears in the muscle tissue, they repair and your muscles get bigger and stronger.
If you stayed on the 20kg bar your muscles will not get bigger and stronger as stress is no longer being applied.
This is the difference between simply practising something vs training for something to become better.
Here’s an example. When I started learning the bench press, my technique wasn’t great. I needed to spend some time practising in order to create good technique before I increased the load.
Now when I do the bench press I am training, I am purposefully increasing the load to create stress on my muscles so they can come back bigger and stronger.
This rule applies for every aspect of your training and life.
Staring a new job for example, it’s uncomfortable, you take time to learn and master new skills you become good and you are offered a promotion.
Here’s my question to you…if you want to create change in your body are you doing what it takes to uncomfortable so your body is put under stress so it can come back bigger and stronger.
If you are not uncomfortable in your workouts and creating opportunity for growth you are simply practising rather than training and it makes it hard to reach your goals.
This is where the mental game kicks in. When you are training it’s uncomfortable, it hurts and sometimes it’s just not that fun. Its during moments like these you need to use an unshakeable mindset that being uncomfortable leads to growth and moves you towards your goals.
So next time your workout, are you training to create change that moves your forward or are you simply practising some movements.
If you are ready to stop practising and ready to start training, check out our Strength Squad. I am ready when you are.