Occasionally I have a couple weeks that are really hard and I feel little to no progress.
Are there any methods for breaking through a plateau?
There have to be several.
Just a thought: have you considered lowering intensity and maybe raising a little bit volume (more reps, more time…)?
- either change what you’re doing, XOR
- wait it out
What alternatives are there, really?
Patience.
: )
So long as you’re doing it right, progress will come.
( :
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PS: I’ve a few rules-of-thumb, when I’m doing PT, in case anybody finds 'em useful:
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intensity-workouts are never more than 36-minutes long: that’s a natural limit, & the switchover from anabolic to catabolic happens around 36-40-mins, naturally…
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endurance-workouts are never more than 90-minutes long: marathons are anchoring onto the wrong thing: it’s our bodies we’re training, not some external-thing, so we ought respect our body’s innate-cycles! ( notice that on the EEG, dreaming begins about 90-mins after falling asleep, & notice also that the optimal-entertainment-movie also is about 90-minutes long: this, too, is an innate natural biocycle. )
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HIIT is calibrated to HRM, and NOT to clock-time: when my heart reaches the top of what’s healthy/safe/sane, then I put the kettlebell down, or quit doing pushups, & when it’s slowed enough, then I get going, again. It DOESN’T MATTER how many minutes that was, this-session: if I’m incubating some cold or flu, my “minutes” will be “wrong”, but my innate-body-self-regulation will be dealing-with-that, too, & it knows what it’s doing!
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respect recovery-days, unless you are going for a neverending every-day’s-a-workout-day result, which may have longevity-of-your-health consequences ( it may simply wear-out your body quicker, so you get fewer years outside a wheelchair, iow ).
“Corps Strength” is a good book on fitness, btw, & it recommends NOT doing heavy weights, as they produce too much injuries.
The guy who wrote that spent 28 YEARS in the US Marines, studying this stuff.
There’s a pic of him with about 400-lbs of weight on him ( couple marines, & some ammoboxes with sand in 'em ), so I think he’s immensely-qualified to give this recommendation.
Optimal fitness, not ideological/traditional/conventional, right?
Do well,
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