How to Break Through Fitness Plateaus? This Method Most People Don't Know
To avoid detours, you need clear goals, precedents, and guidance from a teacher/coach. To get stronger on the fitness journey, you need more rules. This session will continue discussing Deliberate Practiceand fitness, helping you break through plateaus and continuous progress, covering the following topics:
- Different stages of fitness
- Key to continuous progress
- Methods to break through plateaus
Different stages of fitness
Everyone's fitness journey can be roughly divided into several stages:
Stage 1: Beginner Stage
Generally refers to the 1-2 years since you first started exercising. At this stage, progress is fast, you will learn most of the basic fitness training and diet knowledge, your body shape and strength will have obvious progress. This stage is proportional to the effort and reward, the more you put in, the faster your progress, and you won't stagnate much; however, some people are only in the beginner stage because they don't spend enough time and energy, even if they've been training for several years, but they're still stuck in this stage, so remember that progress is not inevitable, effort is key.
Stage 2: Dedicated Stage
After experiencing the rapid growth of the beginner stage, you will encounter a plateau stage, where your state stabilizes and fluctuates little. The progress is very slow, and it may even stagnate. This stage will make you impatient, although you have been working out and controlling your diet diligently, but the results are not as expected. If you don't train, you will get worse. In addition, you will encounter many obstacles along the way.
- Persistence is needed in this stage, which is the key to continuous progress. There are usually several situations:
- Loss of passion and state regression
- Persistent efforts to maintain stable state, this situation requires the key to continuous progress, which can achieve a slow progress speed. Wait for you to discuss in detail.
Persistent efforts will eventually break through the breakthrough, this situation needs the methods to break through the plateau, which will be discussed in detail later.
Stage 3: Master’s Road
Regardless of fitness or other fields, becoming a master level requires time to refine. To reach this stage, you also need to pass countless obstacles, plateaus, and breakthroughs. Only then will you be closer to the master level.
Very few people can actually reach this stage, and it's not just about years and experience. ‘10,000 hours of practice’ is a misconception. Without deliberate practice and continuous breakthroughs, you’ll only reach a certain level and stop. Even if you keep practicing, it will just be repetitive and won’t improve.
Key to Continuous ProgressNext, we will discuss the key to continuous progress, which will use some of the rules in Deliberate Practiceto help us. In addition to the ‘clear goals, precedents, and teacher guidance’ mentioned in the previous video, we also need to...Comprehensive focusStep out of your comfort zone.Everyone will probably think: This is common sense, right? It is indeed common sense, but not many people can do it. Simple, but not easy.It means that you must be fully focused every time you train, don’t look around, don’t look at your phone, don’t talk, and don’t let other things distract you. You also need to push yourself to do more sets or reps, add a little bit, and do exercises you don’t like. This extreme focus and stepping out of your comfort zone training can help you enter a state called ‘flow’/‘paradise’. At this time, things around you and time will become blurred, time concept will not exist, mind is blank, only you focus on practicing, and the discomfort/pain you feel during training will become a pleasure, allowing you to constantly push yourself.Some examples of people entering ‘flow’/‘paradise’ state:
For example, Kobe Bryant, who was intentionally provoked by an opponent with basketball, suppressed his blinking response as a human, and didn’t blink for a long time, this state of practice is the key element that enables continuous progress.
We ordinary people may not be able to focus so intently, we can use external environment changes to help us focus more, such as:
- Choosing a less crowded gym/time slot
Don’t make appointments with friends to train together, reduce conversation distractions
- Put your phone away, reduce distractions
- These are some tips to help you focus more.
- JK Rowling also rented a hotel to focus on writing ‘Harry Potter’ novels, refusing any external influences.
- Breakthrough Plateau Methods
- Plateaus are unavoidable obstacles. Many people think that as long as they continue to work hard and persist, they can break through the plateau. In fact, it may be true, but it’s not the most efficient approach.
- Deliberate Practiceproposes the following approach: constantly try new methods. If applied to fitness, I would describe it as:
- Find the limiting factor/key problemThen take steps to improve this part, a little like the 80/20 principle, which can make you put in less effort but achieve a greater reward.But how to find the limiting factor? Let’s give an example, using the chemical principle of high school chemistry:
- Training + Diet + Hormone + Sleep + … = Effectiveness
If you are a person who has never exercised, the limiting factor is training, which is 0, so the effectiveness is also 0. When he starts to exercise a little, because his body has never been trained, any exercise is effective for him, so the effectiveness is greater than 0.
- If you just keep training harder, the training is 2, but other factors are only 0.5, you can only achieve a maximum of 0.5 effectiveness.
- Once you understand this principle, when you encounter a plateau, there are two possibilities:
- Each factor is also around the same, so you need to continue to improve all aspects, and you need to continue to work hard.
- There is only one (or a few) fatal limiting factor, for example, a person’s situation is:
- 1 Training + 0.6 Diet + 1 Hormone + 0.3 Sleep + … = 0.3 Effectiveness
- If you just improve sleep, the effectiveness becomes 0.6.
As for how to find this limiting factor, because everyone’s situation is different, and there are many subtle variations in each factor, such as:
Variations in training: execution, training volume, training frequency, rest time...
Variations in diet: composition ratio, food type, body absorption level...
- Because there are too many variations, you need knowledge and self-awareness to analyze effectively, so you need to keep trying each factor to find it. Of course, you can also consult teachers/brothers/elders for help, which can help you find it faster. This is what Deliberate Practicesays: constantly try new methods.
- Finally, let’s summarize
To achieve good results on the fitness journey and avoid detours, you need clear goals, precedents, and guidance from a teacher/coach. If you encounter a plateau, in addition to persistent efforts, you also need to be flexible, find the limiting factor, and constantly try new methods. Ultimately, you will break through the plateau and reach a higher level.
