Top Trainer Tips for Advancing Your Workout Plan

Workout PlanPlateaus are common, but you don’t have to settle in: if you feel you should be building more strength or increasing endurance, it might be time to progress your workout plan.

Top trainers—including many here at XSport Fitness–use metabolic training principals to advance workout routines and push past fitness plateaus. Here are some tips for you.

Get Intense

When it comes to ways to progress your fitness efforts, few things are as effective as simply working harder. Our bodies become accustomed to the stressors we put upon them in our everyday lives, but are also equipped to respond to sudden needs. From an ancient survival perspective, this might have meant sprinting from a threat or pushing past danger. Today, it’s more about incorporating intervals of increased exercise intensity, which has been shown to be a highly effective path to improved fitness, and it really stokes the metabolism!

Increasing intensity in a workout plan can be as simple as adding 30 second or 60 second bursts of sprint level activity every few minutes during your typical cardio workout. Or, it might mean alternating single joint exercises like biceps curls with core moves like squats and lunges.

Change it Up

They say variety is the spice of life, and it is also the cornerstone of total body fitness. To advance your workout plan, you’ll want to avoid the human body’s natural tendency to adapt. That means, challenge your body to master new milestones and progress toward new goals—get those muscles firing in new ways by adding variety to your workouts. This can be on a weekly or monthly level, as well as over the long term.

Performing new movement patterns or alternating your fitness activities each day are the kinds of approaches trainers may use to advance your workouts. It’s all in an effort to keeping your body guessing. Simple examples include adding an accessory like a stability ball, changing the exercise set you’re performing on different days, or trying a new group class on a regular basis.

Schedule Your Workout Plan

Many trainers use a “periodization” method of varying workouts within a planned schedule. By planning workout cycles over the long term, you can set yourself up for continual advancement and help avoid plateaus. A periodization program is especially helpful in strength training. It will recommend increases in intensity, a variety of exercises and variations in other factors like timing and recovery, to create a constantly evolving workout plan that can take you to new levels of fitness.

Whether it’s scheduling a personal training appointment to upgrade your current routine, exploring the group fitness schedule or adding short speed bursts on the treadmill, a big part of the push you need to advance your fitness comes from within. Get excited about the possibilities and make a commitment to be fit!

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