Five Ways to Transform Your Fitness

Anybody who works out regularly or is passionate about their fitness is going to hit a plateau sooner or later.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if you do the same workouts and the same exercises for years on end, you’re going to reach a stage where you stop making progress, don’t look any different, and maybe feel your enthusiasm starting to dip.

Let’s check out five ways you can kick-start and transform your fitness journey, and set your sights on the next new goal.

1. Try a Body Transformation

I’ve written about this separately, but it’s worth mentioning here too – and as a transformation coach, I know first hand what a huge impact this can make on your lifestyle!

My transformation packages run for eight weeks and focus on achieving phenomenal results through a combination of tailored nutritional plans, focused workouts and personal support to see what results you can achieve.

The impacts are massive:

• • See what you’re capable of to inspire you to keep progressing.
  • Learn about new ways to train, recover and eat to fuel your drive.
  • Test your limits, and see tangible results in a short space of time.

If you’re in a lull and feel like you need to inject some passion into your workouts, check out my transformation results and let me know if you want in!

2. Use a Personal Nutrition Plan

It is very common to be working hard, feel like you’re pulling your weight, but not see any results. One of the most typical scenarios is where someone just isn’t eating enough – because if you sweat buckets several times a week, surely you should be seeing progress!

The reality is that your diet is just as important as being active, and regardless of what your calorie tracker says, your nutrition must support your training goals.

• • If you don’t eat enough, you can damage your metabolism where your body adapts to a lower amount of fuel and conserves this in response to not having enough nutrients.
• • If you want to build muscle, you need to be in a calorie surplus – and there is no diet supplement or magic formula in the world that can change it.
• • If your macros are way out (the balance between protein, carbs and fats), then there’s only so much difference the best exercise programme can make.

A lot of the time, your diet might not even be ‘bad’ – but if it’s not tailored to your fitness goals, it’s going to set you back every time.

3. Reset your Goals

Why do you work out? What’s the thing that makes you lace up your trainers and head to the gym?

Typically, that reason might be something like this:

• • I want to lose weight.
  • I want to look fit.
  • I want to feel better.

Those goals are completely valid – but also vague. When your goal is to ‘get stronger’, you need to know what that means to you to understand if you’re making progress.

My advice is always to set quantifiable goals and keep track of how you’re doing. If you feel like your fitness has stalled, setting clear targets and clarifying your aspirations is a fast and easy way to refocus and decide where your existing workouts are not contributing towards your progress.

Here are a few examples:

Instead of ‘I want to be stronger’, you could say:

• • I want to increase my back squat by 15kg.
  • I want to be able to run three miles without stopping.
  • I want to be able to use the 16kg Kettlebell in class instead of the 10kg.

See how much easier that is? If you have something clear to work towards, you can start working on it in a straight line, without working out sporadically and not accomplishing the right exercises that contribute to your ultimate goal.

4. Try a New Sport or Style of Training

The comfortable is familiar, but a sense of security is sometimes the worst possible thing for our fitness.

When you repeat patterns they become a habit, so even though exercise is a great habit to have, if it’s leaving you feeling in a plateau, now is the time to shake it up and try something different.

It can be anything, but by challenging your body to adapt and respond to a new form of workout, you target different muscle groups, different aspects of your fitness, and new realms of your willpower that can spark a fast retreat out of no man’s land.

Here are a few things you could try, to challenge yourself to step out of that comfort zone:

• • Switch up your cardio – try running, football, boxing, cycling.
  • Try different types of resistance training – kettlebells, Olympic lifting, dumbbell exercises.
  • Change how you train – use a different machine, swap low, heavy reps for more, lighter reps, shorten the intervals between sets.
  • Track your progress each week; add another 500m to the rower, another 5kg plate to your bar, take one-minute rest instead of two.
  • Test out something completely new, like a team sport or class that you haven’t tried before.

By challenging yourself, even in a minor way, you create a new stress impact on your body that can shake you out of a slump and help you discover muscles you never knew existed!

5. Get Some Professional Advice to Transform Your Fitness

Last but not least, if you want to transform your fitness, and embark on something new, the best option is to work with a Personal Trainer, online coach or fitness professional. They can evaluate what you’re doing now, how that fits in with your aspirations, and what you can do to build new targets.

I work with all sorts of clients in specific sports or fitness disciplines who reach a dip – and it’s as simple as taking an unbiased evaluation and providing a fresh workout structure that takes where they are now, and builds a pathway to their next goal.

While we can all change it up from time to time, it can be extremely hard to be realistic about what we are achieving, and where we can make good lifestyle changes.

If you’re considering your own diet and calorie intake, it’s just too easy to ignore those glasses of wine in your calculations, or ‘forget’ that you slacked off in that last set because it was getting a bit boring!

As a PT, my job is to provide the tools and education to get you to the next level – and build up those fresh habits that will take your fitness to new heights.

For more information about training packages, programmes, nutritional programming and body transformations, get in touch any time or check out the offers currently available on my website.