What To Do When You’ve Plateaued

“I’ve been working out for a year and in the last 6 months my body has plateaued.”

Ohhhhh, I’ve been here before and I’m sure you can relate.

Let me give you some background on this person.

His goal was to reshape his body “from dad-bod to rad-bod” (His words, not mine… but I loved it lol). He wanted to look more like an athlete with bigger arms and chest, with a more trim waist. He wasn’t striving for abs, but he did want a waist under 32,” and he was current a 36″.

He had been working out for about a year and dropped 20lbs (started at 230lbs) his first 2 months by just cleaning up his diet; he noticed some muscle tone and some development his first three months, but after that is when he said he stalled.

Why did he want to do this?

He was uncomfortable taking off his shirt when he would go boating with family and friends and didn’t want to feel that way anymore. He didn’t want to be just another cubby dad that couldn’t keep up with his kids.

He told me a story of how he played volleyball in the pool with his kid, and his shoulders and hips were sore for over a week. He was so sore it affected how he slept, which made his body hurt worse for about a month, all from a game of water volleyball with his 10-year-old.

For any guy, especially dads, this is an ego hit.

Let me give you more info, and let’s see if you can figure out what’s going on.

• He was in his late 30’s. 5’9″ weighs 210lbs.
• No know hormonal issues.
• He was about 27% body fat when we measured.
• The scale had fluctuated between 210 and 205 for the past 6 months.
• He had been weightlifting for a year (most guys will start with the iron) doing weights 5xweek with a traditional bodybuilder split. Example: Monday was Chest, Tuesday Back, Wednesday legs, etc…
• He did not record the weight he lifted.
• He would do cardio 2xweek for about 20min after his weight training.
• He tracked his cals about 2x week and he would average 2500cals keeping his protein at about 200g a day, filling the rest in with carbs and fats.
• He did mention that he didn’t train legs very often due to his knees hurting when he did certain exercises.

After reading this, you may see there is more than one thing going on, and that is quite normal in these cases, but I want to know…

…what would YOU tell him to do? Where would you ask him to start? What would you suggest he do with his eating? What about his workouts?
What do you think is happening? What would you suggest for him to do?

Think about that for a sec and scroll down to see what we did
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Solution: Consistency + Tracking His Numbers

As you can tell, there is a lot going one; this isn’t just one thing that will take his body to the next level but instead doing multiple things on a consistent basis.

This, what you see above, is more common than anything when it comes to stalled progress.

Not being consistent and not tracking numbers. In this person’s case, without realizing it, he had created the perfect maintenance lifestyle (diet + exercise) to maintain his current shape; but to go to that next level, he would need to do things differently… or better.

What we had him do was track all his numbers in his workouts (exercises, weights, sets, reps) and strive to beat those in his next workout. This way, we avoided him doing the exact same thing as last time, and this forced his body to develop.

Without realizing it, he had been lifting the same weights for the same rep ranges for the past 6 months; even though he changed some of the exercises up, he was still lifting the same. When he did this, his body had no reason to change, no reason to develop further. As soon as he started tracking his workout, you could see the difference in only a few weeks.

Now for his diet?
Well, when he started tracking his food EVERY day in two weeks, we saw what was happening.

Have you ever seen that meme where on Monday-Thursday you eat great, then on Friday and Saturday you go overboard? This was him to the “T.”

Monday-Thursday, he would average about 2300 cals with 200g of protein (like he said), but on Fri, he would average over 3000cals, and on Saturday, we saw several 4500 cal days.

Now I didn’t want to take away those Friday and Saturday meals from him, but we had to modify things to fit his cals.

Mon-Thurs we kept the same cals at 2300, but on Fri and Sat when he knew he was going out to eat and would most likely eat a lot, we had him skip a few meals, basically saving the bulk of his calories until he went out at night. I did have a rule with him that he still had to hit a min of 150g of protein that day in the forms of lean meat or shakes and keep his cals under 2500. As long as he did that, he could eat whatever he wanted to eat on both Friday and Saturday.

He also made sure to have a longer workout on Saturday morning; this kept him from going too far overboard on Friday night, knowing he was going to have to workout and allowed him to burn a few extra calories that day as well.  🙂

What happened?
Not going to lie, it took about 6 weeks from him to become consistent with this. One week he would do good then the next week he’d fall off the wagon, but once he got TWO weekends in a row, then he was on board.

He was consistent for 10 weeks (longest he’s ever been consistent) and dropped 23lbs. Yes, 23lbs in 10 weeks, and he gained about 4lbs of muscle, so the total scale loss was 19lbs.

Truth be told, he ended up eating closer to 2000 cals each day and would fast all day Sunday after his Saturday meal, so this is why his drop was a bit faster.

He’s hovered around the 205 marker and has been happy there for about 8 months, its a natural lifestyle for him to live. He’s still tracking his workouts but has cut back on his food tracking to twice a week, and when the scale starts getting closer to 210, he’ll track daily until it goes back down to 205.

As soon as life settles down due to 2020, we’ll make another push to go further, but right now, things are easy for him, and he is enjoying life, so no reason to screw with anything.

What about you?
If you find that your stalling track EVERYTHING for two weeks. Track your workouts and your eating; once you do that, you’ll find out very quickly why your stalling.

Regardless, track for two weeks.

Once you do, make your adjustments (such as more consistent with your eating and beating your numbers in your workouts) take your measurements and track for another two weeks to see the changes.

I can PROMISE YOU that if you do this, you’ll break past that rut and be well on your way to where you want to go.