How To Get Out Of Your Training Rut

By East Side Crew on August 5, 2011 in Sport

We all know the feeling. You start a new training program and you feel awesome. You have more energy, you feel that little bit fitter each week and you can see changes occurring in your body. Your pants aren’t so tight and your top doesn’t cling to the middle like it used to – life is great!

And then all of a sudden you don’t feel so great. Your legs feel tired, you seem to be going backwards and you lack the motivation to keep training hard. Watch out – you’re stuck in a training rut, but don’t despair, it happens to the best of us.

At the Crew, we follow these key training principles to avoid getting stuck in a rut:

Variety is the spice of life – Constant variation is what keeps getting you results. You don’t need to make massive changes to your training program. Small changes will help you to keep getting fitter, faster and stronger. For instance, if you just do long slow runs, add some interval training or some hills twice a week.

Overload – Your body is a tricky thing. When you place physical stress on the body that it isn’t accustomed to, like lifting heavier weights, your body will learn to make the physiological changes necessary to adapt to the stress. In order to keep achieving improvements to your strength and fitness, you need to be constantly challenging yourself to train that little bit harder, lift a little more or run that bit faster. Incremental increases to the stress placed on the body will ensure that you are constantly adapting and getting fitter, faster and stronger.

Motivation – It’s very difficult to keep pushing yourself without the motivation. Setting a goal is a great source of motivation. If you have something to work towards you are more likely to stick to your training program and push yourself to train that little bit harder each week. At the moment, our goals are all about the City2Surf and getting a better time than last year!

WORKOUT

Add this workout to your current training regime to get fit fast:

400m time trial
21 clap push-ups
21 tuck jumps
21 burpees

Repeat 400m time trial and 15 reps of each exercise.

Repeat 400m time trial and 9 reps of each exercise.

Rest for two minutes and repeat. Those of you who are training for performance should aim for a time of around 60 seconds for your 400m time trial and should be completing the clap push-ups on your toes. Those of you who are new to training or normally follow our fundamental workout should aim for 90-100 second for the time trial. Try the clap push-ups on your knees at first. The aim is to be as explosive as possible with each exercise.