Beating the Plateau!

Do you or your client’s find that you're plateauing with your training? Let’s look to the accommodation principle to try and explain why this is happening.

The accommodation principle basically describes our bodies response to a continuous stimulus over time as our body adapts to accommodate that stimulus. The stimulus here reflects the frequency, intensity, time and type of training we are doing. This principle is sometimes also known as the law of diminishing returns. As we continually apply the same stimulus, the same training session or exercises, the magnitude of the return (our results) will decrease, eventually causing us to plateau. The following examples may help explain this more clearly.

The best example of this is probably those Facebook adverts you’ve seen whereby a trainer has managed to get that client from a body weight squat to a 40kg squat in a short amount of time, 6 or 7 weeks, so is using this to sell their programmes. Likely, this individual has never done a squat before so the body is getting a brand-new stimulus and is adapting to it to compensate – will will discus this response in a later post! Over time this client will find they can add less and less weight to the bar and the magnitude of their strength gains will decrease until eventually they might plateau.

The same might be applied to someone who hasn’t done much exercise before but has now decided taken up the gym to lose weight. Let’s say this person started completing a full body workout three times a week for 30 minute sessions. Initially, they will lose a significant weight. As time goes on and this individual is still hitting the gym 3 times a week doing the same 30 minute workout, they will see a reduction in the amount of weight they are losing until eventually they will plateau too. This is because the body is adapting to accommodate that training stimulus.

Obviously, these examples are very simplistic and do not account for other variable such as the individual learning technique or adjusting their nutrition; but both can help identify where we might see the accommodation principle at play in our training.

So how do we overcome the accommodation principle and avoid plateauing in our training. This is where we would draw on out F.I.T.T principle – Frequency, Intensity, Time and Type

Let’s start by looking at how we can modify the frequency our sessions: How often we train. This doesn’t always mean increasing. Sometimes we will have to reduce the number of sessions per week before we put it back up again to vary the stimulus and make sure our body continues to adapt and progress. This will also help avoid over-training.

Alternatively, we could look to adjusting the intensity (how hard we work) and the time (the length of our sessions); for example, making our sessions slightly longer and less intense or slightly shorter and more intense to add some variation to our training. The most common ways to increase the intensity would be through going faster if the exercise is cardiovascular or lifting heavier in resistance training exercises.

Modifying the type of training is also key. Not only is variation important to stop our training getting boring and therefore making us more like to stick to it; it also provides a different stimulus, so the body doesn’t just get used to, or accommodate the same form of training. Some examples of how we can modify the type of training include: Adding some conditioning to your strength training or incorporating some accessory movements to ensure we are still working toward the same goal whilst varying the type of training and exercise being completed.

How do you address the accommodation principle in your programming and training?