Michele Maroldo

When your exercise routine becomes a bore and you don’t see results in the mirror, it may be time for a change. Read on and follow these easy steps to get your routine and your body back on track.
You’ve been working out for months, you’ve got your routine down pat, and when you first started you saw significant results. Now that the months have past, you’re seeing less and less results. What gives? You’ve reached an exercise plateau. You might find this hard to believe given the fact that you’re still exercising so I’ll give you an example. A man of average size and build begins a job as a construction worker, when he first begins his muscles are very sore at the end of the work day. Each day that goes by he becomes less and less sore until he no longer feels muscle soreness. He begins to notice that his arms are becoming more muscular and well-defined due to swinging a hammer all day. However, in time he no longer sees growth in his arm muscles, they remain the same despite his continuing to swing a hammer day in and day out. Why these results? His body has become accustomed to this motion and it’s no longer a challenge to his muscles because he uses the same weight of hammer every day.

So how do you continue to challenge your muscles? You must revamp your routine every so often, as your body will become accustom to a daily routine of exercise. The first step would be to increase your weight resistance as your muscles become less challenged with the current weight you’re using. Depending on the exercise you are performing, increase your weights in 5 pound increments. Some exercises, however, will not allow for a 5 pound increase. An example of this would be most shoulder exercises like side lateral raises. You may only be able to increase the weight when performing this exercise by 1 pound increments. If you don’t have access to dumbbells or there are no dumbbells increasing by 1 pound you can try performing your shoulder exercises using a shoulder machine or cable crossovers.

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