Simple Ways to Burst Through Your Contest Prep Weight Loss Plateau
Have you been dieting hard and training like a wild person, and now experiencing a contest prep weight loss plateau? It can happen. While it feels like a dead end, know that there are a few things you can do to overcome it and start making progress again.
Often times, the prep plateaus occur because one cuts their calories too fast, too soon or they over-indulge on the cardio too far out. While it seems logical that you should eat extremely low calories and do a boat-load of cardio when you start prep, nothing could be further from the truth. Let’s cover a couple of ways to overcome that plateau…
Tweak Your Contest Prep Diet
Chances are, you cut your calories too low too soon and now your body has run out of energy. While you do have to lower calories are part of the fat loss process, you still need enough to support your BMR, training, cardio, and recovery.
To break your contest prep weight loss plateau try taking a cheat meal and indulge in some pizza or a hamburger. If you are too scared to eat junk food then opt for a re-feed meal such as a big chicken stuff potato or whole wheat pasta. Eat higher calories and give your body a shock. When your body assumes it’s being fed again, the fat will start melting off again.
Adjust Your Training
Another thing you can do is tweak your training. Ideally, it’s good to keep the poundage you use as heavy as possible so you can keep your muscle during prep. However, when you hit those low days and you struggle with energy and hoisting that heavy poundage you can tweak your training by adding some of the Weider Training Principles.
Some things you can do are add drop sets at the end of you set. If you are curling 40 pounds, once you hit your last failure rep, drop the poundage to about 15 and rep out as many as you can, until you can do another rep.
Your Can Try Tri-Sets
Do 3 different exercises for the same body part in a consecutive fashion.
Example: Triceps Tri-Set
- Overhead Extensions – 12 reps immediately followed by
- Skull Crushers – 12 reps immediately followed by
- V-Bar Pushdowns – 12 reps
- Rest and repeat 3 more times
You Can Even Do Super Sets
A super set is doing two opposing muscle groups back-to-back such as triceps and biceps, hamstrings and quads, chest and back.
Example: Triceps and Biceps Super Set
- Overhead Extensions – 12 reps immediately followed by
- EZ Bar Curls – 12 reps
- Rest and repeat 3 more times
Make these training tweaks when you feel you are losing some strength and energy from dieting. This type of training tweaks helps you keep your muscle by keeping the intensity high. Keep in mind that dieting and cardio burns off the fat and the weight training builds and keeps the muscle.
Contest Prep Weight Loss Plateau Fix
It’s about dieting down slowly and not slicing calories at the start. As you diet down you tweak your training with the above tactics, only when necessary. When your energy or strength takes a dip, you can keep up the intensity simply by adding in training principles.
