Hey Athletes! Want to know what to do when you hit plateaus? Then tune in to this week’s episode of Ask Me Anything!Â
Episode 32 of Ask Me Anything is up!
Ask Me Anything: What To Do When You Hit Plateaus
In this week’s episode of Ask Me Anything, Jerred and Joe answer a question from Craig. He asks what to do when you hit a plateau in training. The guys dive in and give their tips on how to tackle this!Â
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Related Resources at End of Three Fitness:Â
- Ask Me Anything: How To Come Back After Sickness
- Ask Me Anything: What Highly-Effective Training Looks Like
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To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript:Â
Ask Me Anything: What To Do When You Hit Plateaus
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: Welcome to garage the math. He asked me anything. It’s pretty simple. I’ll be answering questions from the thousands of athletes that follow our daily programming. If you have a question or topic you want submitted, go to dot com slash AMA. Let’s get started.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared moon here with Joe Courtney. What’s up?Â
Joe Courtney: How’s it going?Â
Jerred Moon: It’s going well. Oh man. We have a good question from Craig today. Greg Lewis, he’s been on the podcast a couple of times. and I think he just has a great question for our more dedicated athletes, the longterm athletes who, you know, want to stick around, want to see progress, but it’s kind of like a mindset on that progress and plateaus.
So here’s the question. He said after three years of solid training in multiple PRS, most cycles. Yeah. What do you recommend for athletes when they hit a plateau or their [00:01:00] improvements slow down. Do you, how do you stay motivated? Do you switch, focus on the goals to something more specific? Is it adjusting the mindset to realize that progress is, is still being made, but just slower.
So I think I have a great response to how I do this and maybe it will be helpful. And then Joe, you know, whatever you got, man, but I I’ve been doing this type of training per our standard for longer than anyone else, because. I created it. I, you know, I just I’ve been doing it for before. Like for years before it was even a thing at garage gym athlete.
It used to be into three fit. back in the day. I think Joe might be the only person who really remembers that. And you know, how do, how do I stay motivated? And that’s why I have our, we have the standards in place. So we have fitness standards. For our community. And the goal for me is to, we have recruit, we have established and competitor and each different parameter that we test has its [00:02:00] own set of parameters.
and I look at this now as a checklist thing, and this is how I also keep. Without being okay. Because the PR mentality, it can’t be forever. You can’t get a back squat PR forever. You can’t get a two K road time PR forever. You just can’t. So you have to come like it is, it is impossible. If it wasn’t impossible, you would be the world record holder in a lot of things.
So how do you adjust then? This is how I look at things now for me, I don’t care about PRS. Really at all, like I’m not trying to hit PRS and almost anything. What I’m trying to do is maintain that competitor level fitness across all categories. And this is what keeps me challenged every single 12 weeks, all across the board year after year, because it is very hard to have every single element in [00:03:00] our standards at the competitor level.
All the time, like you have to be really dialed in. So if you want to get lazy for one cycle, this has happened to me before, like in, in, by lazy. I mean, like I, maybe I wasn’t going, I wasn’t hitting the intensity as I should have. And some of the intervals in my, two K row pops up above that seven minute time.
Cause that’s one of our tests. I’m like dammit. Now I’m one level out. And by my own standard, if you’re one. One element out of competitor, you’re completely out of competitor. You’re established. So if I had everything was at a competitor level, but one little thing wasn’t then I’m established and now I’ve moved to establish athlete.
That’s going to piss me off. And so I’m going to work really hard that next cycle to make sure everything’s back into that competitive level. It is a very hard thing to continue to do. And I know, I know Craig is a little more strength focused. I do think that his question may have been directed a little bit more at that.
but this is how I stay motivated is I’m. And that also when I go into [00:04:00] fit week and I’m testing all these things, it’s a checklist item for me now. It’s not a PR mindset at all. It’s. Like the, the, what is it, two X Exxon back squat, or is it dead lift or whatever, you know? I think it’s 1.75 on back squat and 200 deadlift.
So let’s just say I’m 180 pounds. I got to hit three 60 on the deadlift to hit that two X number. I can deadlift a lot more than that, but I go into fit week. I lift three 60, if I’m good with that, I’m like, I’m good. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t, I don’t care about him. I hit four 45 or four 25.
I don’t care. I got above three 60. That’s I’m at the competitive level there. I have like 14 other tests now I need to worry about. And so sometimes I don’t even max out all the way. I just check. Am I in the competitor? Great. Moving on to the next test. So I’m not even trying to PR lift the heaviest. I possibly could.
Most of the time anymore. I’m just checking off each little parameter to see if I’m the competitor. If I’m not. Then I’m like, okay, what do I have to do next cycle to make sure that this thing happens. So that’s how I’ve looked at it for very long time. [00:05:00] Period. It’s kept me happy. I don’t care about PRS as much.
I just care about maintaining a really high level of fitness and it’s very hard to do.Â
Joe Courtney: Yeah. Along the same lines of just changing mindsets of not always shooting for PRS. I usually, for when I go into cycles, There’ll be something that I I’m just thinking that I want to improve on. Like, I want my runtimes either, be better or feel better, or I just want to get my strict press or something like that.
But yeah. How with all of our tests in standard with conditioning and strength, it’s like, I want to improve something, but this still has to stay where it’s at. I’m not going to sacrifice my conditioning because I want to get a little stronger or vice versa. I’m not going to sacrifice my runtimes just because I’m, because of any of that.
So that’s just how I’ve, gone to approach it as well and thinking longterm, With, with the improvements of over what I want to do for the, for the whole year as well. And I mean, if you, if you’re still improving on one thing, but still maintaining the other, and that’s great, versus some people will.
[00:06:00] Strive for these strength measures. And then when they hit the strength, mothers go, okay, cool. I did that once now. Let’s do something else and boxes checked and then there’s like, what happens after that? So it’s getting up to that and, you know, you’re, you’re basically juggling plates or whatever, just to keep up and maintain, but plateaus there they’re definitely bound to happen.
It just depends on what you really want to focus on and, and try for it.Â
Jerred Moon: Yeah. And then the last thing I would say is we we’ve tried to model our new reward system. So this question was asked before eight officially announced it, but we’ve tried to model our new reward system around that. So the PR is at the bottom, you know, we want you to get the, the one PR block shirt.
We want you to get the five PR red shirt. And then the 10 PR lifetime, I think is a realistic, doable thing. Like hitting those, that amount of PRS. Cause it could be. Across multiple different elements that we test. But then after that, we kind of want, you’ve done with the PR mindset and mentality. you know, our rewards after that are doing hard things and meet [00:07:00] yourself Saturday workouts, it’s maintaining 80, 80% consistency over cycle.
And then it’s maintaining 80% consistency over five consecutive days ankles. that’s just, those things are much harder to do. We’re gonna make you better than hitting a PR on the back squat or front squat or whatever. And that’s kind of where we want people after you’ve achieved those PR metrics in our community.
Like, let’s move on. Let’s talk about consistency. Let’s talk about mental toughness for the long haul. And that’s why I really want every, veteran athlete like Craig and everyone else in the program to have their mindset. After, after the PR thing has been, has been achieved.Â
Joe Courtney: I think this is a little bit more geared toward the veteran people that have been here for multiple, multiple cycles versus like the neuro ones.
Yeah. Yards are going to be coming a lot. But then, once you get all your PR like, just think about, if you add about 20% to whatever your metrics are now, then think of it from a year from now. Like, okay, now I just need to maintain this. And then I’ll just kind of creep a little bit from there. So it’s not that we’re just throwing out PRS in general, but after you’ve.
Improved everywhere then. [00:08:00] Can you maintain that? Yeah.Â
Jerred Moon: And if you agree with our elements, that are what we test the different, like 16 different parameters that we have a new PR could be. How many, how many elements do I have? In the competitor level where established level, you know what I mean? Like if you’re like, Hey, last cycle, I had nine out of 16 in the competitor level.
Let’s see if I can get 12 out of 16, this cycle, or 10 or 10, or, you know, whatever. Like that’s a new way to look at PRS. That’s different than just always wait on the bar or going faster. Yep. Cool. All right, guys, that is for this. Ask me anything. If you want to ask a question, go to dot com slash AMA, ask a question.
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