Let’s be real for a moment: it might take a bit of time before you are seeing progress again, but a good place to start is listening to your body and learning how it responds to your routine.

“Consider keeping a training diary where you can keep a note of your nutrition, hydration and other factors such as stress, sleep, mood,” Elle recommends. “That way, you can keep an eye on how you are progressing and notice patterns, both for performance and underperformance.”

“Aside from following an appropriate program, monitor how you feel”, agrees Rebecca. “An elevated resting heart rate or a higher-than-usual heart rate during training can indicate overtraining, so monitoring this as well as your sleeping patterns can provide some insight into how well you’re recovering.”

And of course, if you’re always running or doing weight sessions, why not vow to try something new? Even if you can’t get to a gym, studio or class, there are plenty of options for changing how you move at home – whether that’s having a go at a barre class online, committing to 20 minutes of dancing in your kitchen, skateboarding, trying a totally different strength training routine or mixing up your running sessions to include long, tempo, easy, interval and fartlek training.

“If you feel like you’ve hit a mental plateau or are physically exhausted, switch it up!” Olimata suggests. “Allowing yourselves to change things up a bit, from intensity to activity, can be a great way to help you feel inspired again.”

5 ways to break your plateau now

Keep a training diary to chart your workouts, mood, hydration and nutrition. Try to maintain the diary for two weeks to give you a good idea of how things are changing.
Track your sleep to make sure that you’re getting enough shut-eye. Use your fitness tracker, phone app or good old pen and paper to chart how many nights you get eight hours’ sleep in a week.
Try a different form of movement or switch up your training regime. If you don’t want to try a different exercise, see if there tweaks you can make to the way you train now.
Reduce the intensity or load of your workouts. Schedule in days when you don’t try to give your workout everything you have. Keep some workouts short and low-intensity.
Prioritise recovery by taking proper rest days and re-fuelling adequately. You need at least two days off a week and it’s on those days that you want to make sure that you’re eating enough to give your muscles a chance to recover and the stomach has a good opportunity to digest and distribute nutrients without the external pressure of high-intensity movement.

5 reasons you're no longer seeing progress from your training