Let me see if I can guess, you've been exercising regularly for a while, it's been going well, and all the sudden you hit a brick wall. The last thing you want to do is go to your spinning or step aerobics class and you can't stomach the thought of another walk around the neighborhood. Sound familiar? Here's the bad news, you've hit a PLATEAU. Here's the good news, its normal. So what now? Here are five tips to help you work though your plateau and get back on track.

Enjoy a Period of Active Rest

There's nothing wrong with letting your body rest. Enjoy a week without the normal structure of your exercise routine. Instead, do some yard work, play ball with your kids, or take a yoga class. This is called active rest and it will allow you to return to your structured exercise routine with a fresh mind, rejuvenated muscles, and ready for new a new challenge.

Hungry Much?

Your metabolism is always changing right alongside your body as you begin to increase your exercise intensity. This means the calories your body needs to rebuild your muscles and keep up with your new exercise routine with increase. A good sign that you need more calories to keep up with your exercise is if you find yourself hungry all the time.

Variety, Variety, Variety

It seems like common sense, but most of us forget that we need to add variety to our workouts to keep our minds fresh as well as our muscles challenged. Mix things up, take a new class at the gym, sign up for tennis lessons, try a new weight routine, or even hire a personal trainer for a month to give you some new ideas.

Intensity Levels

On top of adding variety to your workouts, you also need to vary the intensity of your workouts. Set up each day as a low, moderate, or high-level intensity workout day. Try interval training with low to moderate exercise for 5 minutes then 15 minutes of high intensity, repeat that cycle for a 40-minute work out. This is a great trick to help your workouts seem to go faster and work on your heart rate at the same time.

No Snooze, You Lose

Let's face it, moms do know what they were talking about when they say "Be sure you are getting enough rest." Sleep is very important to your exercise routine because it's during sleep that our muscles rebuild from our exercise that day. Enough sleep ensures you will be able to wake up the next morning refreshed and ready for the next workout.

Try these tips as you are working your way over that brick wall. If you are still finding it hard to get through your plateau, relax and just ride it out. Your body is smarter than you think and it will tell you when its ready to exercise again.