How to break through a fitness plateau

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The fitter you are, the more training stress or workload your body requires in order to continue to improve your fitness. Of course, proper recovery plays a crucial role in this process.

• 5 steps to recover faster from a hard ride
• What to eat and drink to recover from hard rides

If your fitness has reached a plateau, then perhaps your training stress is inappropriate to enlist your body’s responsive process of rebuilding molecular structures, or positive adaptations (see 'Understanding the physical effect of training on the body,' below). But what to do?

Well, firstly we need to consider the three elements that make up training stress.

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• Intensity is how hard we are riding, both at any instant, during parts of our ride (e.g. up that hill) or for the ride as a whole. Intensity is often expressed in subjective terms (e.g. as a rating of perceived exertion), but is most directly and instantly measured in terms of power output (wattage).
• Duration is how long we ride for (hours per ride, per week or per year), but is also the time spent at particular intensities.
• Frequency refers to how often we ride (e.g. four days per week), but also how often within a ride we undertake certain efforts (e.g. I rode hard up that 5-minute hill four times today). Frequency also indicates the level of recovery time available.

The intensity at which we ride determines the type of training adaptations that occur, and is the most essential element of training to understand.

6 ways to vary training stress and increase fitness

1. Cause and effect

The elements of training stress (intensity, duration, and frequency) are interlinked, so that when you vary one, you must consider the others.  For example, you can increase the intensity at which you ride but you may have to reduce the duration so as not to increase the overall training stress too quickly.

2. Change the activity

When you are looking to escape your current fitness plateau, a change in the training stimulus is in order. Not only is a ‘change up’ good for your body, it’s also good for the mind (it needs training and stimulation too).

3. Change your routine

4. Allow greater recovery

5. Change your focus

6. Learn from your training

Understanding the physical effect of training on the body

So as our fitness increases so does the training stress needed to continue positive adaptation

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