Dealing With Stagnant Performance

I remember in my first season of racing, I made tremendous progress. There was one patch where every time I raced, I seemed to set a personal best. I imagined this upward trend continuing and at this rate, I reckoned I would be in the Tour de France by about 2008. Well, of course, I’m still here and progress is not as simple as we would like to hope.

Often after a great first season, we will find that our performance stagnates or even appears to go backwards. This can be demotivating and it is important to work out how to deal with this.

1. It is quite natural. Everybody will have this experience at some stage. We cannot expect consistent progress in a straightline. To make progress we have to expect to go backwards at times.

2. Don’t be demotivated Don’t be demotivated by a feeling you are going backwards. Don’t dwell on a disappointing set of results, it is important to move on and think of the next race. These set backs are just as important to our progress as the times when we do better than expected.

3. Alter Training schedules. Don’t always stick with the same training routine. Consider doing something quite different. Either longer distances, shorter distances or even taking a break.

4. Are You Overtraining? As we train more, it becomes just as important to rest and allow sufficient recovery. Sometimes stagnant performance may be due to overtraining. Taking a short break may actually help us to regain our progress. See: Tips to avoid overtraining.

5. Don’t be Too Goal Oriented. It is good to have goals. But, we shouldn’t get too dismayed if we don’t achieve our ambitious targets. Keep persevering, just because we don’t achieve things at once, means we need to have more patience.

6. Train with Others - Take help from a coach. If we are the only ones to monitor our performance and training schedule, we can become too introspective, losing sight of the bigger picture. Talking to others may help put our performance in perspective and remind ourselves we can do better in the future.