Troubleshooting Performance Plateaus
Performance plateaus can be perplexing for athletes and coaches alike. Sometimes, even when the training plan makes sense and the athlete is executing the work, performance gets stuck. See how to identify the underlying causes and break through.
Learn how to identify what’s really behind a performance plateau. World-renowned coach Joe Friel helps you choose the right next step with confidence, and guide athletes back toward progress—by better evaluating training load, recovery, lifestyle stress, and motivation, and recognizing when performance goals begin to come at the expense of health.
Our online course, “Troubleshooting Performance Plateaus,” shows coaches how to understand when a plateau is a normal part of training, when it signals a deeper issue, and how to respond in a way that supports both performance and long-term athlete well-being. You’ll learn how to:
- Distinguish between productive and problematic plateaus so you can see when an athlete is simply stabilizing at a high level versus when progress has truly stalled.
- Spot the real cause of stalled performance by looking beyond the training plan and evaluating sleep, life stress, illness, motivation, routine changes, boredom, training consistency, and recovery habits.
- Make effective training adjustments by seeing when to reduce load, shift intensity, change structure, alter the training environment, rework the race calendar, or move attention away from constant data tracking.
- Help athletes train more consistently by solving common follow-through issues like missed sessions, low motivation, and poor workout preparation.
- Recognize when health needs to come first and navigate the fitness-versus-wellness tradeoff with better judgment, drawing on insights from Joe Friel’s decades of experience coaching endurance athletes
When an athlete stops improving, it can be tempting to assume they need more intensity, more volume, or more discipline. But often, the real answer is subtler. This course walks coaches through understanding the full picture. You’ll come away with a more nuanced coaching eye to better guide performance while protecting the health and consistency that make long-term progress possible.
How to Enroll
All USA Cycling courses are offered exclusively through USA Cycling’s online learning management system at learn.usacycling.org.
Questions? Contact Suzy Sanchez, Director of DEI and Membership Programs, at ssanchez@usacycling.org.