Motivation and discipline to continue training disappears.
For the second year now I see that there is no progress in training. all races are going worse than in 2022, 2022 was my fastest. in winter i train inside. my ftp was the biggest in spring 2022 287wt at 66kg.
In winter, I train indoors and on a road bike in warm countries.
Last year, I thought that something was wrong with me, I thought maybe some kind of virus or something was missing. And this year I feel good, but there is no increase in speed, even on Strava segments the time is worse.
I have been training with a coach in a structured way since the summer of 2017 and to this day, I started from scratch. Sometimes I am morally dissatisfied with the coach, I want to blame my failures on him. I set myself the most important race for the summer xcm, I rode it much worse than in 2022, I was very upset, and a week later I took part in the xco race and also rode slower than in 2022, there is not a single new record on the Strava segment.
These two races finished me off, I wanted to quit everything and give up. I decided to write here, there are ideas or advice on what to do, the fact that there has been no progress for 2 years, only regression, affects me psychologically very strongly, my mood is bad. I can’t talk to anyone else about this.
Do you currently think there are holes in your training plan? Are you doing your part, with good sleep, diet, stress management, etc? Have you talked to another coach to get a second opinion on your training and progress?
It would be hard to take a guess as to why you are getting worse without knowing any of the details.
yes, I spoke with the trainer, he said that there is no progress every year, sometimes they are at the same level for several years. I changed the training, adjusted them according to my feelings, nothing helps. The volumes also remained the same. Nutrition, sleep, stress seem to have remained the same. The only thing is that in 2022 I followed the keto diet for several months, but I don’t think that this is closely related. I am not fat, 66 kg
I’m 34 now, I don’t think it’s age related, at least I won’t put up with it. I’m being overtaken by riders who are over 40
You haven’t shared your annual hours or if you have taken any extended breaks. I think your coach is right and that sometimes improvements stall and performance doesn’t always go up in a straight line. However, taking breaks once, twice or more a year can be good. Without knowing more details about your history of training, it’s very hard to say why this is. But, if something doesn’t work, go ahead and change what you are doing. Seems like either way you learn something.
Without more detailed knowledge of your training, physical status, and daily routine it’s pretty hard to make a call as others have said.
One thing: you need a change for sure. What direction will be the key
No shame in that, I’m 48 now and faster than I’ve ever been and I’ll overtake a lot of people in their 30’s but I’ll be spanked by folk in their 60s. My Mate who is 43 overtakes most riders and finishes 1st or 2nd in a lot of open TT’s, some folks just have better genes (albeit they need polished with training).
That aside my motivation to train is health, and whilst I can’t say for certain I reckon if I hadn’t been in a good shape cancer would have took me in my late 30/ early 40s. But I’m not afraid to take a break and cycle for leisure (especially at this time of year) and that relaxed state is actually seeing me go faster. Talk to your coach about taking a break and/or mixing it up.
Hey @michaelkrsk1, I am sorry you are feeling this way , and thank you for sharing.
There’s lots of great feedback already and I definitely understand where you are coming from.
As it’s been mentioned, sometimes we plateau (287wt is a great number), and sometimes we lack the motivation because the bar is set too high and that can actually hurt performance in a way we don’t imagine (you need motivation in a race to push past your limits) or sometimes something maybe happened in our lives that we don’t realize actually takes toll on our bodies and it’s the ability to cope with training load.
Just know that you are not alone. We all go through these periods, and they are totally normal. If anything it may be a good time to go back to the basics of why you ride your bike
An outside expert opinion is probably better than what we can provide with access to your entire training history. Maybe setup a coaching consultation with @empiricalcycling and see what thoughts Kolie has
287 FTP at 66 Kg’s is pretty strong, some people can’t get to that point even with pretty heavy volume. Where were you at in 2022? When you say “same volume”, is that same hours with same intensity mix? Once you get the “easy” gains (and you are almost certainly past those), most people aren’t going to improve unless the training stress continues to ramp up. And every additional watt take more and more work as we get closer and closer to our genetic potential. I wouldn’t expect a big drop if doing everything the same over 2 years, but I wouldn’t expect any performance improvement.
If you’ve only been increasing training stress via intensity, you may be at a point where you need to up the hours and reduce intensity to accumulate additional stress that is productive. How many hours a week do you average?
It could simply be that you’ve maxed out. This is the best you’ll ever get on the hours you are putting in.
Or there could be some other reason. You are burnt out. Overly tired and not recovered? Had/have covid. Any number of things.
Someone linked that Empirical Cycling podcast. Those guys do consultations. You could pay them to look at all your data and see if they can pinpoint a technical reason.
Philosophically, there is always someone better. At some point we no longer improve, get older and get slower. Most of us are not born with elite genetics. It’s just a fact of life. Find whatever the fun is in cycling and just focus on that.
I plateaued if not regressed for 2-3 years. All along my teammate was improving and I felt like although I was training a lot, I wasn’t performing to my expectations. At races I felt like I was in the wrong group and should be with the faster guys. I was extremely frustrated, lost some interest in the sport and started blaming my genetics.
Out of desperation I asked my teammate how he kept improving year over year in his late 40s. He walked me through his training and in short, it was simply focusing on raising CTL. There were no magical workouts or Build blocks, but rather just ensuring you get in the TSS and raising CTL towards your “A” race.
Following TR for 5+ years I maxed out all my low hanging fruit and I needed a breakthrough. Over those years my CTL never broke 80. However, when I focused on getting my CTL past 100 (highest in 2024 was 134) everything changed. My FTP didn’t change much, but somehow I was able to stay with the lead group at races.
IMHO, getting in the TSS and raising my CTL was the answer (YMMV). I’m fitter than I’ve ever been at nearly 48 years old. I feel amazing and performing beyond my expectations. I no longer stress about workouts, FTP, progression levels, etc, etc. I feel like I’ve found a cheat code.
I’ve largely shifted to a similar approach in the last couple years with good results. I do a couple interval-based workouts each week and I’ll be careful about too much intensity outside of those workouts. But the overriding training objective is to push CTL as high as I can while still recovering and giving myself a proper taper into my big events.
+1 again, and I turned 55 last year. And I just hit 134 ctl (all time high I think) before my taper into leadville. And my FTP hasn’t really gone up either, but my ability to hold a high percentage of it is dramatically improved. So, lots of similarities with the approach and results. I know age is working against me and I don’t expect to keep improving much at this point, but that’s why we have age categories in racing. At some point, it’s not about getting faster, but not slowing down as much as the others in your category. I know I’m not going to have a 300+ FTP when I’m in my 70’s, but I shouldn’t need that to be reasonably competitive.
Anyway, N=2 I guess in this case and may not work for everyone. But it’s been good for me and I enjoy long hours on the bike. One upside of getting older (for many) is less family/life commitments. There is no way I’d attempt my current training schedule when I was younger with the kids still in the house and travelling for work all the time.
If you don’t like riding for riding’s sake, then you might consider trying to find a different hobby. Nobody is paying you to ride and train, it’s just a hobby for fun and some structure to your life (self discipline).
I haven’t really improved in like almost 10 years, but I’m still what people would consider a really strong rider (for a non elite racer). I just like to do it. Find whatever that is for you and try to stop taking it so seriously.
Also, I’ve came in 6th overall and 4th in a TT one year. Two years later, I had a TT 30 seconds faster on the same course and came in 10th. Conditions and your competition changes. It is what it is.
I try to peak 4 weeks out with a big overload block. Immediately followed by 5 or 6 days of rest or super easy days. Then into a taper for a few weeks leading into event.
I peaked at 130 in early May for unbound (my big target race for the year). CTL had dropped to 110 by the day before the race. I always struggle with the time between my peak and my event, it’s just hard to back it down when you have a month to go and feeling strong. I’m usually feeling great at the time of my peak and my body tells me to keep pushing big volume and intensity, but I force myself to pull it back. I typically feel terrible/blocked after a week of rest and then my legs come back around during the taper. I like to get a race in during my taper when possible to give the legs some intensity, but at shorter distance than my target event (2 weeks prior is ideal for me). Last week before the event is very reduced volume, but still some 10-20 minute hard efforts worked in. Legs felt unbelievable at Unbound this year and I set all kinds of power PR’s and had a good result.
I’m currently just coming off my rest week heading into leadville in August and my legs felt pretty crappy last weekend, but I know this is par for the course and I just need to play it out. Peaked at 134 a little over a week ago and currently sitting at 121. I’m still trying to figure out a good taper approach for Leadville with altitude being such a factor. It’s kind of an A- race for me, so my training and taper is more around riding stuff I like to ride and just pushing volume rather ride than optimizing performance. Heading for CO tomorrow and I’ll have a couple weeks and I’ll spend that time pre-riding the course and doing some hard efforts on the climbs.
, and thank you for sharing.
