Triathlon Plateau
As in any other sport, triathletes can also hit a plateau on their training sessions. When you hit the triathlon plateau, it would seem as if you don’t get any better no matter how hard you train. However, you should realize that every athlete has had his training plateau at one point or another during his career. The key to avoid the mental frustration associated with the training plateau is to understand it.
First, you should manage your expectations because the improvements in your athletic abilities are not linear. At the beginning of the training, you can expect that physical fitness will be fast because your body is adjusting to a new activity. It is noted that around 80 to 90% of all athletes get fit on the first few months of their training when they do it consistently.
It is during the last couple of weeks when you are trying to get the final results of your training program that triathlon plateau is likely to occur. Progress in this area can take up to several weeks and getting to the last 5 to 10% to be at top shape can sometimes take even six months for results to show. So if a triathlete is expecting to see the rate of improvements he experienced at the beginning, he is bound to be disappointed.
This is just the normal cycle of how the human body works because the training plateaus during the period when the body is putting your fitness into its “account.” To illustrate this, think of an inverted pyramid, the amount of training you need to do in order to fill out the small compartment at the beginning of training is quite small. But as you go further up, the amount of training required also increases.
Remember, though, that like the pyramid, there is a hole at the bottom. Some people try to work out as much as they can to get to their optimum level but it is possible that this can just be a case of overwork because the amount of work you put in can just leak out of the hole when your body had already absorbed as much as it can.
