WHY YOUR PERFORMANCES PLATEAU

Your performance can hit a plateau in many ways. If you have plateaued, you’ll notice that the gains you’ve been making in training have halted. Maybe you’ve been making steady progress in terms of weight increments in the gym or sprint speed on the pitch and now you seem to have hit a glass ceiling. Or perhaps you’re just not feeling as sharp on the pitch or as strong and powerful in the gym as you normally do. Performances plateau for different reasons but pinpointing the cause may lead to a quick and easy fix. The main causes are generally:

• Over-training

• Inadequate sleep, nutrition and recovery

• Psychological stress

OVER-TRAINING

The first thing to look at is your workload. Let’s say you’re playing Tuesday and Saturday (and have to travel a long way to matches), training with the team three times per week and also scheduling strength-based gym sessions. Sudden spikes in workload without careful consideration can cause a lot of stress to your body and even lead to illness. If this resonates with you, the simplest solution is to be smart and reduce your workload until you return to feeling energetic and healthy, especially during the season. Begin by taking the least important activities out of your weekly schedule. Of course, the most important ones are always your team matches and training sessions.

KEY POINT:

If you think overtraining may be the cause of your performance plateau, make sure you have at least one, ideally two rest days each week and consider ways to reduce your workload without negatively affecting your overall performance. During the competition period when you’re playing lots of games, it comes down to doing the minimum amount of work to get the maximum amount of gains. This is also referred to as the minimum effective dose.

INADEQUATE SLEEP, NUTRITION AND RECOVERY

If the above doesn’t apply to you and your workload is appropriate, your performance plateau could be the result of inadequate sleep, poor nutrition, or a lack of recovery time after games or training.

SLEEP:

The general advice is to aim for an 8-hour sleep every night, but anything from 7 and a half up to 10 hours could be the right amount for you. Sleeping for 10 hours might be a luxury you can’t justify, however, getting as much sleep as you can is going to lead to feeling better in training and matches.

NUTRITION:

Having sufficient protein and carbohydrates in your daily diet will also have a positive impact on your performance. As a general guide, this should be 2g of protein per kg of bodyweight and 4g-5g of carbohydrate per kg of bodyweight per day (although you may eat less on rest days).

RECOVERY:

Maintaining flexibility, tissue quality and joint mobility is essential in terms of boosting recovery and staying injury free. Foam rolling and stretching are the most effective strategies to use and any tight areas should be released consistently to keep you performing at your best. Being able to sit into a deep squat position comfortably is a good indicator of having the flexibility and mobility required to move well on the pitch.

PSYCHOLOGICAL SOURCES:

When you’re training in the gym, the weights, reps and sets in your programme make it easy to identify a progression or regression in your body’s condition. If you notice that you’re no longer making gains or you’re not able to lift as much as you did in the previous week, you have a clear indication of a performance plateau or dip.

As mentioned, in gym training it’s simple to measure and monitor your performance objectively, but monitoring your performance in a football training session becomes much more subjective. With objective measures, a dip in progress lets you know that you need to pull back somewhere in your training schedule and reduce your workload, but when measures are subjective, it’s harder to evaluate your performance and know whether you’ve really plateaued.

One way to help with this is to use the RPE scale (rate of perceived exertion), it’s a simple 0-10 scoring system where you give the perceived intensity of your session a score, we outline how to use this in both our testing guide and true tracking system. You can then combine your RPE score with the number of training minutes to give an overall training units score. For example, if you had just finished a training session which was 60 minutes long and you perceived the intensity to be a 7/10 (very hard), then your training units for that session would be 60 x 7 = 420.

AVOIDING IN-SEASON PLATEAUS

Hitting a plateau in training is a normal part of your body’s adaptation process. Gradually increasing the workload in steady increments and allowing appropriate recovery between sessions promotes steady improvements, however, it’s natural to plateau at times when your body needs additional time to adapt to new stresses.

Athletes in all sports hit performance plateaus at some stage in training and in competition. Olympic sprinters might achieve a PB in one race, but they’re not going to keep on improving on that PB in every race that follows. Olympic weightlifters might lift a new WR weight in one round, but they’re not going to keep on breaking that record in every consecutive round. Plateaus occur and by following a progressive training plan and continually monitoring yourself, further improvements will be achieved over time.

As a player, reaching peak fitness for crucial games and avoiding in-season plateaus is important. The most important games tend to come towards the end of the season when teams are chasing cup finals or trying to avoid relegation, so improving in pre-season and then maintaining your performance levels throughout the season is key.

Plateauing when you’re in the form of your life is one thing, but experiencing a dip in your performance mid-season is another.

KEY POINTS:

• Monitor your progress objectively in the gym

• Monitor your progress subjectively in football training

• Make sure you’re doing everything in your power to optimise your performance at every stage by sleeping well, eating well and boosting recovery by maintaining your flexibility, tissue quality and joint mobility