Why You Might Be Experiencing a Plateau or Regression
Photo by: Tannis Thatcher
High-Gravity Days
If you have been climbing for a while, you’ve probably heard a friend say they’re having a high-gravity day, or maybe you said this yourself when you were not feeling great while climbing or training. What happens if a single high-gravity day turns into consecutive high-gravity days?
Periods of feeling weak happen to everyone, and they can be confounding. You question the effectiveness of your training program. You wonder if you are wasting your time. Should you continue following your training plan, switch things up, or take a break altogether? What is the right answer? Is there a right answer?
First off, take a moment and PAUSE.
Slow progress, a plateau, or even a decline in performance are necessary parts of training and improvement. Our performance is not meant to trend upward forever and ever. We are meant to divide our training up into phases or seasons for longevity’s sake. Trying to peak all year round would be exhausting.
In this blog post, we explore the principle of adaptation, overreaching vs. overtraining, and some possible reasons why you might be experiencing a dip in performance or plateau.
The Principle of Adaptation
Adaptation occurs when you do exercises/movements that stimulate your muscles in a novel way. Your body will increase its ability to cope with the new stimulus and it does so in a series of phases (based on the Supercompensation Theory/One-Factor Theory):
Alarm/Fatigue Phase: In this phase, we are just starting our new training program and our body is receiving new stimuli which exceed our current capacity. During this phase, we may experience increased muscle soreness and fatigue, as well as a decrease in performance as our body adapts to the new demands.
Resistance/Recovery Phase: At this point, our body is starting to adapt to the new stimulus and recover from the initial stress. We see our fitness levels come back to baseline.
Supercompensation Phase: This phase is characterized by optimal performance and muscle growth attained as a result of the adaptations made in the resistance phase. We may want to time this phase with an upcoming competition or climbing trip to take advantage of this increase in strength and performance.
Loss of Supercompensation: After supercompensation peaks, it will eventually start to dip down again since our body has adapted to the stressor and no longer responds to it in the same way. Either a new stressor is applied and the process begins again or no new stress is applied and detraining begins. This is how we will start seeing that sinusoidal wave start to form. As we continue to use the supercompensation model in our training, we will gradually move that wave in an upward trend and see our strength and performance increase.
It’s useful to understand that our body goes through phases and we cannot expect it to be progressing all the time. Beginner and intermediate climbers/athletes don’t need to worry about the supercompensation model since they will probably see gains no matter what they do (as long as they do it consistently), but it is something to consider once you gain more experience.
Overreaching Vs. Overtraining Syndrome
Overreaching is the accumulation of training load that leads to a decline in performance. For high-level athletes, the goal is functional overreaching. Research shows that overreaching followed by appropriate rest and recovery (i.e. a deload) can lead to an increase in our performance — which is known as delayed transformation. Delayed transformation is the concept that adaptation to exercise occurs during rest, not during times of stress.
After weeks of hard training, a deload period is advisable. A deload is a period of reduced training volume (cutting back your training load to around 50-70%) to let the mind and body rest, recover and experience the effects of delayed transformation.
A deload week isn’t necessarily employed to help our muscles recover, since most muscles need no more than 72 hours to fully recover. However, central nervous system and psychological fatigue may take longer to recover, albeit these are more challenging to quantify.
Many of us who have gone through a tough training block have felt the cumulative effects and the need for extended rest. Deload weeks can help alleviate the mental and physical fatigue accumulation. How often we deload and the length of our deload depends on factors such as age, training background, training intensity, and outside stressors.
If overreaching is extreme and combined with added stressors, overtraining syndrome (OTS) may occur. When an athlete does not give themselves sufficient rest after intense training sessions and exceed their ability to recover from strenuous exercise, they may start to experience OTS.
A non-exhaustive list of potential symptoms includes fatigue, declining performance, higher risk of injury, low mood, disturbed sleep, and hormonal changes. Full recovery from overtraining syndrome can take weeks or months of a reduced training volume.
As athletes and coaches, it’s crucial to know the difference between overreaching and OTS.
Why You Might Be Experiencing A Plateau or Dip In Performance
Most people look at their climbing progress through one lens: grades; It’s difficult not to, I mean, how else are we supposed to measure progress in our sport? Grading scales are the universal ways of assessing difficulty (albeit being flawed and inconsistent).
A plateau is defined as “a state of little or no change following a period of activity or progress”. Yet how reliable or accurate is our perception of change? Especially when we are psyched and want to reach our potential. How do you know if you are progressing at a good rate and on the right path?
The beginner climber’s main goal is to move up the grade ladder. If they do a V2, the natural progression is V3. But as we move up the grades, jumping grades gets exponentially harder. For context, I have been stuck at V10 for about 4 years (lol). I feel stronger than ever and know I am a better climber, so why isn’t that being reflected in my max grade? I know why: I don’t have as much time as I used to to go outdoor climbing and I haven’t tried many V11s as there are very few V11s at my local crag. However, like I said, I am still seeing progress in other ways. For instance, I am way more comfortable with certain styles I used to avoid (e.g. slabs and comp-style). I am sending V10s more quickly and thus feel more solid and confident at this grade. I climb with more confidence and feel smoother on the wall. I do not doubt that V11 and even V12 are just around the corner.
Before you start thinking about how to break out of a plateau, ask yourself what makes you think you are in a plateau. How do you define progression? Are you really stuck in a plateau or is your definition of progression limiting you?
In any case, let’s talk about some reasons why you might be feeling stagnant in your training and climbing:
You just started a new training program.
A new training program will introduce foreign stimuli that might leave us feeling more sore than usual. This is called delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and occurs due to temporary muscle damage and inflammation. It is “delayed” because we typically feel the muscle soreness 24-72 hours after our training session.
DOMS can cause fatigue, tight and tender muscles, and reduced range of motion due to pain and stiffness when moving, which can negatively impact our performance.
Dips in performance are common when starting a new program and, as I mentioned earlier, are part of our body adapting to new exercises/stimuli. It is best not to judge a program’s effectiveness too early and stick to it for 4-8 weeks before jumping to any conclusions.
You are not resting enough.
As mentioned earlier, deload weeks are crucial for longevity in sports. We can’t make gains if we are perpetually breaking our muscles down AND neglecting to rest. Progressive overload and regularly introducing our body to new stressors are crucial for getting stronger, but reaping the fruits of our labour only works if we pair our training with adequate rest.
If you struggle with resting, know that 1. you are not alone and 2. you can learn to love rest! I used to hate resting because I didn’t have any hobbies I was psyched about outside of climbing. After exploring new hobbies, I found a few that interested me and was happy to have more time to devote to them on my rest days.
I used to think a rest day would derail my progress and stop my momentum, and what kept happening was that I would end up being forced to rest because I got injured! Now that I understand the value of resting, I’m a lot more comfortable with vegging out for a day.
You aren’t taking care of yourself.
This one relates to #2, we need to prioritize self-care for our health and longevity! Self-care looks like sleeping 7-8 hours a night, eating enough calories to sustain the activity you are doing, resting sufficiently to recover from your training sessions, and making time for hobbies and relaxation.
We experience stress from many different aspects of life but it all pulls from the same ‘battery’, if you will. Make sure you are employing stress reduction strategies in your life so you don’t empty your stress battery.
Your training routine has gone stale.
Progress breeds motivation. When we feel strong and we can see our training having a positive effect, we’re more likely to keep showing up and putting in the work. But what happens if that isn’t the case? What if we feel stagnant on our project or we keep falling short in competition?
We push ourselves so that our bodies can adapt to the training and get stronger in the long run. However, we will eventually hit a wall with certain exercises at which point, we probably switch up the stimuli.
When we start to experience a plateau, it may be a sign we need to switch things up; Switch up the exercises, rep or set range, do more of one thing, less of another thing, etc. Maybe we could push a little harder in the gym, as we aren’t going to see significant improvement if we are always operating at a 6/10 level of effort. Or it could be that we need to pull back and rest as we are burning ourselves out.
Identify whether you are the type of person who goes too hard in the gym and often overdoes it or the type who struggles with motivation and pushing themselves. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, it’s not about judging ourselves but learning what we need to meet our goals.
References
Anzmann, Tyler. “The Process of Adaptation to Training and Its Impact on Throwing Velocity.” Tyler Anzmann Performance, 24 June 2022, tyleranzmann.com/fitness/the-process-of-adaptation-to-training-and-its-impact-on-throwing-velocity/.
Boleto, Nick. “The Art of the Deload - Why, What to Avoid, and What to Do.” Power Plant Gym, 16 May 2018, thepowerplantgym.com/deload-art-science/.
“Delayed Transformation; Why No One Gets Stronger in 6 Weeks: Sparta Science.” Sparta, Sparta Science, 24 Aug. 2023, spartascience.com/blog/delayed-transformation-why-no-one-gets-stronger-in-6-weeks.
Kreher, Jeffrey B, and Jennifer B Schwartz. “Overtraining Syndrome: A Practical Guide.” Sports Health, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Mar. 2012, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3435910/.
