Your successful methods for Shattering a Plateau

take a down week. Change up your training. Your training probably gets stale, ie doing the same workouts and runs over and over. Find different workouts to do.

yeah, the above.

doesn't matter what you do if it's the same thing over and over again. you've got to continually hit your body with different stimuli or there's no reason for it to adapt/get better.

so if you're plateaued doing a certain amount of mileage at a certain speed with certain workouts, then start changing the variables. Change A or B or C or a combination or all of them.

Haven't been doing marathon pace longer tempos? Try those. Long run no that long? Extend it. No doubles? Try those. No mile - 3k work? Try those. No hill sprints? Try those. No 10k-hmp longer intervals? Try those.

I seriously doubt your training plan focuses on every different system so start targeting those in different ratios and see where you go.

Norweegian wrote:

take a down week. Change up your training. Your training probably gets stale, ie doing the same workouts and runs over and over. Find different workouts to do.

+1. Or find different people to run with. I typically train with people who are a bit faster than me and it's really helped me get faster and get out of training ruts.

Speaking of stressing your body in new ways, running with Orthotic inserts that raise your arches is a great workout. I originally inserted them thinking they'd help me maintain 5 minutes a mile by correcting form. They don't do that, they slow you down. But they force you to work other muscle groups.

I bought the inserts shortly after making this thread.

A good number of people have had success by sleeping an extra 10-15 hours, spread over the course of two weeks.

Seriously.

This may not apply to you but hopefully my two cents will help.

In high school I ran for a pretty high mileage program, and I was not the most talented runner. I ran 4:48 my sophomore year, and could barely break 11 for two miles. My junior year the mileage finally started to help me and I ran close to 16 flat for 5k. I knew I was getting good, especially during my junior track season when I ran 1:57 and 4:25. I was fit, but I definitely felt like I was plateauing over the summer.

Then I started weight training.

During my senior year, three or four days a week, I would do sets of lunges, bodyweight squats, dumbell squats, jump lunges, push ups, deps, curls, box jumps, and more. The squats and lunges were my main focus. Over the winter, after running 15:35 for 5k xc, I noticed that I was getting really, really fast in my intervals. I was able to crank out workouts like 12-16x400 at speeds much faster than my junior year's mile pace, and come back the next day for longer runs.

Senior track I ran 1:52 and 4:14.