5 Reasons Your Endurance Training Plan is Failing (And How to Fix It)

So you’ve invested some money in a training plan that promised to deliver great results for your next ultra trail race or your first cycling race. You followed the workouts diligently, yet despite this you are feeling more and more tired, workouts are getting harder and harder to complete and you are feeling less and less confident about your upcoming event.

It can be very frustrating and disheartening despite considerable investment of your money, your time and your energy into your training plan to realise as your event gets nearer that your plan may not be working.

As an endurance coach I often chat to people who are in this very position and I would like to share with you what I suggest to them to help them get things back on track.

While off the shelf training plans are a popular way for people to get fit for endurance athletic events, there are many reasons why your training plan might not be working. Most failures, however, come down to one key element:

The endurance training plan you buy off the shelf is not written for you.

Here are five reasons why your endurance training plan is failing; throughout the main body of this blog I will then share some ways I have helped people resolve them:

1. It might not be the right endurance training plan for you
2. You might not know how to do the workouts correctly
3. You may have got ‘out of sync’ with the training plan
4. You may be doing too much extra ‘outside’ the training plan
5. It might require more work and effort from you than you are able to give

By addressing these issues you can regain confidence in your training and get to your next event prepared and excited to see how all your hard work will pay off in a great ride or run.

As you go through the points below, make a note of the points that resonate most strongly with you so you can start to plan how to get back on track with your training and make it work for you. This simple commitment will help you avoid the pitfalls of under-recovery and over-training which can leave you unable to get to the start line of your main event. Chronic over-training can also mean months of recovery where you are unable to do the sport you love.

It might not be the right endurance training plan for you

There are so many training plans for runners and cyclists out there to buy (or even download for free) so it can be really difficult to choose the right one for you. In addition to this, we never really know how we will respond to a new training regime/stimulus until we have tried it. Even if on paper your race preparation plan looks good, you might find after a couple of weeks you simply aren’t responding in the way you expected or hoped.

Endurance training plans are deliberately designed to be ‘generic’ so that they work for the ‘majority’ of the population. If you have complex needs or can be seen as an ‘outlier’ then a generic plan is unlikely to work for you.

For example, when I began working with Gemma, she had had lots of success with off the shelf plans in the past, but had suffered a serious case of burn out; the plans she had used and loved in the past weren’t working and she felt exhausted and de-motivated. We began working together on a 1-1 basis and at the start most of my input was psychological support with a very basic easy routine to get her mentally strong enough whilst maintaining some time outdoors running to complement her mental wellness. From this we were able to build to her best ever performance in her local race; no off the shelf plan could have accounted for Gemma’s particular needs and combined the psychological support with a minimum routine she needed to get back on track.

It might also be that your target event is a bit of an ‘outlier’ falling outside the generic remit of general race preparation plans. For example the mountain races developed my Nelson Trees like the Silk Road Mountain Race are very particular in that they require skilled riding but the assumption is that there will be some unrideable sections requiring hike-a-bike and even some level of mountaineering experience. Similarly running races like the Skyrace series are by nature very technical and something often not covered in generic trail running plans.

When choosing your plan it can be a good idea to keep the following things in mind:

• Look for plans that explicitly state how fit you need to be to start the plan and be honest about whether you meet that fitness criteria before you buy.
• Plans that are designed as race preparation for the specific event you are doing are often better at training you for the conditions of that race; race websites often have affiliated plans.
• Make sure you know what the maximum, minimum and average training sessions and hours will be per week and that this fits with your current capacity. This requires you to be honest, I often find under-estimating the amount of time you have available by 5-10% is helpful!

Ultimately, if you have some good solid (objective) evidence that your plan is not working, regardless of how much you paid for it, the best thing to do is accept that this is not the plan for you and move on, either by modifying the plan so it does work for you or by getting some advice from a qualified coach to help you better prepare and fix the training plateau.

You might not know how to do the workouts correctly

It can be very easy to misunderstand training language; words like ‘tempo’ ‘easy’ ‘moderate’ ‘threshold’ are often used to mean different things and can feel like a foreign language to the new endurance athlete.

Doing sessions too hard (or too easy) can drastically affect your response to the plan so you need to know how to do all sessions in the way the writer intended. The most common change I make to people’s training when I first start working with them is to advise them to slow down on their easy sessions and they then find that they can speed up on their hard sessions. This creates the confidence they need for their race preparation and allows them to make bigger fitness gains.

Good training plans will give detailed explanation in language that is clear and understandable to all readers to help you do workouts as intended by the writer.

• Look for plans that offer clear introductions about intensities and what they should feel like and check that the language is used consistently throughout. For example if the plan states that is uses RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion) check which scale the writer is using. If plan is power based/heart rate based check that you are using the same zone system as the writer before you start the plan and that your zones are set correctly.
• Check whether the plan writer is open to you contacting them if you need some further explanation. Whilst there might be a limit to the amount of time a coach will give before suggesting 1-1 coaching most coaches want to help endurance athletes achieve and are usually open to a sensible amount of communication to help you make good use of your plan.

The table below, based on Joe Friel’s training zones, outlines training zones as I describe them in my off the shelf training plans for runners. The mixture of words, numbers and colours is designed to help athletes with various learning styles.

You may have got ‘out of sync’ with the training plan

When you buy a plan you of course have every intention once starting it to complete it to the letter. However, life is often messy and can get in the way either because of other commitments (family, work) or illness. It can then be very difficult to know how to get back on track, especially if you have the pressure of a race deadline looming.

Some plans will give some general advice about what to do if you miss training: here is what I usually advise athletes about training plan troubleshooting:

• What if I get ill? Take some rest; if you miss a week, it’s usually a good idea to go back a week, rather than starting where you left off. If you miss a significant amount of time (ie weeks), come back slowly when you are fit and start by doing some short easy runs. If you aren’t sure you could check out our blog on training when you have a cold, or just e-mail us.
• What if I miss a session? Whilst the aim is for you to complete all training sessions as planned, life is complicated, whilst missing a session is not ideal, we do not advise that you try and make up for a missed session.
• What if I start to feel tired? You can expect to feel tired during hard sessions and to feel a little tired as the training ramps up in volume, that is why every third week is an easy week to give you chance to recover physically and mentally. However, if you notice that despite this you are feeling unusually tired and you are not able to complete sessions as planned because of it, you may need another week of easy running or even some complete rest.

Ultimately this is one of the disadvantages of an off the shelf endurance training plan; they only work so long as you can keep more or less in sync with the plan or have the ability to get back on track should you fall behind. For people I work with on a 1-1 basis we are frequently changing plan, adapting them to new life challenges and uncontrollable setbacks.

You may be doing too much extra ‘outside’ the training plan

Plans are usually carefully designed to provide you with enough training stimulus to get fitter without creating so much fatigue that you experience a training plateau or over-train. However, the plan writer cannot know what other activities each person is doing in addition to the training plan they design. If you have a very active job, or you are doing a lot of extra activities (e.g. other sports, weight lifting) for which the plan does not account, you could easily do too much and over-train.

If you know you are unusually active (e.g. you work as a landscape gardener or a builder 6 days per week) or you have other sports you do alongside the focus sport in the endurance training plan it’s usually a good idea to contact the plan writer for advice. They might be able to tell you how to replace some of the planned workouts with the activities you are already doing and how to adapt the plan to your activity level, or they might have another training plan they have written which is better suited to you.

In my experience it’s usually better to do a bit less than to risk over-training and under-recovery. The consequences of over-training and chronic fatigue can be long-term and are conditions from which it is very difficult to recover. It is far more preferable to be a bit under-trained and fresher. You can find out more about over-training and symptoms in our blog article here.

A good way to monitor whether you are doing too much outside of the training plan data provided by TrainingPeaks, Strava, Garmin etc is to keep track of key factors and monitor your day to day energy levels in a more subjective way. Our Traffic Light System can help you do this; we have found when paired with a good training plan and some AI insight on the data you can better manage training load whilst taking account of other life stressors.

It might require more work and effort from you than you are able to give

Buying an off the shelf doesn’t mean that all your training needs are sorted. You will have to spend some time looking at the plan and working out how to make it work for you in and around your life. You may have to redo this step frequently as your life demands change; it is certainly unlikely that your initial plans will stay in place and you will be able to work through everything without a single problem.

If you do not have the time or you are not willing to put in this time to make a bought endurance training plan work for you then buying an off the shelf training plan for runners/cyclists might not be the right way forward for you.

1-1 coaching will provide you with more support to plan your training around your life and create a realistic training plan crafted to your own fitness goals and capacity. With 1-1 coaching planning is usually done in shorter blocks based on conversations about your availability, how you are finding the training and analysis of your latest training so the coach can craft each block of training based on how you responded to the previous one.

Conclusion

If you are thinking of buying a training plan then you can use this guide to help you pick the right plan for you.

1. Start by asking yourself: what can I afford? Given the amount of time and effort you are going to put into training, you owe it to yourself to buy the best you can afford. If you can afford a higher level plan with more support, then take it. If you can afford 1-1 coaching with a certified coach who has a good track record, then this is by far the better option. 
2. If after thinking this through you decide to invest in an off the shelf plan look for plans that:

• Start at your current fitness level
• Give clear instructions about the intensity of workouts
• Require no more time and energy from you than you have available to give outside of your other life commitments
• Are adapted to the specific requirements of your key event
• Have a way for you to contact the plan writer for guidance if needed

If you are in the unfortunate position of having invested in a training plan that is not working and having followed the suggestions in this blog you are unable to make it work you can:

• Book a consultation with a coach (either the coach who wrote the plan or someone else who can give you some guidelines to help you adapt the plan)
• Cut your losses and disregard the plan and either invest in another, better plan, or in some 1-1 coaching.

Frequently Asked Questions

How will I know if my training plan isn’t working?

The way we analyse our own training performance can be very subjective. One bad workout or even race does not mean that the plan isn’t working, but consistently poor or declining performance can indicate problems. Things to look out for would be:

• Reduced speed/power/pace for sessions at the same intensity and length
• Ongoing lingering fatigue which affects your motivation to train
• Unresponsive heart rate (unusually low at a given power/pace, taking longer than usual to get into zone 2 for example 25 minutes as opposed to your usual 10 minutes)
• An otherwise unexplained drop in performance at a given race (all else being equal)

Why is 1-1 Endurance Coaching so much more expensive that a plan?

1-1 coaching requires a lot more work and expertise from a coach. Most companies offer 2 or 3 different packages; the more expensive ones requiring more of the coaches time and expertise. For 1-1 coaching the coach has to craft a plan specifically for you taking into account:

• Current fitness levels
• Current capacity to train
• Current gaols
• Analysis of workouts to see how you responded
• Your personality so that the plan appeals to you on an emotional level as well as meeting your fitness needs

What are the main features of a good training plan for cyclists or runners?

Good endurance training plans include:

• Clear details before you buy about who the plan is for, how fit you need to be to start the plan and how many hours a week you will need to complete the training
• Contact details of the person who wrote it so you can contact them for more explanation or help if needed
• Clear explanations of workouts and intensities that you can see in a sample week provided in the sales page of the plan
• Some guidance on how to execute the plan in a complementary video or pdf
• Higher end plans may also include one or more 1-1 (virtual) meetings with the coach for extra guidance