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No, this does not mean leaving your current team for another team. It means figuring out with your coach what training stimuli have not yet been applied to induce adaptation. Verkoshansky and Siff (1999) explain this in Supertraining where the “timely introduction of more effective training means based on logical continuity” will help “avoid the states of stagnation and deterioration”.
This could be as simple as using larger hand paddles, swimming with higher intensity, increasing training volume, or adding in new methods of resistance training.
We should be mindful in selecting a new training stimulus as not all stimuli will produce desired results. For example, adding in power cleans may have no effect on improving a distance swimmer’s performance, or adding in yoga to a hypermobile athlete may have no effect on performance. As a general rule, a new training stimulus should improve one’s general fitness/capacity to allow the athlete to do more/improved specific work or directly improve their specific sport skill.
Verkoshansky and Siff (1999) provide an excellent visual in continually adding effective training to continually improve.
(Verkoshansky & Siff, 1999)
There is no question that sleep, nutrition, and hydration habits are critical for high performance, yet athletes generally do not do the “Big 3” of recovery very well. Audit your life and objectively determine if you are doing everything possible to maximize the recovery potential of each.
If you can objectively determine that you are doing everything possible (hopefully a third party has also determined this) and results are still stagnant, then look into other possible recovery modalities (contrast baths, electrical stim, massage, etc.).
Piggybacking off the aforementioned “Apply a New Training Stimulus”, an excellent way to determine what training stimuli to apply is to understand your weaknesses. A strategy we implement to determine which weakness to tackle first is to identify the “low hanging fruit”.
For example, we’re currently training an athlete who is close to qualifying for Junior Nationals but has a hard time completing pull-ups. Meaning, the athlete has room for improvement in their relative strength. Giving them the necessary relative strength will improve their general fitness/capacity, which will in theory, improve their sport skill. Once we have maximized their relative strength, we can look to other traits that need to be enhanced.
You can use a web chart, like the one depicted below (Verkoshansky & Siff, 1999), to get a visual representation of where your strengths and weaknesses lie. The traits listed in the photo can be interchanged, and not all the traits will be useful or necessary.
(Verkoshansky & Siff, 1999)
Verkhoshansky, Y., & Siff, M. C. (1999). Supertraining (4th ed.). Verkhoshansky.
