How To Keep Progressing With Your Training Sessions

Let's say you've been running 6x60m flying sprints at 95% twice a week for the past six weeks.

First few weeks felt great. Times were dropping. Everything clicked.

Now? Same session structure, same effort, but times have stalled. Maybe even regressed slightly.

You're working just as hard. Recovery is fine. Technique looks solid on video.

So what changed?

Your body adapted.

Here's what happens: any single type of training yields good improvement for an amount of time. Literature suggests about four weeks, but in practice, it can and will vary for different athletes. What is true for all athletes however, is that results will eventually diminish.

Your nervous system accommodates to repeated stimuli faster than you'd think. The specific motor patterns become automatic. The intensity you're working at becomes familiar. The volume you're handling becomes manageable.

What was once a challenging stimulus that forced adaptation is now just maintenance work.

This is the accommodation principle, and it's the reason most athletes plateau.

The problem isn't lack of effort. It's lack of variation.

Your body is an adaptation machine. It responds to new stress by getting stronger and faster. But once it's adapted to that stress, it stops improving.

Think about it this way: if you program 4x5 back squats at 100kg every week for three months, you will improve for the first 4-6 weeks as neural adaptations occur. By weeks 8-10, progress has slowed significantly. By week 12, they've completely stalled.

Not because 100kg isn't heavy enough. But because your body has fully adapted to that exact loading pattern. The nervous system becomes more efficient at the task, requiring less neural drive to produce the same output. What once demanded maximum motor unit recruitment now becomes automatic and sub-maximal. There's nothing left to adapt to.

The same thing happens with sprint training.

Running the same distances at the same intensities with the same rest intervals creates accommodation. The nervous system optimizes its efficiency for that specific task, no longer requiring the same level of activation to complete it.

Performance plateaus even though you're programming everything correctly on paper.

This is why periodization exists.

Elite programs don't look random. But they also don't look like the same session repeated for months.

They follow a structured progression across the season:

You build the foundation with higher volume, lower intensity work. You're developing work capacity, building general strength, establishing technical patterns.

You then increase specificity and intensity. Volume comes down, quality goes up. You're teaching the nervous system to produce force rapidly through explosive strength work and higher-intensity sprint sessions.

And finally, you sharpen performance. Very low volume, maximum intensity. You're maintaining the adaptations you built while minimizing fatigue.

Each phase provides a different training stimulus. The body never fully accommodates because you're constantly shifting the stress in a planned progression.

But many coaches and athletes get the same thing wrong:

They plan (or pick) a training structure, follow it for months, and wonder why it stops working.

Or they train the same way year-round.

What builds strength in October might interfere with speed development in April. What develops max velocity in February needs to be maintained differently during competition season.

Without phase-based progression, you're either:

Neither works long-term.

The solution isn't more volume or higher intensity.

It's systematic variation within a structured framework.

Example: if you've been programming block starts for four weeks and progress has stalled, you don't need more block start volume. You need a different acceleration stimulus.

Switch to sled sprints (10-15% bodyweight) for three weeks. Then uphill sprints on a 5-7% grade. Then falling starts. Then back to blocks at higher intensities.

Each method trains acceleration but from different angles. The variation prevents accommodation while maintaining the focus on the quality you're trying to develop.

Same principle applies to strength training.

Let’s do another example:

If back squats have stalled at 4x4 @ 85%, rotate to front squats for a block. Then trap bar deadlifts. Then back-to-back squats with higher intensities (90-95%).

You're still building leg strength and power for sprint performance. But the variation prevents the nervous system from accommodating to one specific pattern.

The key is purposeful variation, not random changes.

You can't just cycle through different session types hoping something works. The variation needs to fit within a logical progression that builds toward competition performance.

This is what separates effective programming from just doing stuff that seems right.

A GPP might include high-volume extensive tempo (2500-3500m per session at 70-75%) and general strength exercises like back squats at 4x6-8 reps. That's appropriate for building capacity early in the year.

But if you're still programming high-volume tempo two weeks before championship meets, you or your athletes will show up flat. The stimulus that built the base doesn't sharpen performance.

Even if you’re not looking to compete, this information is still important for progression.

Understanding when to do what is the hard part.

Most sprint content online shows you individual drills or explains specific session types. But it’s difficult to find any explanations on how to structure those sessions across an entire season.

When do you transition from phase to phase? When do you reduce volume for competition? How do you progress from general strength work to explosive strength without accumulating too much CNS fatigue?

How do you integrate acceleration development, max velocity work, and speed endurance across different phases?

These aren't questions you can answer by piecing together Instagram posts or YouTube videos.

That's exactly why I built The Sprint Manual.

It's not just a collection of session ideas. It's a complete periodization system that shows you what to program in each phase of the training year.

The sample programs take you from October through championship season with specific weekly templates. You can see exactly what each phase, week, and day looks like.

Each template shows the actual session structure: which days are high-intensity (CNS-intensive sprint work and heavy lifting), which days are low-intensity (extensive tempo and recovery), what volumes and intensities to use, and how strength training integrates with sprint work.

But more importantly, the manual explains the principles behind the progression.

Why you're programming certain work at certain times. How to recognize when you or your athlete has adapted and needs a new stimulus. What to adjust based on individual response.

The troubleshooting section specifically addresses plateaus: acceleration stagnation, max velocity problems, strength training issues, recovery management.

Not generic advice. Specific programming adjustments.

You can still pre-order until December 31st. After that, the price goes up.