If that speed increases, thats another great indicator of progress

If you’ve been running for a while and have reached big goals, like consistently running a few times a week or conquering a race, you may wonder how to continue to make progress in your fitness. While training plans help you reach race goals, it’s possible to become a stronger, faster, fitter runner without a race on your schedule.

But to keep getting better, it’s important to understand the science behind fitness progress and the keys that unlock results.

Progress can also be called “adaptation,” according to the American College of Sports Medicine—your body safely and successfully adapts to each workout challenge you try. That means progress requires finding the middle ground between challenging yourself too much and getting hurt and not challenging yourself enough to stimulate new adaptations and winding up in a rut.

The Benefits of Taking a Break from Running consistency, patience, and a specific approach to training. It isn’t rocket science, but progress doesn’t happen by chance.

To keep improving your fitness, we tapped experts to reveal how to structure your training for maximum results and how long you can expect it to take to see payoffs. We also cover green flags that indicate your approach is working and how to recognize and beat a plateau. Here’s all you need to know.

While the ideal recipe for upping your run performance is not one-size-fits-all and depends, in large part, on where you start from and your specific goals, there are a few key principles to follow, according to Laura Norris, a Boulder-based certified personal trainer and run coach with an M.S. in applied exercise science, and Avoid These Common Setbacks as a New Runner., South Carolina-based run coach and founder of Hart Strength and Endurance Coaching.

Pay Attention to Progressive Overload

The first concept to understand is “progressive overload,” which essentially means that your body adapts to the load applied to it. To keep progressing, you have to continually up the ante of your training, Norris tells Runner’s World.

Progressive overload could mean changing up any of these fitness factors:

• Increasing mileage
• How to Adapt and Progress Past a Plateau
• Shortening the Running Shoes - Gear
• Pushing your pace
  

It’s generally most safe to apply progressive overload in just one area at a time, Norris explains. So, either work on increasing your volume (how many miles you run) or work on increasing your intensity—but don’t maximize both at once, as that ups your risk of injury.

Periodize Your Training

Shoes & Gear “periodization,” which involves focusing on one or more components of training—such as endurance, speed, or strength—over a few weeks and then switching up that focus to avoid plateauing and working at the same stimulus for too long, Norris says.

There’s no definitive point of when you start to plateau if you don’t incorporate periodization, but a lot of runners will stagnate if they do the same type of workouts for about 20 to 24 weeks on end without any changes, Norris says.

Hart recommends the steps of periodization below to help boost your running fitness:

Step 1: Build Your Base

If you’ve been running consistently for awhile you can probably skip this step. But for those new to running, it’s important to build an endurance base as a first step in seeing progress. “This will include adaptations to the skeletal system, tendons, ligaments, muscles, in addition to the cardiovascular system,” Hart says. “This will allow the runner to actually If that speed increases, thats another great indicator of progress periods of time before fatigue sets in, as well as prepare the body for physically tolerating longer workouts/distances while hopefully avoiding injury.”

To do this, you’ll focus mostly on easy running (that means low intensity!) for about 30 to 60 minutes anywhere from three to six days per week. Focus more on consistency than intensity in this phase.

Step 2: Raise VO2 Max

VO2 max is the maximum amount of oxygen that your body can take in and use during exercise. In other words, it’s a marker of how much oxygen out of every breath you take is put to use fueling your movement. “The fitter you are, in theory, the more oxygen you’re going to use with each breath,” Hart explains.

Typically, VO2 max improvements are made through short, hard intervals. That typically means running at 90 to 100 percent of your maximum heart rate for two to three minutes then resting for about four to nine minutes, Hart explains. You do these types of intense interval workouts once or twice a week, sprinkled in between more easy effort runs.

Stick with this for about four to six weeks—a period known in the fitness world as a “mesocycle”—and then move onto step 2.

Step 3: Boost Lactate Threshold

Your lactate threshold—a measure of how quickly your body clears lactate, a byproduct of energy production that accumulates in your muscles and can leave you feeling fatigued—typically happens at about 70 to 80 percent of your VO2 max, Hart says. That’s why it’s smart to first increase your VO2 max before targeting your lactate threshold so you can train at a higher intensity (i.e. faster pace) for longer.

To train at lactate threshold, you’ll want to swap those short, hard VO2 max intervals for longer, less intense but still challenging, intervals. This looks like running hard at your threshold pace for 10 to 30 minutes, followed by recovery periods of about five to 15 minutes.

Again, do these interval workouts once or twice a week alongside easy effort runs, and repeat for four to six weeks before progressing to step 3.

Step 4: Improve Endurance for Race Performance

Now that you can push your speed more before you run out of breath or fatigue (thanks to that boost in lactate threshold), you’ll want to focus on your aerobic energy system. This system helps you run strong for extended periods of time, and you’ll make this adaptation through endurance training.

“It’s important to differentiate the goal when we’re referring to base building (which does also build endurance) versus an endurance focus for performance purposes,” Hart says. For performance, you want to push your distance goals.

is another valuable metric. Though this number can vary due to stress zone 2 work during one to two long runs per week alongside shorter workouts, and keep this focus for four to six weeks.

Step 5: Go Back to Step 1

At this point, you are likely running faster, farther, and harder and yet it feels easier. In other words, you’re fitter and you’ve made progress! So, it’s time to circle back to the beginning and repeat the process, Hart says. This time, you’re probably focusing more on maintenance in the base phase.

Keep in mind, this progression schedule may change based on your fitness level, training plan, and/or goals. You may focus more on speed and intervals toward the end of your training cycle, for example. But following this format will help you progress your fitness—particularly if you’ve been running consistently and want to switch things up.

This is the million dollar question. The simple answer? It depends on various factors, including the level of your fitness at the start of your program and how consistent you are with your workouts.

Generally speaking, if you do all your workouts and get quality nutrition and sleep, you can see notable changes to components of your cardiovascular system, including VO2 max and speed, in about eight to 12 weeks, Norris says.

Now, this isn’t to say nothing The first concept to understand is.

For example, Norris explains. A lower resting heart rate is generally tied to improved cardiovascular fitness involving 12 untrained people found that the subjects made notable gains in muscle strength and size after just four weeks of downhill run training.

Here are some cues that will let you know your training is leading to adaptation and fitness progress.

1. Runs Feel Easier

First, your rate of perceived exertion (RPE), which basically allows you to measure how challenging your runs feel, will change.

“Maybe you’re going out to run a three-mile loop, and it feels significantly easier than it did a month ago—that’s a great sign [of progress] right there,” Hart says.

2. Pace Improves

You can also keep track of your average pace across specific distances, such as how fast you Whats the Cost of Being a Runner. If that speed increases, that’s another great indicator of progress.

3. Heart Rate Decreases

Average heart rate is another good indicator of fitness progress. “An athlete might notice that their heart rate is lower on runs at the same pace, or that they’re able to do a slightly faster pace at the same heart rate,” Norris explains.

In fact, resting heart rate is another valuable metric. Though this number can vary due to stress, alcohol consumption, and hormonal fluctuations tied to menstruation, keeping tabs on it over time can indicate how you’re responding to your training load, We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.

4. Healthy Mileage Increase

Another one is successfully upping your mileage—without injury. “If someone can go from running 25 miles per week to 35 miles per week, and they feel good in that training, they’re recovering well, that is a sign of progress, too,” Norris says.

Keep in mind progress can look different as you age. “Sometimes we think of progress as Oh, I'm going to PR every single training cycle,” Norris says, but this isn’t helpful for aging athletes. “It might be that progress is maintaining the same time as you enter into being a master’s runner, Running in the Cold.”

Simply Upping the amount of time you spend at a higher intensity can also be a form of progress—and a strong motivator to keep going.

First off, all runners stagnate at some point. “I tell my athletes all the time: If you plan to run for life, you have to ride the roller coaster,” Hart says. “It's not going to constantly be an upward trajectory, even for elites.”

Also important: As the years tick by, you’ll face challenges like sarcopenia (age-related loss of muscle mass) and a decreasing max heart rate, which will affect you’re performance capabilities. “Our bodies do slow down as we get older, so we can’t expect a forever upward trajectory, but I think that we can certainly always look for improvements,” Hart says. “It just may be in different ways.” For example, instead of running faster, perhaps you’re able to run farther.

All that said, plateaus—those periods where you don’t see any signs of improvement, despite training consistently—do happen. And identifying you’re in one can help you take steps to remedy it.

So what does a plateau look like? Interestingly, Hart typically sees emotional signs of them before anything physical crops up. This could mean you’re feeling burnt out and unhappy about your workouts. Then, of course, there’s the affect on your performance, which can show up as a stagnating pace or inability to tolerate harder training.

There’s no set time frame for how long you need to experience these signs for it to qualify as a plateau. “A plateau won’t show up over just a couple days,” Norris says. Instead, “it's looking over a whole training cycle.”

Keep in mind plateaus are often confused with the “valley of fatigue”—that challenging point in a training cycle when you’re really pushing your workouts and mileage, Norris says. The difference, though, is with the valley of fatigue, once you begin tapering, you’ll “rise above your baseline” and see improvements in your fitness and performance, she says. A plateau, by contrast, involves stalled performance even after you taper.

If you do notice you’re fitness is plateauing, take a step back and assess your training, The Importance of Building a Running Base stress management How to Set Up a Program to Progress Your Fitness.

See if you can pinpoint a potential cause for your stagnation. For example, were you less consistent with your workouts than you realized? Sleeping less than usual? Juggling a ton of extra stress at work or home? Tapping a running coach or other fitness expert for help with this step can come in handy “because some people do have difficulty being objective about their own training when it’s so meaningful to them,” Norris explains.

More often than not, a plateau is due to one of those lifestyle factors—sleep, nutrition, or stress management—being off versus your training not being hard enough, Norris says.

Once you’ve identified a possible cause, adjust the appropriate variable. For example, if you realized you’re not taking in enough calories your body safely and successfully adapts to each snacks VO2 max intervals.

Lastly, consider embracing the notion that “a plateau isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Hart says. If you’re happy with your running and getting what you want out of it despite not seeing signs of progress, “that’s totally fine,” she says. There’s nothing saying you have to consistently raise the bar as an athlete. Sometimes, running simply because you enjoy it is enough.

Jenny McCoy

Contributing Writer

Jenny is a Boulder, Colorado-based health and fitness journalist. She’s been freelancing for Runner’s World since 2015 and especially loves to write human interest profiles, in-depth service pieces and stories that explore the intersection of exercise and mental health. Her work has also been published by SELF, Men’s Journal, and Condé Nast Traveler, among other outlets. When she’s not running or writing, Jenny enjoys coaching youth swimming, rereading Harry Potter, Running Shoes - Gear.