The Winning Edge Journal

Why the right capacities must be developed in the right order to unlock your potential

Part 4 of 6 of The Winning Edge Series

By this point, a clear pattern has emerged. Plateaus are not caused by a lack of effort, and progress does not resume simply by doing more. Instead, improvement returns when missing pieces are identified and foundations are rebuilt.

What still remains unanswered is why this works so reliably. Why does rebuilding restore progress? Why do certain changes unlock improvement while others add fatigue without benefit? And why does performance seem to unfold in phases rather than in a straight line?

The answer is that athletic performance does not develop all at once. It develops over time through the progressive and sequential development of multiple interacting factors.

When these factors are built in the right order, the foundations supporting performance become progressively stronger and more specific as development unfolds. Each layer reinforces the next, allowing training demands to increase while remaining supported, absorbable, and repeatable.

When this progression falls out of sequence — when one element of the system fails to keep pace with increasing demands — gaps begin to form. Those gaps are exactly what create inconsistency, fragility, and eventually stalled performance. In practice, this is why a rider can feel fit and progressing one month, then suddenly stuck the next — even though their effort hasn’t changed.

I’m going to use Long-Term Athletic Development (LTAD) to explain this. It provides a framework for understanding how performance emerges, why timing matters, and why certain approaches work only when the athlete is ready for them.

To understand why sequencing matters — and why rebuilding foundations is such a powerful turning point — we first need to be clear about what Long-Term Athletic Development actually is.

What Long-Term Athletic Development Is

LTAD is most commonly discussed in the context of youth sport, which can initially create the impression that it is only relevant to children or adolescents. My perspective is that the underlying principles of LTAD can also be used to understand how performance progression is built over time — not just how athletes develop with age.

Adults continue to adapt in the same sequential way. The key difference is that adults arrive fully physically mature, unlike children who are still growing, so physical maturation is no longer the primary variable that needs to be accounted for. Instead, what matters most in adults is their developmental history.

Adults bring highly variable backgrounds into sport — including previous training exposure, time away from structured training, injury history, lifestyle demands, and accumulated stress. These factors shape where someone sits developmentally far more accurately than chronological age alone.

Viewed this way, LTAD provides a framework for understanding progression based on readiness and capacity, rather than age, making it just as applicable to adult cyclists as it is to developing athletes.

Once development is understood as sequential rather than simultaneous, the importance of building the right things in the right order becomes clear.

Why Capacities Must Be Sequenced

Long-Term Athletic Development is built on the idea that peak performance is the result of multiple qualities being developed, progressed, and layered over time. Development begins with broad, general capacities that create a base for training, and gradually moves toward more specific and specialised qualities once those foundations are established and mastered.

Some capacities only become fully trainable once others are already in place. As a result, development is most effective when these qualities are built in sequence — not because later qualities are unimportant, but because they rely on earlier foundations to be present in order to be expressed and sustained.

This is why certain types of training feel productive at one stage of development and unproductive at another. A stimulus that drives adaptation when the foundation exists may simply create fatigue when it does not. The training itself hasn’t changed — the athlete’s readiness has.

Over time, developing capacities out of order leads to uneven progression. Some qualities advance quickly, while others lag behind. Performance may still improve for a period, but it becomes harder to sustain, more difficult to repeat, and increasingly sensitive to small changes in load.

When this imbalance reaches a tipping point, a plateau forms. At that stage, rebuilding foundations is not a step backwards — it is the only way to restore the correct order so development can continue.

Sequencing matters because it determines whether training stress is converted into adaptation or absorbed as fatigue. When the order is right, progress feels steady and predictable. When it is not, plateaus and inconsistency are the natural outcome.

Understanding this dependency is what allows long-term development to replace trial-and-error progression.

Foundations Are More Than On-Bike Training

When I refer to Long-Term Athletic Development, I want to be clear that I am not talking about the sequential development of on-bike training alone. LTAD describes how all of the factors that influence performance are developed, layered, and supported over time — not just what happens during training sessions.

On-bike work is only one part of that picture. Performance is also shaped by strength and tissue resilience, nutrition, recovery quality, psychological regulation, lifestyle load, support systems, and overall life balance. These elements directly influence an athlete’s ability to absorb training, adapt to stress, and perform consistently over weeks, months, and years.

These factors do not sit outside development — they are part of it. Their level of influence varies across stages of development, while their interaction remains constant in supporting sustainable and peak performance.

This is why advanced interventions often fail when introduced too early. For example, ergogenic aids such as beta-alanine will not improve performance if an athlete’s diet does not adequately support their training load. Likewise, beta-alanine provides little benefit if the physiological system it is intended to support has not yet been developed through appropriate training. In these cases, the intervention is not ineffective — it is simply mistimed.

The same principle applies to strength training. Heavy lifting and complex exercises can be valuable tools, but only when basic strength, movement quality, and appropriate tissue capacity are already in place. Without those foundations, adding load increases fatigue and injury risk rather than contributing to performance.

Long-Term Athletic Development can explain why these outcomes occur. Each intervention relies on other capacities being established first. When those prerequisites are missing, the intervention cannot deliver its intended benefit.

This is why development must be considered as a whole. Foundations are not just what you do on the bike — they are the combined support system that allows training stress to be absorbed and expressed as performance.

Readiness Determines What You Can Benefit From

In long-term athletic development, particularly in children, progression is never rushed ahead of physical or psychological readiness. Skills, loads, and demands are introduced only when the athlete is prepared to benefit from them. From my perspective, the same principle applies to adults. While adults arrive fully physically mature, performance is still shaped by many interacting factors that must be developed in a way that matches current capacity. Physical maturity alone does not mean an athlete is ready to absorb any form of training. Progress still depends on allowing adaptations to develop progressively, in sequence, and in line with the athlete’s stage of development.

I want to use strength training to provide a useful example of how development works beyond just the bike. Cycling performance is not built through on-bike training alone, and strength is an important contributor when it is developed at the appropriate time. Many exercises used in the gym are highly effective tools when applied in the right context. However, if an athlete does not yet have adequate basic strength, movement quality, or appropriate tissue capacity, introducing heavy loads or complex exercises will not produce meaningful performance gains.

In this situation, the issue is not the exercise itself. It may be a very good exercise. The issue is that the athlete is not yet ready to benefit from it. When readiness is missing, the exercise adds fatigue rather than adaptation because it is not the most appropriate choice for that athlete’s current stage of development.

When the necessary foundations are in place, the same strength work becomes productive. It can then support power development, resilience, and performance rather than simply adding stress. What has changed is not the tool, but the readiness of the athlete to use it effectively.

This is a direct parallel to what happens on the bike. Adding more volume or more intensity does not automatically translate to better performance if the athlete is not ready to benefit from it. When readiness is missing, more training simply increases fatigue rather than driving adaptation — and over time, this is often the very reason a plateau forms.

This is why readiness is a more useful guide than ambition or motivation. Progress depends not on how much work is done, but on whether the work being applied matches what the athlete is prepared to adapt to at that point in their development.

Why Copying Elite Training Fails (and Why Elite Riders Plateau Too)

Copying elite training often fails not because the training itself is flawed, but because elite athletes are operating at a very different stage of development. Their training reflects years of long-term athletic development, during which foundational capacities have been progressively built, reinforced, and aligned.

Elite riders are able to tolerate high training loads, frequent intensity, and complex stimuli because the systems required to support that work already exist. Aerobic foundations, fatigue resistance, recovery capacity, strength, movement quality, and lifestyle alignment have been developed over time. The training works because they are ready for it.

When a developing rider copies elite training without those foundations in place, the outcome is very different. Rather than accelerating progress, the training places demands on systems that are not yet prepared to benefit from them. While this approach may feel productive in the short term, it often leads to accumulating fatigue, inconsistency, and stalled performance.

In this way, copying elite training can become a direct contributor to a plateau. By prioritising advanced work too early, foundational development is unintentionally skipped. The rider appears to be training hard and doing “the right things,” but the capacities required to absorb that training have not been adequately developed.

Importantly, elite riders are not immune to plateaus either. Even at the highest levels, progress can stall when development becomes uneven or when certain foundations lag behind increasing demands. When this happens, the solution is the same as it is for any other rider: identifying gaps and rebuilding the foundations that support performance.

This is the central insight that I take from long-term athletic development. Progress is not determined by how advanced the training looks, but by whether the athlete is developmentally ready to benefit from it.

Readiness Is Psychological Too

When I talk about readiness, it’s important to recognise that it isn’t only physiological. Readiness also includes an athlete’s ability to mentally and practically execute what a training plan or performance strategy is asking of them.

This was one of the areas where what Gina was trying to apply didn’t match what she was ready to benefit from yet.

Gina shared an experience that illustrates this clearly. Before starting with me, she had recently tried following a new training plan. The plan itself was well designed and grounded in sound sports science, including a detailed 30-minute warm-up protocol intended to prepare her for racing.

The problem was not the quality of the warm-up. It was that the warm-up did not match her stage of development or readiness. Prior to using this plan, her usual pre-race routine involved five to ten minutes of riding with a few short efforts before the start. That approach felt familiar, manageable, and effective for her.

When she attempted the longer, more complex warm-up, it became mentally and physically draining. By the time she reached the start line, she felt exhausted rather than prepared. Instead of enhancing performance, the warm-up compromised it.

This experience reinforces an important point. Just because something is well designed does not mean it is appropriate. If a strategy does not align with the athlete’s current developmental stage — physically and psychologically — it will not produce the intended outcome.

When Gina returned to a warm-up that matched her readiness, her execution improved and her racing felt more controlled and effective. The difference was not sophistication, but suitability.

This is exactly what long-term athletic development explains. Progress comes from applying the right tools at the right time, in a way that the athlete is ready to absorb and execute. When readiness is respected, performance improves. When it is ignored, even the best-designed interventions can work against you.

Conclusion

What this all points to is a simple but often overlooked reality: progress doesn’t stall because training stops working. It stalls because development has moved out of sequence.

When demands increase faster than the foundations supporting them, effort is no longer converted into adaptation. Training still feels hard, but it becomes less productive. Strategies that work well for some riders — or at other stages — stop delivering results when the system isn’t ready to benefit from them.

This is why rebuilding foundations works so reliably. It restores the order of development, allowing training stress to be absorbed rather than accumulated. Existing strengths don’t disappear — they become more repeatable, more usable, and more resilient once the missing pieces are in place.

The governing principle is this: what you are ready for matters more than what you are motivated to do. Progress is determined not by how advanced the training looks, but by whether the athlete is developmentally prepared to benefit from it.

Understanding readiness and sequencing changes how plateaus are interpreted. Instead of asking “what should I add?”, the more useful question becomes “what needs to be built first so anything else can work?”

Answering that question requires a way to understand where a rider currently sits in their development — not based on results alone, but on the foundations supporting those results.

That’s where the next blog begins.

Continue to Part 5 of The Winning Edge Series: Why Timing Matters in Cycling Development — Why what you’re ready for matters more than what you want to do