✓ Accepted Answer
The way this question is framed suggests you might be hitting the same wall most people hit with periodization.
Let me work through the most likely causes from most to least common.
**Most likely culprit:** training through injury. This accounts for roughly 40% of cases I have seen.
**Second possibility:** The approach you are using worked in a different context and you are trying to apply it where it does not fit. sports has specific conditions where it works well and conditions where it falls apart.
**Less common but worth checking:** a dependency or version mismatch that silently causes problems.
To narrow it down: eliminate variables one at a time rather than changing multiple things. That will tell you which of these you are dealing with.
by ethanthompson
Honest take, because I wish someone had told me this earlier.
Everything you will read about periodization will make it sound more complicated than it is. Here is what 5 years of working with sports has actually taught me.
Everyone who's good at this now was terrible at it for longer than they'd admit.
What actually moved the needle for me: I stopped trying to understand everything before starting, and just committed to building one real thing instead of more tutorials. After that, went from amateur to regional finalist.
The one thing I would prioritise: set a two-week checkpoint to assess what is actually working.
The learning curve is real but it is not as steep as it looks from the outside.
by mwangiochieng876