PHYS-39 · Principle
Same rides every week and my FTP is stuck. Why?
Partly because the body adapts to what it meets: a familiar load moves fitness less, and the fitter gain less from any step. Raise one thing (minutes, density or target), and recover.
How the body works, agreed across the reviews below; a study entry shows what one experiment measured.
Practical Application
Same rides every week and my FTP is stuck. Why? Partly because the body adapts to what it meets: a familiar load moves fitness less, and the fitter gain less from any step. Raise one thing (minutes, density or target), and recover.
Mechanism
In 55 untrained women, arms trained with a progressing load grew about twice as much as arms held at one load, which still grew (Kassiano 2026); in 31 untrained adults the progressing leg gained more only between sessions 18 and 24 (Ferrari 2026).
More stimulus is not always more: in 8 highly trained runners, three vVO2max sessions a week for a month changed nothing after one a week had raised vVO2max (REF-005, sequential, uncontrolled).
Common misreading
"Consistency alone keeps fitness rising"; "progressive overload means a bigger week every week".