Consistency in Endurance Training: The Key to Getting Faster

Every autumn, the conversations begin.

Athletes start looking ahead to next season, reflecting on what went well, what didn’t, and what they need to do differently to improve. Inevitably, the conversation turns to getting faster, getting leaner, improving body composition, adding more intensity, increasing training volume, or finding some new approach that will unlock the next level of performance.

Some of these things might help. Some might actually get in the way. Like most things in coaching, it depends.

But after 26 years as an athlete and 20 years as a coach, I’ve come to believe that the most important thing standing between most athletes and their goals isn’t a lack of knowledge, talent, or even motivation.

It’s consistency.

What two decades of coaching taught me

In that time, I’ve experienced just about every approach to endurance training imaginable. I’ve worked with coaches who deliver all the warm fuzzies and those who produce world-class performances. I’ve trained through high-volume programs, low-volume programs, more intensity, less intensity, and across seven different age groups.

I’ve also spent two decades coaching athletes with vastly different goals, abilities, schedules, and definitions of success.

I’ve seen a lot of things work. I’ve also seen a lot of things fail. And while experience has taught me that there are many ways to achieve a result, it has also made one thing increasingly clear: The approach matters far less if an athlete cannot execute it consistently over time.

That’s not particularly exciting advice, especially at a time of year when everyone is looking for something new to try.

Consistency doesn’t make for a compelling training trend. It’s difficult to package, market, or sell. It doesn’t promise a breakthrough in six weeks or offer the satisfaction of overhauling everything you’ve been doing.

But it works.

Consistency in endurance training looks different for every athlete

The challenge is that consistency looks different for every athlete.

For one athlete, it might mean consistently training more. For another, it might mean training less so they can finally absorb the work they’re doing. Some athletes need to consistently slow down on easy days, while others need to stop avoiding the discomfort of hard training.

You might need to stop skipping your swims. You might need to commit to strength training instead of treating it as optional whenever life gets busy. Or you might need to fuel your workouts adequately, get more sleep, or stop allowing every unexpected interruption to derail an entire week of training.

The point isn’t that everyone needs to do more. It’s that everyone has something they need to do more consistently.

And identifying that something is where good coaching comes in.

It’s easy to look at an athlete’s training and identify what could be improved. It’s much harder to determine which improvements are realistic, sustainable, and important enough to prioritize. The most sophisticated training plan in the world is useless if it requires a level of commitment, recovery, or flexibility that an athlete’s life simply cannot support.

Patience is part of consistency

I’ve seen athletes make tremendous progress on relatively ordinary training programs because they could execute them week after week, month after month, year after year. I’ve also seen talented, highly motivated athletes continually undermine their progress by chasing the next big thing before giving the current thing enough time to work.

And that’s another part of consistency we don’t talk about enough: patience.

Endurance adaptations take time. The aerobic development, durability, strength, and efficiency required to perform at a higher level aren’t built in a single training block. They’re the cumulative result of months and years of appropriately applied training.

When you constantly change direction, you interrupt that process.

Why consistency is harder than it sounds

Every new approach comes with an adjustment period. Every attempt to squeeze more out of your training comes with a cost. Sometimes change is necessary, but sometimes the best thing you can do is give a well-designed program enough time to produce the adaptations you’re looking for.

This is where consistency in endurance training becomes much more difficult than it sounds.

Consistency isn’t cheap.

It requires time, energy, planning, and a willingness to make decisions that support your long-term goals. It requires changing habits, adjusting expectations, and sometimes accepting that the most productive thing you can do today isn’t the thing that feels the most rewarding.

It also requires an honest assessment of what you’re willing and able to commit to.

You can’t build consistency around the life you wish you had. You have to build it around the life you’re actually living.

And you probably won’t fix it in a month.

For athletes who have spent years approaching training in fits and starts, developing consistency may require a fundamental shift in mindset. Instead of asking what more you can do, you start asking what you can reliably repeat. Instead of measuring the success of a week by how much work you accomplished, you begin looking at how that week contributes to the larger picture.

That shift is deceptively difficult, particularly for ambitious athletes who are accustomed to equating progress with doing more.

It’s also probably the one approach you haven’t seriously considered because it seems too simple.

We tend to assume that meaningful improvement requires something more complicated. A new training methodology, a more aggressive schedule, a different coach, a better device, or a more precise set of numbers to follow.

And yet, I’m more convinced than ever that the athletes who ultimately reach their potential aren’t necessarily the ones who do the most. They’re the ones who figure out what matters, commit to it, and keep doing it long enough for the work to pay off.

That doesn’t mean never missing a workout, never having a bad week, or never changing the plan. In fact, the ability to adjust when life inevitably gets in the way is part of what makes consistency possible.

Consistency isn’t perfection. It’s the ability to keep moving in the right direction without continually starting over.

The question to ask before next season

So as you head into the off-season and start thinking about everything you could change to get faster next year, I’d encourage you to ask a different question.

What do I already know I need to do, but haven’t been willing or able to do consistently?

Start there.

I’ve come to appreciate that there are very few secrets left in endurance training. We understand the basic principles of adaptation remarkably well. We know that appropriate training stress, adequate recovery, and sufficient time produce results.

The challenge has never really been knowing what to do.

It’s finding a way to keep doing it.

The longer I’ve been involved in endurance sports, both as an athlete and a coach, the simpler I believe the path to improvement really is.

But simple has never meant easy.

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About the Author

Elizabeth Waterstraat | Founder and Head Coach, Multisport Mastery

Elizabeth Waterstraat is the founder and head coach of Multisport Mastery, with 20 years of coaching experience and 26 years as an endurance athlete. A USA Triathlon Level III Coach, she is a five-time Kona qualifier, five-time Ironman World Championship finisher and 12-time National Champion. She has coached athletes from beginners to professionals and from first-time finishers to world champions, helping them develop the fitness, skills, and confidence to pursue ambitious goals through consistent, purposeful training.

Her coaching philosophy is built on communication, education, and partnership, with an athlete-driven approach that emphasizes the process as much as the outcome. She believes effective coaching requires understanding the individual, maintaining focus on meaningful goals, and finding balance between athletic ambition and the demands of everyday life. Through her coaching and writing, Elizabeth encourages athletes to take ownership of their development, build confidence through knowledge, and create a positive, sustainable relationship with sport.

Read more about Elizabeth, or book a fit call to talk about your goals.

The Most Effective Way to Get Faster Is Probably the One You Haven’t Tried