A training plateau is not a failure of will — it is a signal embedded in the system. George Sheehan, the physician-philosopher of distance running, argued that the body is not an instrument you operate but a conversation partner you learn to read. He drew on William James's radical empiricism — the idea that experience itself, not theory about experience, is the primary data. What this means practically: when your progress stalls, the temptation is to impose more — more volume, more intensity, more structure. But James and Sheehan both point toward a different move: suspend the program and attend to what's actually happening in the body right now, not what the spreadsheet says should be happening. The plateau is usually telling you something specific — a recovery deficit, a movement pattern that's compensating for weakness elsewhere, a stimulus the nervous system has simply habituated to. The fit person who improves steadily is often not the one with the most rigorous plan but the one who treats their own experience as evidence that outranks the plan. This Monday, before you add anything to your training, try subtracting an assumption about what your body needs.

What assumption about your physical training have you never tested — just inherited from a program, coach, or convention — and what would you notice if you dropped it for two weeks?

Drawing from American Pragmatism — William James (synthesized with George Sheehan)