We’ve all been there when we suddenly hit a plateau. That frustrating moment when progress seems to halt. When weeks of training yield no tangible improvements. When the rating that seemed just within reach remains stubbornly elusive for the entire season. When the actions that worked flawlessly in practice mysteriously disappear during competition. This is why we often see fencers, young and, yes!, Olympians, hit plateaus or experience periods of apparent stagnation. And the truth is it’s not only in fencing, but in every other aspect of life.

Let’s talk about these plateaus – not just what they are, but what they mean, and most importantly, how to push through them.

The Anatomy of a Plateau

First, let’s acknowledge something important: plateaus are normal. They’re not signs of failure or indications that you’ve reached your potential. They’re natural pauses in the progression of any skill acquisition – temporary holding patterns where visible progress seems to stall. No matter how talented, dedicated, determined or even obsessed you are, you will hit plateaus at some point or another.

Think about learning to drive. Remember that initial rush of improvement? The first time you successfully parallel parked or executed a perfect three-point turn? But then came that period where you weren’t getting noticeably better day-to-day. You were competent, but not improving at the same rate. Yet underneath that apparent standstill, your brain was consolidating skills, building neural pathways, preparing for the next leap forward.

Fencing is no different, except that it’s infinitely more complex than driving. (And, in fencing, there are no automatic transmissions.)

When a young fencer hits a plateau, it’s often after they’ve mastered the basic mechanics. They can execute a decent lunge. Their riposts hit the target. Their footwork is functional if not elegant. But suddenly, the rate of visible improvement slows dramatically. Bouts that once felt like victories waiting to happen now feel like puzzles they can’t quite solve.

For more advanced fencers, plateaus often emerge around competition results. Maybe you’ve been hovering at the same placement in tournaments for months. Perhaps you consistently make the top 32 but can’t seem to crack the top 16. Or maybe you’ve been stuck at that C rating when an A seems as distant as the Olympic podium.

Why Plateaus Happen

Let’s get scientific for a moment. Skill development isn’t linear – it follows what researchers call a “logarithmic curve.” Rapid improvement at first, followed by increasingly smaller gains that require disproportionately more effort. This isn’t unique to fencing; it’s how humans learn practically everything. Think about your music lessons, your math studies, your skiing or skating learning, your tennis playing – the list is infinite here, just think about one of your skills that you learned for a prolonged period of time. If you honest with yourself, you surely will recognize a moment or two when you became stuck at your current level, or hit a plateau, to be more gentle with wording.

But fencing plateaus often have specific causes:

Technical Overload: Sometimes we’re working on too many technical elements simultaneously. Your coach has you focusing on point control, while also adjusting your lunge mechanics, while also rethinking your distance management. Your brain simply can’t process all these changes at once, so progress stalls across the board.

Comfort Zone Fencing: You’ve developed a game that works… sort of. You have your go-to actions, your trusted responses. They’re reliable enough that you’re afraid to abandon them, but not effective enough to take you to the next level. You’re trapped in the purgatory of comfortable mediocrity.

Mental Barriers: Perhaps the most insidious cause. You’ve convinced yourself that “this is as good as I get” or “I always lose to left-handers” or “I always choke in a third DE.” These beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies, creating invisible ceilings in your development.

Physical Limitations: Sometimes it’s simply that your body needs to catch up. Your mind understands what to do, but your muscles, reflexes, and cardiovascular system need time to adapt. This is especially common during growth spurts or when returning from injuries.

Hidden Progress: Often what feels like a plateau is actually progress in disguise. You’re not seeing results because you’re unconsciously setting higher standards for yourself, or because you’re competing against stronger opponents than before.

Negative Self-Talk: The constant inner critic that tells you you’re not good enough, not improving fast enough, not working hard enough. This voice can be paralyzing, making you doubt even the skills you’ve already mastered and preventing you from attempting the new ones you need to break through.

Wrong Comparison: You don’t see your progress because you compare yourself with wrong people, giving yourself a wrong benchmark. Remember, every one develops differently, and comparing yourself to others at some arbitrary point is wrong. The fencer who started two years before you, the one who trains twice as many hours, or the one whose physical attributes are completely different from yours – these comparisons tell you nothing useful about your own progress.

Breaking Through

So how do we push past these frustrating plateaus? How do we restart the engine of improvement when it seems to have stalled? Here are strategies that I’ve seen work time and again:

1. Embrace the Micro-Goals

When big improvements seem elusive, shift your focus to micro-goals. Instead of “I want to make the top 16,” try “I want to improve my hit rate on counter-attacks by 10%.” Rather than “I want to earn my B rating,” focus on “I want to perfect my second-intention actions.”

These smaller, process-oriented goals provide concrete pathways forward when the big picture goals feel stuck. They give you daily wins to celebrate, even when tournament results haven’t budged.

2. Change the Stimulus

Your brain and body adapt to stimuli, then plateau when that adaptation is complete. The solution? Change the stimulus.

If you’ve been drilling the same actions for months, try something completely different. If you’ve been focusing on technical precision, shift to tactical application. If you always follow the same bout order with the same people, change it. Sometimes, the change doesn’t even need to be fencing-specific – cross-training in a completely different athletic activity can break patterns and create new neural connections that benefit your fencing.

3. Deconstruct and Reconstruct

Sometimes you need to take things apart before you can rebuild them stronger. This might mean temporarily performing worse while you revamp your fundamentals.

I witnessed a few situations when a coach adjusted a training routine and it helped a lot. One of them I will tell now as its impact will be more obvious. One of our fencers hit a serious plateau. Their coach made a bold decision – for six weeks, they weren’t allowed to lunge at all during bouting without telling any of their teammates about this imposed on then restriction. They could only use small steps and extensions to score. It was frustrating and their win rate plummeted. But it forced them to develop timing and distance management skills they’d been neglecting. When the lunge restriction was lifted, they not only recovered their previous level but surpassed it significantly.

4. Mental Reframing

Often, our plateaus exist primarily in our minds. The narrative we tell ourselves – “I always choke under pressure” or “I can never beat that fencer” – creates boundaries more restrictive than any physical limitation. I can’t recall a competition when at least one fencer didn’t tell “I never beat this fencer.”

Start by becoming aware of these narratives. Write them down. Then actively work to replace them. “I always choke under pressure” becomes “I’m developing strategies to stay focused when it matters most.” “I can never beat that fencer” transforms into “I’m identifying specific weaknesses in my game against that opponent.”

This isn’t empty positive thinking; it’s creating mental space for growth that your negative narratives had closed off.

And remember, if you never beat that guy, there is no pressure on your anyway – the worst that can happen is to repeat the same result, but the upside is huge. Also, the whole pressure is on that fencer – it’s them who must perform to not lose to a person they never lost to.

5. Trust the Process

Finally, sometimes breaking through a plateau simply requires patience and trust. If you’re working with a good coach and following a sound training program, improvements may be happening beneath the surface, invisible for now but preparing to emerge.

However, trust doesn’t mean blind faith. If you’ve been plateaued for an extended period, it’s reasonable to reassess your approach. Are you training effectively? Is your strategy sound? Did you have a discussion with your coach?

The Hidden Gift of Plateaus

Before closing, I want to offer a perspective shift. What if plateaus aren’t obstacles but opportunities? What if they’re not walls but doorways?

Plateaus force us to reassess, to get creative, to dig deeper. They teach us resilience and problem-solving. They remind us that progress isn’t always visible, even when it’s happening. And perhaps most importantly, they separate those who fence for quick rewards from those who truly love the journey.

Some of the most significant breakthroughs in fencing come immediately after the most frustrating plateaus. It’s as if all that work was accumulating beneath the surface, invisible but gathering potential energy, waiting for the right moment to catapult you forward. I remember after winning Tokyo Olympic Games in men’s foil, Ka Long Cheung told “I was nobody entering these games. The others were big names.” Of course, he wasn’t ‘nobody’ at this moment – after all, he qualified for the Olympics, which isn’t small feat at all by itself! But maybe he did felt he plateaued before the games. In any case, he is one of the leading foilists now – and Olympic Champion again from Paris.

So the next time you find yourself stuck on that frustrating plateau – when the results aren’t improving, when the ratings aren’t changing, when practice feels like you’re treading water – remember that you’re in good company. Even Olympic champions have stood where you’re standing, feeling the same frustrations, facing the same doubts.

The difference isn’t that they never plateaued. It’s that they never stopped looking for ways through, over, or around those plateaus. They kept experimenting, kept questioning, kept pushing – not just against their opponents, but against their own limitations and assumptions.

And in the end, that might be the most valuable skill fencing teaches us: not how to win medals, but how to confront obstacles with creativity and persistence. Not how to avoid plateaus, but how to transform them into launching pads for our next evolution.