Programming Pitfalls

Chasing speed. Chasing strength. Chasing performance.

Too often, coaches and athletes chase the adaptation. More volume, more intensity, higher frequency.

Stimulate, stimulate, stimulate. 

Most articles or training videos focus on the stimulation –> adaptation phases of training. The internet only cares about novelty. It doesn’t matter how utterly useless it is, if it’s new, “techie”, and has views – it’s awesome!

Dan Pfaff often looks at training as:

• Stimulate
• Adapt
• Stabilize
• Actualize

Unless you’re new to training, you likely recognize that performance enhancements come in waves, and do not increase in a linear fashion. At times, you need to allow your body to acclimate itself and get accustomed to its new status. From there, the actualization phase is where you put these new gains to work (hopefully).

Let me use an example of another complex system – the stock market. If you have half a brain, you’ve heard about Bitcoin’s tremendous run the last few weeks. It eclipsed previous all time highs, and has since dropped 30% and stayed in a consolidation period.

Near it’s all time high, Bitcoin was met with tremendous resistance and selling pressure, which led to panic selling. The current price was outpacing it’s perceived intrinsic value. Now, it will “stabilize” in this zone and prepare for it’s next move up (or down).

Let’s say you progressively load and train hard for 4 weeks. Assuming your nutrition, sleep, recovery are all in check, you should notice slight performance improvements each week.

Then you will hit a wall (your gains or training load are outpacing your ability to adapt and recover from them) and you’re faced with a few choices:

• Unintelligently “train through it” for “mental toughness”
• Sharply decrease your loading (not smart)
• Attempt to stabilize (the right choice)

The most reasonable answer is to attempt to stabilize your system with a smoother transition. Have you ever taken an extended time off of lifting/loading? Your joints feel like shit. You have pain and feel stiff, even though you’re not doing anything. This is what Dan Pfaff refers to as chronic relieving syndrome. This occurs when there is a steep decline in loading. On the other end of the spectrum, you can encounter too much loading and get hurt. It’s a balance.

This is why I don’t ever have people take complete breaks in trainings. I have my athletes train year round. Movement generates blood flow. Blood flow is restorative. Those who have a decent amount of tissue will need even more movement to generate the requisite blood flow. Active measures > passive.

If you’ve been squatting exceptionally heavy, dial it back to 60-65% and do a couple sets of 3. You’ll come back feeling far better than just “not squatting.”