To Do or Not To Do

Yesterday as I was working on some new training programs and evaluating the past training cycle when I came across a “new” exercise that I thought might solve a specific problem one of my athletes was having. The dilemma in this case always is, will the new exercise do a better job than what was being done before. It started me thinking that maybe I should keep the old exercise and change the emphasis; make an adjustment to address the particular issue. At the sake of making this more complicated than it is I thought I would share my thought process. It is important to consider the athlete’s psyche. The athlete does not adapt well to changes so that weighed heavily in my decision-making. When I looked more carefully at the new exercise I did not think it was significantly better than the old exercise. In some ways the new exercise was a bit of a wildcard coming out of left field, my past experience with this type of situation was not positive. I had to ask myself was I changing for the sake of change or would this make a significant positive difference. The final decision was to stick with the old exercise and modify it over the next few microcyles.

In summary when you you are thinking about making changes in exercise selection or training programs ask yourself the following:

• Is change really needed or is it just something nice to do?
• If you make the change and add something then what are you going to take out?
• Will the change make a significant difference?