At various points in my career I’ve experimented with different forms of minimalist training. Both as an elite athlete, and more recently as a middle aged coach I have found many benefits of short focused training sessions. As our February site theme is microdosing, I wanted to share some of my own experiences with this type of training.
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The achievement of optimal sport performance at all levels of competition requires that athletes undertake physical, technical, tactical and psychological preparation over an extended period of time. With limited time and energy, it’s no wonder that athletes and coaches can feel they are engaged in a tug of war scenario. As Gandalf said: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
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Look back in time and the everyday demands of the world automatically traditionally created a physically intelligent person. To be physically connected to the natural world through the body and culture used to be vital for survival. Then came industrialization and the information economy. Now we don’t have to be physically sophisticated to eat, survive, or earn a living. That’s great to some extent, but the byproduct is that most of us have become more alienated from our deconditioned and objectified bodies.
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With the exceptions of professional athletes and some students, most sportspeople are time poor. Travel, work, study, family and competing, take up time in strangely inconvenient blocks that mess up your meticulous training routine. If the plan says, “90 minutes”, then it is easy to become disheartened when you only have 60 available. Or, for the ultra-committed, you become sleep-deprived as sleep is what “gives” in order to “make-it.” This is a short-term solution that comes back to kick you in the backside as you underperform in your sport or life.
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We often think about the stimulus of key sessions or training phases. But more often than not adaptations come from the accumulation of training over the long-term. On this week’s episode we look at the cumulative training effect, the role of small doses of training stimulus, and how to connect sessions together to enhance the cumulative effect.
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The GAIN Master Class Series has been going strong the last six months and we want to give you a taste of what it’s about. Our latest event last week looked at reconsidering periodization, including a top panel discussion with leading practitioners. On this week’s episode of the GAINcast, we share highlights from the panel discussion, as well as an interview with Professor Keith Baar, our next Master Class presenter. Read more
The site theme in October is rethinking periodization, culminating in this week’s GAIN Master Class event on the topic hosted by Vern and Martin. Below are even more new resources on the topic that we published throughout the month, including the topic content from our articles on periodization. Read more
The people who come to our club to learn weight lifting are normally in their mid to late twenties and have had experience of lifting a barbell before. Unfortunately, a lot of them use the C-word in their enquiry, but I don’t hold that against them. They have found that they like the lifting part of Crossfit and want to just do weight lifting or they want to improve their technique to go back to their box. A few of these novices want to compete and whilst they won’t break records they have managed to win medals in their age/weight categories since training at our club. Read more
Strict lockdowns might be over in much of the world, but coaches continue to be challenged daily by the difficulties of planning during a pandemic. On last week’s HMMR Podcast we hosted a roundtable of NCAA coaches. Most athletes have now been allowed to return to campus and train in person, but that only means one set of problems has been exchanged for another. Read more
A planned program of preparation is the foundation that elite performance is built upon. Under normal circumstances, a coach creates a strategic plan based on a variety of factors, the athlete then executes the plan, and results follow. Read more
