[Fitness] [Rant] Scheduled Peaking

[digitaldiscipline]

[Fitness-related, but viewable to all]

MFT, the guy behind Gym Jones, from whom I cadge a fair amount of my workout philosophy, is occasionally so full of shit he squeaks going into a turn, as far as I'm concerned. Not often, but one of his precepts is simply not applicable to the vast majority of athletes - that training ought to be undertaken to provide peak performance at exactly the time it's needed.

In his post-Olympics essay, among a lot of stuff I genuinely agree with, was this: "Serious Athletes plan every aspect of their lives to ensure that they peak for that special event. To ensure that they are at the pinnacle of their career when they compete on the world’s stage."

Admittedly, I am not a "serious athlete." I'm a guy who wants to be in good shape; strong in useful ways, healthy, and all that sort of thing. I don't compete against anyone but myself, every day.

But, fundamentally, I have a different approach: Fitness should mean you're ready to perform at or near your peak any time you need to. Call it the Fireman Philosophy - those guys may be called on to do maximum effort any time, any day. "Peak performance at exactly the time it's needed" in the real world means you're ready to go Right Now if a storm hits, or a car crashes, or a mugger pulls a knife.

You can't schedule life, you can simply be ready to take it on.

Comments

[ruefullyamused.livejournal.com]

For once, a short "me too". I can't speak from experience, since I'm not yet in shape, but I think your spot on when it comes to the goal...capacity for max effort when needed, and probably not on a schedule. Wish me luck with smoking cessation # 10498123409 starting tomorrow. It's a big first step in the right direction. All my hoohah about being prepared won't mean diddly if I can't hump a 90 lb ruck 15 miles, eh?

[xany.livejournal.com]

I agree with both of you, as you're each coming from a separate standpoint.

For the Average Human, being ready to go Right Here Right Now is absolutely essential.

however, when talking about "peak performance" as is applies to an athlete, you are talking in sports-specific terms. You don't want Michael Phelps to put in a record-setting performance in the Olympic Trials and then not be ready to compete in the main event, for example.

Another way to put it (and the way I tend to work out): When you lift, never lift to failure unless you have to. Know your limits. Push them, but to not reach or exceed them unless it is necessary.

In the case of competitive athletes, this is almost always the case in their training. Look at powerlifters. they will rarely lift their 1-rep max outside of competition, and they follow a strict lifting regimen designed to increase their 1RM (usually a 12-week pre-competition plan).

This is, I think, what MFT is referring to when he is talking about providing peak performance at the proper time.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that's what he's referring to; however, for 99.997% of the population, it's a prescription full of you're doing it wrong. Elsewhere, he talks about ongoing fitness and the habit of working out as the journey, not the destination; I think that's in the actual essays ("Knowledge") as opposed to an epistle appended to a daily workout. These seem orthogonal to me, and I'm definitely more dialed into the latter approach.

Then again, I've been this flavor of stubborn asshole for at least twenty years - in high school, my preferred meta-event was the 220m a couple minutes after the mile/2 mile. I couldn't hope to keep up with the sprint specialists fresh, but after doing an endurance event? That'd be much more interesting. :-)

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

I agree with xany. I love doing CF or GJ style workouts because they make me better at life. I'm not planning for a big event, other than whatever happenstance may throw into my path.

If I were planning for a big event, I would follow Berardi's prescriptions on diet, and train for a lot more than 20-30 min a day, and get someone like Twight or one of the CrossFit Coaches to design me a workout programme dedicated to bringing me to peak performance in my chosen sport when my competitions were happening.

Both those approaches are utterly appropriate -- but they're very much the difference between general physical preparedness, and sport-specific training. For most sports you need a fair bit of the former as well as the latter (you need a base before you can specialize), but presumably the kind of serious athletes Twight is referring to have got such a base before they start their sport-specific training. It makes perfect sense for the SST to be designed around their calendar -- with specific phases of training, too. You probably want to be doing most of your gains, your work TOWARDS your peak performance, for several months before the event, & then either completely rest, or do a much-reduced maintenance workout, for at least a couple of weeks before the 'big event' -- you don't want to go into your contest tired or injured.

dude...

[maelstromsl.livejournal.com]

he's just talking about periodized training... no big deal, scheduled lower intensity training times, scheduled harder training times. Folks like him are at such a high level to start with that their "off times" above and beyond.

Oddly enough, I actually use some principles of periodized training to "make up" for stuff like taking 2 weeks off and going to Germany every year. I think of times like that as "restoration" periods and focus on keeping the eating under control, and still get plenty of cardio, I come back and hit it so hard that within 2 weeks I'm lifting significantly heavier than before I left. Training the same way and with the same intensity all the time gets boring and leads to plateaus anyway. Plateaus suck balls, and so far doing varying the type, and intensity of training has allowed me to make unprecidented gains.