It Depends

Nearly every training question I receive gets the ‘it depends’ response. The reason is simple. In most cases I don’t know enough about the variables at play to make an informed decision. 

What have you been doing to date? 

How’s that going for you? 

How long have you been doing it? 

How committed have you been? 

Case in point. At a coaching seminar last week a physical preparation coach shared his views on training for boxing; specifically on the topic of running for boxers. He was adamant, boxers should not run. 

I understand his rationale, but training is rarely binary particularly when individualisation is a priority. Opportunity and opportunity cost can be hidden in plain sight. 

As an example, I had a few questions: 

What volume, frequency and intensity of running is he talking about? 

Running 6 days a week or one or two times/week? 

Long slow distance, intervals, sprints, hill sprints, stairs, deep water running? 

Running as individual sessions or as part of a boxing session? 

At what stage of the training camp is he talking about? 

At what stage of the career is the boxer? 

What level of boxing? 

What’s the boxer’s history and relationship with running? 

What’s the injury status and joint health of the boxer in question?  

What’s the availability of quality sparring partners like? 

While it’s not an exhaustive list, it highlights the need for understanding an athlete’s  circumstances before being married to a generic view.  

Plus human beings are emotional. Athletes included. There’s a psychological component to all training/preparation. As an example I’m thinking of a combat sport athlete who ran extensively during his career. Around 15 kms/day. He was a multiple world champion who enjoyed a long career.

Did he run too much? The reality is I don’t know and will never know. We cannot repeat his life in a parallel universe where the only variable that changes is the volume and/or frequency of running.

Now for the sake of this discussion; on paper an argument could be made that his running may have been excessive (he suffered lower body injury challenges resulting in a major surgery late in his career which from all reports negatively affected his performance for some years prior to surgery). 

From a purely physical standpoint this may be an acceptable hypothesis. Case closed, right? Not so fast…

The challenge is athlete preparation isn’t just physical. It’s also technical, tactical and psychological according to Tudor Bompa. 

What only he knows and we’ll never know, is the psychological impact running all those kilometres daily had on him. If the benefits psychologically far outweighed any perceived physical drawbacks, his decisions have been on point. If this was not the case, there’s likely been an opportunity cost. 

A take away from these examples is achieving desired results in your training (I say ‘desired results’ because all training produces results, though not always the desired ones) and optimising the planning of it depends on more variables than most realise.

If you haven’t already, start with the old ‘training triangle’. Illustrated via a triangle with the words training, eating and sleeping on the three sides. 

The commercial interests built around training and nutrition are enormous. It’s not difficult to see. Because there is so much to sell you, they get the lion’s share of attention. Sleep on the other hand, might be the most under rated recovery and performance enhancement tool on the planet and comparatively gets limited attention. 

Like fasting when it comes to nutrition or stretching when it comes to training, there’s not a whole lot to sell you. The commercial benefits of educating on and promoting sleep is a low return enterprise while concurrently an enormous opportunity hiding in plain sight for the committed athlete. 

Individualising your training is the north star and training means more than just the actual training sessions you’re doing.