What Bets Are You Placing In Your Training

The decisions we make in life can be viewed as bets. We’re betting the decision we make to a choice we have, is superior probability wise to any other decision available to us. As an example, if you decide to get married, you are betting your life will be better being married than not. Then you’re betting your spouse is the one to be married too over anyone else. 

The same goes for our training. Actually, I’ve jumped the gun and assumed a bet. Let’s break it down. 

Anyone who trains (or ‘works out’ for our North American friends) is betting their life will be better engaging in some sort of consistent physical activity and skill development than not. That’s a bet I’d double down on.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s look at some common bets you’re placing in your training consciously or by default. 

Flexibility 

It’ll come as no surprise the majority of people are making subpar bets within this physical quality. Not everyone of course, but most. 

Apparently it’s now well established that stretching before training is ‘bad’ but ‘mobility’ work is good…

95% of the time I bet against this, choosing stretching before training. Why? One of the many reasons is the priority principle. For decades Ian King has shared what gets done first in training gets done best. I could walk into training locker rooms, gyms, fields, pools, academies, dojos and facilities anywhere in the western world tomorrow morning and find an endless number of sports people lacking in flexibility.

Strength

Strength training is a staple of athletes around the world. However outside of the traditional strength sports of Olympic lifting and powerlifting, warm up sets seem to be disappearing faster than the physical cash circulation is in society. 

I bet beginning the first exercise of your session with an empty barbell (or its equivalent if not a barbell exercise) and executing multiple progressive warm up sets – depending on the weight of the first work set – is the best course of action for your training goals and injury status both now and long term. 

Just because you can lift heavier with no warm up or a limited warm up, doesn’t mean you should. Err on the side of caution and be progressive in your warm up sets. If you’re short on time, you don’t cut warm up sets, you modify or cut work sets if your goal is no injuries in the gym.  

It’s fascinating how many intelligent people do stupid things when it comes to loading in strength training.

Speed

Most sports have fantastic skill drills to improve speed and its sub qualities. Here’s a fantastic example for combat sport athletes.

It doesn’t matter if your sport is a speed based sport such as track and field events, a game based sport such as Football (Soccer) or a sport not known for its speed such as marathon running or gi Jiu-Jitsu.

Speed is a component of the sport. When training this component, minimising fatigue via appropriate manipulation of training variables (volume, intensity, rest periods, work to rest ratios, etc) is vital. 

I bet ‘less is more’ (to use a Charlie Francis saying) when it comes to speed training. Meaning less work and more rest during drills to minimise fatigue and ensure the work is of the highest quality.  

Should fatigue creep in and your execution slow down you’ve got to ask yourself, what adaptation are you now rehearsing?

Endurance

‘Fatigue masks fitness’ is a fantastic Ian King quote. 

More often than not I bet too many athletes compete with unnecessary residual fatigue during competition. One way to avoid this is figuring out your own peaking plan leading into competition. 

Typically it’ll take you two to three iterations to lock it down, so best test it out well before important competitions. 

In the video below Cameron Quinn lays out a peaking program he’s used with combat athletes with great success over the past 30 years.

There you have it. A few of the many bets I regularly make in training professionally and personally.