The Rule of Rubber. — Trainathlon

Whether following a program to every minute detail, or planning workouts day-by-day, always follow a basic rule to know what direction the training difficulty should be moving. Is the answer more reps? Is the answer more weight? More time? All of these can be right, but whatever the progression is, it should be a stretch, not a snap.

Bruce Lee said to be like water, but in reality, we have to accept that we are rubber. Yes, we can change shape, yes we can lengthen, mobilize, and strengthen, but we can't do it at the drop of a hat. The issue with many peoples training is the size of the leaps they decide to take. There are many ways that people take their bodies closer to snapping than stretching.

Appreciate the bodies elasticity, and let training reflect it. You can stretch into a new, permanent shape (or level of fitness), but it has to be subtle, and consistently small, enough to induce a change in the body, but not enough to put anything on the injured reserve.

They prioritize soreness.

Whether the usual weights feel easier to lift than they did in the past, or much more weight can be lifted for low reps, these might cause soreness, or they might not. In the case of the latter, remember, soreness isn't the priority, and would actually be nice to avoid! Taking every set on a ride for a personal record will only help you find your limit, and a bunch of subsequently weaker sets. Instead, training in a way where the difficulty increases gradually. Personal record aren't usually shattered, they're pushed up slowly, pound-by-pound, but they're pushed up consistently! Never forget, soreness is not necessary. Many strength conditioning professionals, including those with collegiate athletes in season, are changing their outlook on rate of perceived exertion, and the neccessity of fatigue in training. Companies like StrongFirst push for training methods of compound movements done with heavy load, but never pushing for failure or fatigue. Drop sets, supersets, and High Intensity Interval Training aren't viewed in the same way in these camps. The aim of many new age, or Russian influenced coaches is to accumulate more volume of the same or similar movements. If they aren't ever done until failure, and the body rests sufficiently before each sub maximal set, the body won't have to recover as much to continue practicing the same movements, and gradually, getting stronger. Coaches like Jon Danaher, and Firas Zahabi advocate for these methods with plyometrics and force production drills for Mixed Martial Arts.

Cut down on the quantity of exercises, cut down on the pain, and lock down more perfect, powerful repetitions. You will grow stronger, and when your goals change, you can apply that newfound strength towards even higher performance. What do you seek, pain, or performance?

They get lost in the group.

Group fitness can be done well, and can provide a social outlet that helps people improve physically, spiritually, and mentally. Being surrounded by others focused on fitness can be beneficial, but it can also leave certain participants in the dust. The best classes keep the movement complexity simple, so that all participants can scale up and down, or modify as needed. For some, a group environment is too intimidating, and for others, the group environment will peer pressure them into going past their capabilities. Some of the movement progressions in class push that line between stretching and straining. Participants may make jumps in intensity, or movement complexity too quickly, and hurt themselves. This can either quickly or slowly derail fitness ambitions.

When working with a group, a good rule of thumb is to keep it in uniform. Nothing is too complex or too crazy for people to grasp, and they can adjust difficulty by weight, or speed. When participants are worrying more about the choreography than the numbers, they need to regress and get stronger foundations. While animal flows, suspension drills, and unique modalities may provide innovative new spins on fitness, simplicity promotes safety. Whether you participate in group fitness workouts, or provide them, ask yourself if the workout is simple enough. If not, the efficacy may get lost, and injury may occur. Stretch the limits slowly!

The goals aren't realistic, and the timeline isn't laid out.

People that break the rubber rule either stretch too far, or stretch to wide. Remember, the body needs to recover from all the hard exercise it goes through, so if the training is pushed too far in either direction, injury or degradation will occur. Now, there is a difference between stretching too far, or too wide. Are you stretching too far in either direction?

Too far (Narrow focus with excessive expectations).

Yes, you can aim to add weight to your squat, and probably achieve that successfully. But no, you can't add 400 pounds to it within the year, even if you did train it every day, for hours a day. Only that, every day, it still will burn you out. Sometimes, a 25 pound PR is something struggled for. Set a date one year from now. Measure the max of your favorite lift, and see how much you can beat it by next year. If you train it safely, and improve, you may add a good percentage of weight to it, but the gains in these sports take a long time. Bodybuilding, powerlifting, and weightlifting are all sports where older athletes still have significant success. It's because of the amount of experience they have gained through practicing the craft. Athletes of all kinds can fall victim to this. These are baseballs power hitters who lack any speed, boxers with endurance and no power punching, and quick injury prone wide receivers. If it truly is your goal to partake in any of those, you have to plan to sustain it, and make goals reasonable. Anticipate slow growth, and surprise yourself by pushing passed it.

Your movement selection can also be too narrow. If moving things up and down, or forward and back get stronger, but side-to-side strength gets weaker, your swapping more strength for more weakness elsewhere. Don't fall victim to this, and train the antagonist muscles too. If you squat, do some lunges too. If you want a better bench, make sure there are bent over rows in your routine. Can those hips move? If they can't work on lateral lunges! Narrow focus can create narrow movement (literally).

Too wide. ( Too many different goals, not enough time to master them).

There's a cliche about parents raising their children to play "every instrument and be mediocre in all of them." What applies in music certainly applies in fitness. Some people need to narrow their focus, or force themselves to hit the point of burnout, and remain on a plateau in all of their fitness abilities. Where cross fitters, or weekend warriors with a drive to dominate the tennis court, or the golf course go wrong is getting distracted by fitness. Training for a better triathlon time is a great endeavor, but not when you want to beat your marathon PR. The cycling and the swimming can help with recovery days from running, but shouldn't become a distraction from the running. The bulk of your energy should be spent on improving the run!

Referring back to the famed Jiu Jitsu coach, John Danaher, was once quoted, addressing overtraining by saying. "Look, it's under-resting." To improve at a skill, you need to accumulate practice time. Reps, rehearsals, sessions, all get you closer to the main goal. If these reps aren't as high quality, they aren't going to improve you. Doing something at a disadvantage, or fatigue, isn't always a benefit, as often sought out in drop sets and super sets. Instead of aiming for pain every time you push it, try this.

Recover fully! Always train at the peak of your performance, but stay at the peak, not over the edge. Once you touch the true limit, you're body is going to need to recover from the session. If you train just at the limit before that, you can always maintain high quality training, and improve every session. If instead you choose to try tackling: a better big three powerlifting total, 5k time, and max-pullup number, you're going to struggle, and find little improvement, if any. You have stretched too wide. Set small goals, and crush them time after time. When weaknesses are noticed, make sure you stretch your capabilities in a different direction. Has your one-rep-max skyrocketed, but now you can't do more than 10 reps without passing out? It's time for endurance work. Remember, you can't have it all, stretch the limits in one direction at a time. Training to the limit is okay, but the issue lies in it's frequency. Torch the body on one day at the end of a training block? Awesome! You get to see your new limits expressed to their fullest. If you do this every session, however, good luck avoiding the burnout, or even worse results at the end of the training block. You have to see your badass potential at full clip, don't waste your body's ammo before the big battle in the gym.

What you can do to stretch without snapping.

1. Small Goals, every week.

Even if a personal record improves by only 2.5 pounds a week, a year will be enough time to add over 100 pounds to that personal record. Now you may start to realize how hard even a 2.5 pound personal record could be to break. If you still are aiming for 20 pound jumps on your personal records, you will find nothing but an inevitable plateau, one day. When there, start aiming smaller, but be vigilante about smashing the deadlines. Set dates

"By next week on friday, I will add 2.5 pounds to my single attempts, or an extra rep on a normally ten rep max." The improvements have to be that gradual. Set a plan and deadlines week by week on safely testing and measuring your performance through the exercises. "How did that set look, being 5 pounds heavier than last week?" If it felt better than normal, good for you. If it felt shaky, stay put on that weight for awhile longer. Every move, you want to be secure, so that every advancement made in training keeps you moving forward, and never injured; which can cause issues with your consistency!

2.Consistency.

Less is more, but only if it's done less often. Like saving money, invest in fitness gradually, consistently, and confidently. The people who do this properly can fight off soreness to continue training frequently, and make there sessions effective. a 30-45 minute session with minimal rest is all that you have to sacrifice out of the day, and the week to improve your body. This is the more sustainable route to improvement, and more effective than taking out days of skipping training to put yourself in another pain hole. Instead, try our third idea.

3.Be nicer to your body.

The sooner people stop setting the objectives of pain, sweat, exhaustion, and overheating as their goals of training, the sooner they will see improvements. Never forget that the body likes to communicate with you to protect you. If the body feels some burning during bicep curls, that would be normal. Now if the body feels tightness for weeks on end in that same bicep, after that brutal bicep workout, it's now time to listen to the body, and let it recover. Performance is a great indicator of your maintenance. If you have set 10 rep maximums of 75 pounds, and every workout after you can only press 60, that body is not healing. In the pursuit of fitness, the body may go through some pain. Fitness requires you to toughen up, but part of toughening up is wising up. Sometimes, the toughest thing you can do is ignore your ego, and let the body heal for the long term goal, not that session-by-session routine.