By working too hard all the time you end up not working very hard at all

The truth is, this isn’t really just about working hard. It’s about working too hard too often. The popularity of CrossFit / Hybrid training has made the idea of being a jack of all trade extremely appealing and feasible, but is it really possible?

The concept of training

The most commonly employed training model is the general adaptation syndrome aka GAS. Put it simply —> baseline —> challenge yourself —> rest

Then there’s 3 options:

• You experience adaptation and performance increase.

• You return back to baseline - no performance increase.

• You haven’t recovered and experience a decrease in performance.

This is pretty simple stuff, but if you don’t understand this and accept it as a reality you will not progress. Unfortunately a lot of people get stuck in the 2nd and 3rd options. In my opinion that is because they may not understand the effect fatigue has on training.

You see they’re are different type of fatigue, but also different ways one may achieve those. For example CNS fatigue is commonly thought to occur only when heavy strength training. This is completely wrong, in fact CNS fatigue can be experience doing many things, your work stress is one, slow and long distance running for example will dramatically fatigue your CNS. I wrote a whole post on here that you can check out to read about it in more details.

Not understanding this might make you think that one activity does not have a negative effect on the other when it truly does.

The non essentialist’s problem

The success of CrossFit and Hybrid endeavours partially lies in the endearing idea that we can do it all. Which I think we can to certain degree but not all at once and not to a top capacity for sure. This idea is deeply embedded in human nature, people want to lose weight but aren’t willing to cut down on their social drinking. Some people want to see their family more, but aren’t willing to spend less time at work.

The word priority comes from the Latin word which means “first” the idea of having many priorities is paradoxical because by it’s very definition, you can only have one priority.

You have to pick something and stick to it, be it strength, endurance or capacity. Pick one and decided that’s what you’ll improve on. The rest, you can only hope to hold on to it.

As you can see from the table above (especially the bottom centre table), training can be organised in such way where one quality can be maintained while other pursued. Because it’s isn’t as hard to maintain a level of fitness than it is to obtain it.

The elite hybrid athletes performance aren’t obtained through the perceived event’s in which it is performed. But as a result of well established years of training following programs that allows development in one area or the other. In other words the athlete will not train each qualities at the same intensity all year round but just like the table above it’s organised to take turn.

There is another reason why I think personal attention to programming is even more needed in concurrent training. Because we all have different strength and weaknesses, ie: someone with a powerlifting background can enter a program where less attention will be placed on strength training compared to endurance and capacity. Being aware of what actually needs work is a lot more important than the training itself.

A new training philosophy

100% efforts are soo taxable that it can only be performed once within a given session. Especially as you get fitter and are able to express more, your body will need more time to achieve that intensity. Physiologically, the body’s systems that support true 100% effort need recovery time to perform at their peak again, whether within the same session or throughout the day. Hence why by working too hard all the time you end up not working very hard at all. The built up fatigue factor lead an athlete to thin that they’re working at 100% intensity everyday, when they’re actually limited to a daily 80-90% effort due to built up fatigue.

Realistically fatigue can build up from one session to the next but also from one exercise to the next within the same session. Hence why it is always recommended to perform the most important exercises first. With that in mind training needs to be programmed so that the athlete gets the most amount of stimulus for the least amount of fatigue.

Here’s a few golden rules:

1. Hypertrophy work is useless. Unless you’re very skinny and new to training, past that stage all it does is create loads of fatigue for very little in return.

2. 1RIR and 2RIR are your best friends, that is because you dont have to train to failure to get stronger or bigger. Anything over 85% 1rm will create loads of stimulus anyway do it anyway, doing 5x5 means that you had 25 stimulating reps and that you worked to failure 5 times. Whereas doing 6x4 with 1RIR means that you get the same amount of stimulating reps without working to failure.

3. High velocity work and plyo’s are great too! You probably get the theme from now muscular damage induced fatigue is the enemy, so anything fast will tend to place a bit more demand on the nervous system and connective tissues.

4. Categorise your sessions in term of priority, level of freshness and fatigue inducing. Some activity requires high level of readiness’s whereas others won’t. Ie; heavy cleans compared to a slow run. But some activities will induce a high level of fatigue, while other won’t. For example some 50m sprints compare to a 10k run.

5. Lean into your strengths and weakness, if you’re really good at something try to maintain that for a bit. It gets harder and harder anyway so you might as well grab some low hanging fruit from the stuff you’re not good at. And if you’re not good at anything just yet that’s probably one more reason to stop for a second and focus on 1 goal only.

Author - karim djidel

Hey, I’m a coach and athlete. I offer 1-1 personal training services in Hackney Wick but also online training globally. Feel free to reach out if you’d like more tips on fitness and/or how to get started!