What You’re Probably Missing in Your Strength Program
What is the secret sauce in training?
Well, for many of us it’s strength. Yes, for the sport of CrossFit, you will find the age-old debate around what is the “price of admission” - strength or endurance. The correct answer is “yes”. Meaning, it is unethical to just lay out a blanket statement for the sake of making noise. What matters most lies with the answer for that particular person asking the question. For some, strength is the price of admission and people need to get stronger. For others, endurance is the price of admission and they need to be able to work for various times and energy requirements to have any sort of success. Yet, with that I still often see one key ingredient missing in regards to strength as it pertains to individualized CrossFit programs.
That one key piece is adaptation.
Yes, adaptation is a large umbrella which includes stimulus, fatigue, and recovery along with all the subsidiaries that lie within those. So, I could be stretching a bit in the title to get your eyes on this article, as you might have been looking for that magic pill. However, I will dive deeper into adaptation, as I want it to relate to what you are reading.
When it comes to adaptation and strength, the missing piece often occurs around the stress/stimulus block. As I look through CrossFit training programs, I see that many people are prescribing or writing in strength training without regards to the appropriate stimulus needed by that athlete to create the right stimulus for adaptation. You see, everything comes down to the desired response we want to create, the stress or stimulus we need to apply to the body/system for that to occur, and allowing the right recovery time and ideally the proper timing of the next like-stimulus to drive up supercompensation.
This issue is the desired stimulus that is applied is lacking. Too often people don’t take into account who the athlete is (as it relates to the genetic makeup) and what the right amount of stimulus is that is needed for adaptation. Each person is different and as people age up, both biologically and physiologically, so too must the stimulus change around them with regards to proper dosing. When we are looking to get people stronger, we need to look deeply into the stimulus we are applying for that person, if it is the right amount for them, and what the following two training days look like as it pertains to fatigue and recovery (then supercompensation). If the athlete is having too much work put on them, then their window to recover and grow will get smaller and smaller. If the athlete is not having enough stimulus put on them, then their system will never be pressured for growth.
So take a look at the work you are doing, and/or what you’re having your athletes do, and make sure that it is the right prescription for them.
If you are unsure about this for your own training as an athlete, then contact us at help@conquerathlete.com and get set up with a free consultation. For you coaches out there, check out our Coaching Mentorship Program and see how we can guide you along your coaching journey.
