Are You Optimising or Creating Training Scars?

Today’s blog is inspired by two lads I was talking to over the last week.

Two very different people, different backgrounds, different

circumstances and even born in different decades.

Yet have fallen for the same trap.

Self Help has gone from a joke section in the book shops to a full bore

SocMed driven industry

And while we should be helping ourselves and working to improve

ourselves, the amount and quality of information coming out is making it

impossible for people to navigate.

From Signal to Noise: The Shift from Forums to Short-Form Video

The same thing happened in the fitness world. Back in the 2000's and

early 2010's before SocMed really took off, we had fitness magazines

which were alright, there were some great websites such as T-Nation,

some really good forum sites where real discussion happened and from all

that we could navigate our way to actually coaches websites and blogs

and get to read their work, directly from the coach themselves.

It was a great time, and I miss it!

Then SocMed exploded and in depth articles started to phase out, they

got shorter, then then shorter, then video, then short form video.

And the noise level went through the roof.

Back in the day, to get into a media publication, be it T-Nation or a

magazine, you had an editing staff to get through. Which means those who

got published probably had something to say, so when we went to their

blog page, we very likely found good info.

But now, with SocMed, anyone with a mobile phone can but out anything

they want.

Clicks are currency, not quality, but quantity.

And as a result, the signal to noise ration has gone to shit.

And those who are new, those who are looking for help and information,

they're not equipped to separate the signal from the noise.

And that's a problem.

Largely because those putting out good info, don't have the acumen to

produce slick content that gets a stack of views, mostly because those

people are busy being experts in the actual subject matter and actually

helping people.

The SocMed experts getting all the views, they're very often the ones

simply making noise and drowning out the good signal.

Optimizing Yourself Into a Rut

So back to these lads.

They're both kinda vulnerable, I'll not into reasons why.

But they both have been following some of this self help advice, and

they're miserable.

Like that Diary of a CEO muppet Steven Bartlett, they have essentially

"optimised" themselves into a rut.

They have such rigid rules that their living by that they have lost the

ability to roll with the punches, to adapt, the let their hair down.

When really what good self help should be doing is the opposite, helping

people shed the need for super tight structure and give them the ability

to be flexible and adaptable

To have fun

To focus when focus is needed and let their hair down when the time comes.

Anyone who genuinely performs at a high level, does so in phases. In

fitness we call it "Periodisation"

Where we build and back off. We shift focus, from periods of intense

single focus work to more relaxed general focus work.

We build strength, we build mobility and we build endurance, and we do

so across Mind, Body and Spirit.

What much of the self help world is doing is reducing the mobility by

having too many structures, to many controls, too little freedom in place.

And that ain't fitness.

The Danger of "Training Scars"

I have worked with athletes who loved tightly controlled routines and

trained at the same time of each day with the same kit, ate the same foods.

And when they went away to a competition, the fell apart.

The event was at a different time of day, the food was different, the

equipment felt different.

They could perform in their controlled environment but really that had

built themselves a prison

They had developed what we call "training scars" and couldn't adapt when

the circumstances changed.

That's not fitness

Fitness is being able to deal with the unknown.

It's simple

But it's not easy

Dave Hedges

www.DaveHedges.net