5 Principles of Training (& Life)

In this post, I want to go over which boiled down principles I keep in mind everyday while training athletes. Oddly enough, these principles stay true to their label as principles because I believe they carry over into everyday life. The methods that fall within these principles are infinite, so don't get caught up in the "how" to specifically conquer something; focus more on designing from the principle itself and you can tweak your methods as you go.

Progressive Overload

This principle of training is probably the most widely talked about within the strength & conditioning/fitness professional community. What is the basis of the principle? You have to continually overload or increase the amount by which you are doing something (like weight/reps/time during training).

The more that you overload over time, the more you can handle and grow. If you don't change any variables in some realm, no growth will happen because you need some progressive overload to reach your goal. On the flip side, too much increase can lead to injury or complete shutdown. So, you have to find the "correct" amount to overload (which you will never 100% know). As a suggestion, I never change any variable that I'm progressing in someone's training more than 10%. Most of the time, my jumps will be in the 5% range.

How is this true in life? Well, have you ever met someone who to you seems like a busy person? Or watched someone you admire and they tell you all the daily items they must complete? Then you look at someone completely unproductive and see how little they do with their day. Both people have the same amount of time during the day, but how can one be so much more productive than the other? I would be willing to bet progressive overload and adding tasks on little by little was used by the productive person.

If you ever find yourself caught up in the emotion of the peaks and valleys that occur while pursuing a goal, take a look at the journey from a broadened perspective. If zoomed into a graph with many points of data, there will be plenty of increases and decreases from one point to the next that may look like the data are all over the place. However if you zoom out far enough, the general trend line will be a steady increase over time. So, if you get caught up in the peaks and valleys, know that you are still riding along the trend of increase and getting better.

Everything In Moderation

This principle really speaks for itself, and I am sure you have had many times in your life that you have had too much of one thing and experienced the loss of whatever positive aspects item had in the first place.

Let's start with training...

Have you ever hit a plateau or did something so much it lead to injury? Yeah me too. Plateaus in training happen often, and it usually can happen because you find one thing that worked and transformed your training. You hit bigger numbers or felt better because of this one training modality. BUT you did it for awhile (too long) and well shit.. another plateau. Or you only do one specific movement or train one thing - let's go with jumps. you want to increase your vertical, so you have to train jumps. However, you only train jumping and neglect proper rest or any other forms of strength training or tendon care. Then your patellar tendon hurts (jumper's knee) and you've developed some tendinopathy in that tendon because of all your jumping.

Even an olympic weightlifter whose job is to Snatch and Clean & Jerk the most weight possible don't only do weightlifting movements. And they most certainly don't stick around really heavy weights all the time, as they know lifting heavy day in and day out for multiple times a day only results in one outcome.. injury. Will this elite olympic weightlifter suffer in other forms of athletic performance? Yes, probably.

So, if you are a general strength athlete (basically all sports) or part of regular day to day life, stick to everything in moderation. Both your body and your mindset will be better off because of it.

Now on to life!

This one is really easy, as too much of anything either becomes mundane and loses its significance (sunsets every single night) OR it creates a negative habit (drinking alcohol). Am I saying don't take in a beauty sunset or have a couple beers now and then? No. Just be conscious of what you're doing and choose to do something for the right reasons.

Specificity

I somewhat alluded to this in the previous section with the jumping example. If you want any result in life, you must practice the principle of specificity.

What does this look like in training? Whatever the specific thing you want to improve is, you must train that specific movement/skill. You want to get stronger? You better lift weights. You want to jump higher? There better be some jumping in your program. You want to be faster? You better sprint. This is super simple, and allows you to remember not to overcomplicate things. You don't need to break things down and overanalyze to the point where the program becomes something that doesn't even get the results you want.

One thing I will address for specificity is this; SPORT SPECIFICITY IS NOT FOR THE WEIGHT ROOM. You want to be a better basketball player or increase your ability at certain skills for basketball? Go practice those skills and play the game. A weighted ball for rebounding is pointless. Literally anything with a box out in the weight room is dumb. The weight room and S&C in general is to increase an athlete's athletic ability, which in turn allows them to perform more athletic actions in their sport and make them more resilient. Do not confuse the two.

How does this work in life? Well, I see it as filling the buckets of what is important to you. Do you want to be a better friend? You better reach out to your friends and let them know you're there. Want to be better at work? Learn something for work or be more productive on the job. Just know that whatever area of life you want to improve, you must give energy to that specific thing.

You Are What You Repeatedly Do

What are your results in training or in life? If you look at what you repeatedly do (your habits), it will be simple to see what your external results may look like.

I want to explain how I correlate this with training so that you understand where I am coming from. We have all experienced that one person in training or the gym who is unbelievably strong or powerful, but their conditioning or work capacity is shit. Who would you rather have on the field? The person who can squat 500 lbs one time and needs 5 minutes of rest minimum before they can perform any other physical activity OR the athlete who can squat 450 lbs but only needs hardly any rest before going into the next set or movement? I'll take the one with the higher work capacity. Another good example is speed for a general sport athlete. Do you want the player who can sprint 21+ mph once per game for that single rep while running 19 mph for the others due to fatigue OR the athlete who can run 20 mph for every single rep? Give me the 20. You need to be able to repeatedly perform a task rather than perform it once and your nervous system/body is so fatigued that you can't continue.

It may seem pretty obvious about where I am going with this in life as well. Your daily habits and choices are the things that yield your outer results. How so? 95+% of your daily actions and thoughts are subconscious (yes, that is an accurate percentage that is quite frightening). Those subconscious programs are running without you even thinking and your daily habits are built upon those. So, don't like your results? One thing to look at are your habits. Do you exercise daily? Do you look for things to be grateful for in life? Or do you complain, see the negative of everything and feel more like life is happening to you. These are simple examples, but the point gets across. These daily thinking and doing habits directly influence our outer world. Make sure you repeatedly choose the more productive habits and positive thoughts and emotions. The results you seek will begin to reveal themselves.

Mindset Is Everything

This speaks for itself and is touched on in the previous section. Your thinking may be holding you back in both training and life.

One book that I think can illustrate this very well is Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. This book is written and based on the work of a plastic surgeon. At first reaction, you may think, "what the hell does a plastic surgeon know about mindset?" To which I would answer, great question. This surgeon noticed that after removing or fixing a defect on someone that altered their appearance for the better, they would become an entirely different person.

Dr. Maltz found that his patients' self images drastically changed (or didn't) and that whatever results they had were directly correlated with their self image. So, this book was written to help develop a person's self image and reveal their true self.

Admittedly, I am not all the way through this book, but I am currently reading it and think it really deserves to be mentioned in this section. It really shows that the self image one creates leads to the results in someone's life, negative or positive.

I will do a post on mindset alone in the future and take a really deep dive, as I believe it is the most important thing. This is why I have it last on the list. You will most likely remember the first and last items you read in this post; I wanted to make sure that mindset was last, so it really sticks with you.

Finishing Up

These 5 principles I know to be true based on my own experience of training myself and other athletes.

I purposefully left out specifics and methods because, once again, the methods are many and the principles are few. The fact that these principles can span training and life means they can be applied to other areas as well.

Is this an exhaustive list? Nope. However, when I had the idea to write on this, I wanted to give real value of the top principles that came to my mind and how I think and apply them to my daily adventure of life.

I hope they help you better your life in some way and that you are consciously even using the idea of principles for yourself. Create your life; don't sit back and let it happen to you!

I appreciate you reading this, and if you found it useful or a good read, please share it with someone else!

All Love,

Nick