training the unready

[faustin]

This was a note I wrote to myself, unedited.

Many people need to be pushed, and pushing them really is exactly the right thing to do. There is an occasional rare instance when it's not the right thing to do, hence this note to myself:
10. Beware of the boy who cries wolf. You'll end up pushing him hard. The trainer always tries to find balance on

Comments

[roadriverrail]

Of course, there's the converse of that person, and I fit that archetype. I'll keep plugging away at something until I go to do it and parts of my body don't respond. And then, I'll start looking for muscles to compensate. If my arms simply don't respond, I'll try to heave harder with my core. If that doesn't work, I'll use my calves or my toes or anything to get the next rep.

That kind of behavior, in my experience, can be very dangerous.

[faustin]

I don't see your tenacity in crossfit training too often, mostly because the exercises we use to achieve intensity are very potent: eg., running gives you a ton of variability in intensity; heavy back squats do not. Doing 20 back squats at 225 pounds will floor any wild animal; attempting 3 rounds of it, alternating with 15 pullups, and you know that even a beast has hit his limits and will not be casting about for another experiment. Thrusters, OHS, GHD situps, handstand pushups all tend to have this effect. Executed with good technique, the athlete hits strength and metabolic limits and it's pretty safe, with the sole remaining issue (except for other weird medical conditions) of rhabdo

[roadriverrail]

Oh, trust me...I hit real physical limits. I hit them fast. Hell...I can only safely do the prescribed workouts for women. Well, when I was in better form, anyway...I've since atrophied (life chaos has been too strong for me to work Crossfit back in).

With the running, or with wall ball or a few other exercises, my larynx will seize up and I can't breathe. But, I will still run headlong into it. It was good for me, actually, because it gave me time to be mindful about the feeling of inflammation in my throat, and I could make a game out of toeing that line.

With the lifting, someone was invariably having to catch my final reps, which I'd then still keep trying to push through. I mean, if I'm going to suffer, I might as well just go all out, right?

I think the big worry, though, is that the exhausted and tenacious are the ones likely to drop a barbell where it might hit someone else or otherwise do stupid things. I've seen someone throw a kettlebell into a tibia that way.

[faustin]

I see. That is definitely extreme. I have heart but I don't push myself that hard.

Kettlebell --> tibia, ooooouuuuucchhh! Yuck. I tell people all the time: weird shit happens when people are fatigued, it's hard to predict what's going to crash or how or when. (Oh, and I design our equipment/gym around it. No jump boxes (tires instead, rounded rubber). No angles allowed under pullup bars. I still get freaked out every time I see kids swinging upside down, though.)

[songofapollo]

This is a fascinating issue for me, scientifically and personally. I've always wondered how personal trainers know when to push and when to pull people back.

I remember when you wrote an evolutionary rationale for the human body to have reserves or capacities of stamina beyond self-perceived limits. That's an interesting tidbit in the context of this conversation.

Are you worried that you're going to hurt someone -- or cause them to hurt themselves? Lots of people seem to be concerned with CrossFit's potential for injury, and some people (like the Navy) seem to think that it has already demonstrated a propensity to injure its practitioners.

[faustin]

The evolutionary rationale certainly is relevant; but the training agenda of the Navy SEALs is quite different from my agenda as a commercial trainer (unless I'm training future SEALs, though my agenda still is to give them optimal strength, technique and conditioning development, as well as mental toughness, as a basis for their future - lifelong - success and training.) For the SEALs, we simply observe that the body says "hey this activity if continued will weaken us to the point we may be at risk to predators or otherwise unable to exhibit fitness or protect our values." The body says this very very very early. It's an over-conservative risk mechanism. We must learn to ignore it, to discover just how much our bodies are capable of.

As a trainer I'm just trying to optimize. If I'm too conservative, I cheat my client of results, and results are what I'm supposed to deliver. If I'm not conservative enough, I risk injuring my client, with potentially devastating consequences to him and me.

If you read my response to roadriverrail above, you'll