The Five Rules of Training

Just me spiraling around some sort of core, defining philosophy.

Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash

There are a lot of ways to train, a lot of activities to undertake, a lot of ways to “be fit”… but I really believe there’s a set of core principles beneath all of it. I’m gonna spell that out here. This is part personal philosophy, part real world experience, and part understanding of science and stories of others.

Rule One: Be Prepared

Physical preparedness is important. If you represented your physical ability and prowess as a pyramid, preparedness is the base it all rests upon - the bigger the base, the bigger and taller the pyramid can be.

But what does “preparedness” mean? Preparedness refers to your base level of strength, mobility, and conditioning, in addition to your breadth of experience with training and activity - knowing how to throw, run, climb, jump, push, carry, and more while being able to do those things with some level of proficiency and skill.

This preparedness is built through activities like complexes, heavy conditioning, medleys, and traditional cardio. But it also includes the sort of rapid-fire circuit training you find in almost every successful athletic program, including mainstream popular ones like Insanity, P90X, or even Zumba. In short, you train preparedness by combining as many muscular, cardiovascular, and energy system stresses into a single session to get better at all these things at once.

Rule Two: Be Resilient

Regular training is hard. Not only because you’re simply doing hard work, but because most days you simply might not feel like it. Training when it’s too hot, or too cold, or when you’re too tired is tough.

And without the resilience to deal with these things in your path, you simply won’t be able to put in the amount of work you need to in order to really thrive.

Improving resilience is about practicing under adverse conditions when you’re feeling at your best. Spend time outside when it’s hot and humid; take cold showers; take the stairs instead of the elevator; choose the thing that sucks. The more adversity you put in front of yourself when you can control it, the better you will be able to react when you can’t. In this way, you build consistency into your training by removing excuses.

Rule Three: Build Work Capacity

Work capacity is a somewhat obvious term that refers to your capacity to do work. Higher work capacity means you tire less quickly, that you can do more work before you fatigue. This means you can put more effort into your training.

When you’re first starting out, almost everything you do increases work capacity. In fact, training preparedness (Rule One) is probably more about increasing work capacity than other modalities like strength and endurance.

Improving work capacity isn’t complicated - it simply means that you need to do more whenever you can - from training session to training session; from week to week; whatever. The best way I’ve found to do this is through density training - increasing work or decreasing rest within the same amount of time - but there are plenty of less technical ways to simply do more whenever you can.

Rule Four: Build Adaptability

Adaptation is what makes training work. This is codified in the SAID principle which says the human body makes Specific Adaptations in order to more efficiently overcome Imposed Demands. The more you run, the better your body becomes at running.

But building adaptability is slightly different. It is about knowing what specific adaptations you want and choosing the right imposed demands. Adaptation works, but knowing how and when to adapt is what we want. To this end, building adaptability requires you to have a large breadth of experience that gives you a vocabulary of demands to put on your body; and it requires you to have the ability to execute on this enough to get the adaptations you want.

Really, Adaptability is built upon Preparedness and Work Capacity, but adds a layer of knowledge on top. You must know what adaptations you want or need, how to change your demands, and what sort of training to undertake to adapt in that way.

Rule Five: Recover

No one has the work capacity to train 24 hours a day. In fact, if you attempt something like this, your body won’t be able to adapt - you’ll get injured, chronically fatigued, and sick.

By putting effort into recovering from a bout of training, you bounce back quicker and are able to train more in a given week or month. In this way, recovery is a parallel to work capacity, just on a larger scale. The better you recover, the better you can train. Poor recovery leads to lowered work capacity, endurance, and maximal strength.

But what exactly does it mean to recover well? It’s mostly about eating enough of the right foods, reducing stress where you can, and sleeping well. But it can also involve activities like deep breathing, stretching and mobility work, focusing on play, or even cold exposure.

Wrapping Up

In trying to push my training ideas toward some sort of unifying theory of how I train people and how I’d like to see people train, I’ve come to believe that all training is based on:

1. Preparedness for new activities or styles of training. This means a wide breadth of training in multiple skills and modalities.

2. Resilience to push through the hard edges. This means doing hard things when you’re able so that it’s easier when you’re less enthused.

3. Work Capacity to be able to do more. This means you have to put in the cold, hard mileage - there’s no shortcuts.

4. Adaptability to be able to pivot and focus. This means knowing what to emphasize to achieve the results you want.

5. Recovery to be able to keep training for years and years. This means you need to take some time off and relax.

Actually Doing It

1. The base of your training should cover a number of movements that are varied or novel, that work to improve strength, endurance, flexibility, balance, and all sorts of modalities. Aim for breadth.

2. Train a little harder than is comfortable when you’re feeling good, and train even when you don’t feel like it. Spend time being uncomfortable.

3. Forcibly improve something every session or every week - go up in sets, weight, reps, or speed; reduce rest time; or something else entirely. Just get better.

4. Once a week, put an emphasis on training that gives you adaptations you need right now. Lift if you want to be stronger, sprint if you want to be quicker, etc.

5. Don’t overdo it. Every day: eat the right amount of food and get enough sleep to not feel tired. Meditate or pray or walk in nature or just find some way to calmly unwind your stressors.

Supporting Programs

If you’d like to see some practical examples of programs that fit this mold, I recommend the following (affiliate links where possible):

• Tactical Barbell II is a conditioning based program with an eight week “base building” block (Preparedness) and ongoing endurance and conditioning training to be added to any training template (Work Capacity). Add in their original strength program, Tactical Barbell, and you have more Work Capacity and Adaptability going on.

• Infinite Intensity is an encyclopedia of movements and how to structure workouts to improve Work Capacity and Adapatability. The program itself is based in Preparedness and Resilience, covering a wide breadth of low-tech movements.