I’ve been doing working out for 11 years, and coaching for 6 years. This has given me ample opportunity to make plenty of mistakes, both in my own programming, and coaching other athletes. When I think back on them, and other mistakes that I see athletes make, I find they fall into three categories. Keep reading to see if you are making these mistakes, and how to avoid them.
1. CONDITIONING IS EASIER THAN STRENGTH
I’ve heard this one a million times, and I must have said it two million more. You’ll often hear someone saying, “strength takes a long time to acquire, but you can get into WOD shape in just a few months.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
In my experience writing programs for athletes, and gyms, there is no physical trait that is “easy to acquire.” There are some that different athletes already have, and can build upon quickly, but there are none that are universally easy for all athletes. I think this platitude comes from folks that spend a lot of time training strength, which is probably me, if I’m honest. When you train this way, you gradually decondition your ability to perform at a high level in WODs.
Consequently when you do start to turn your attention back to metcons, you rapidly improve to where you were previously, and maybe make a little progress. This leads us to think that conditioning is somehow easier to obtain. If we think about this critically there is nothing in training that can be developed at a high level, without much effort. All newbies to a certain method of training will rapidly develop, but once those beginners gains wear off, it’s a hard slog for further improvement.
We also see top level games athletes working on their conditioning year round. If it were truly so easy to acquire, then why do they constantly hammer it?
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