Your hidden training
This refers to everything you do as part of your lifeĀ outsideĀ of your normal training, that youĀ dismissĀ because, well, itās life, but thatĀ directly impactsĀ your body, nervous system, and performances.
In studying how to make professional athletes more competitive, the French specialists I came across realised that many science sport engineers, despite their skills at cycling nutrition, program loads, and everything in-between, completely ignored 90% of what their athletes had to constantly adapt to: not their training, butĀ the ebb and flow of life.
They went on criticising the way we professionalise young adults into becoming professional athletes, arguing that jumping from 3 workouts a week to a twice-daily affair was a recipe for disaster.
The following stuck with me:
ā From a phisiological perspective, a 15% annual increase in the training load or more is enough to create a burnoutā
Take that, hustle culture.
Surely, none of you trains handstands 2 hours, twice a day. But 15% per year is not a lot at all.
Beyond that, there are a few open questions to take home.
- Are you acknowledging and fully accepting that you hidden training canĀ overshadowĀ your handstand training and make your performance fluctuate? Can you accept those fluctuations?
- Are you beingĀ gradualĀ in the volume of your training and able to take the foot off the pedal even before you start to feel the first signs of tiredness?
- Can youĀ be at peaceĀ with the fact thatĀ when your plate is already full, less is more?
- Can you look at your training from a moreĀ holisticĀ perspective, in which sniffing noses, sleepless kids, angry bosses and invisible gut disruptions have a direct impact on athletic performances?