Coach Ted talks about training variety as a tool for gaining mechanical advantages and combatting accommodation.
The Advantage of Variety
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The Advantage of Variety
Season 6/Episode 75
March 9, 2023
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This is the Ted O'Neill program. There's so much information in science and philosophy, physical training, performance optimization, nutrition, human experience with Ted O'Neill and Jon Leon Guerrero.
0:23 Jon
Welcome to the Ted O'Neill program. I want to talk about the importance of variety when it comes to training. Specifically, when we condition, we have a number of things that we lean into and those things are our we've identified great levers to pull. But we have a number of other things that we introduce from time to time and we move things around. (Yes) So, what is the importance of variety to our conditioning medleys and how do you arrive at the amount of variety the introduce?
0:57 Ted
I think variety whether it's the conditioning medleys or in the barbell training, you can prevent or what's better said delay accommodation. (Okay) So, in other words, the body becomes accustomed to what you're doing. And then it ceases to get better at that, because the body isn't in the brain, generally speaking, isn't designed to be forward moving all the time. In fact, we have all manner of stopgaps in place to keep us the same. So, in the most linear description say someone goes out and they jog for one mile. (Yeah) That'd be a very basic form of exercise with little to no variety, like their stride length is the only variable. Right? And so if someone does that for a month, they're probably going to improve their conditioning relative to their starting point. But in a very short period of time, nothing new is going to happen.
1:51 Jon
Well, let me say two things first, that I thought, you know, musical surprise, really entertains us, like a lot of times when you're listening to a song and it really has a groove and then all of a sudden, they introduce a different time signature. Oh, they just went into seventh. (Yeah) You know, we get surprised and it's novel, and then that's cool. I thought you were just entertaining us by throwing in different things in the medley. So, to hear that there's an importance there in avoiding accommodation. That's great. The second thing though, is I have a friend who runs seven miles every day, and he's in great shape. But he does run seven miles every day. What would you introduce to a guy like that who has a great training regimen that just doesn't have a whole lot of surprise built into it?
2:44 Ted
I wouldn't say if that's the only bit of information I'm going to get. We'll just say that that's all you get. (Yeah) Because otherwise, from this vantage point, everything I'm doing is a wild guess. (Right) So, then I would think, well, this is someone who has a lot of cumulative microtrauma. (Okay) They're bouncing off the pavement for several miles every day. (Cumulative microtrauma) Yeah. So, I would probably introduce something like reverse hyperextensions Okay, to get blood flow and a little bit of a buffer zone for the low back. (Okay) I would probably incorporate some high rep work that doesn't have any kind of traditional eccentric phase like band work for the knees and hips. (Okay) So we're not creating more or greater accumulation on the eccentric or on the negative loading phase. And that can pump a lot of blood into those areas for restoration. (Okay) And to kind of create more of that buffer zone. And I would probably do at least one other thing that would offset the repetitive motion that that person has. So, if they are running, I might have them do some kind of a wide stance box squat. For example, just learning those mechanics and doing it with some amount of weight to offset that very linear, very limited pattern of just running toward them. Now they're heavily in their posterior chain. (Okay) And I would do that in combination with those reverse hyper because if you add just those two things, (yeah) and you develop a much greater level of hamstring. Then every stride instead of landing and pushing can be striding and pulling from the hamstring so one, you begin to reduce the stress, the accumulation of the stress through the impact by changing mechanically how you're maneuvering through space, and now two, you have a new gear that you didn't have before and so then also really basic things like if someone was just a runner, and they introduced some amount of heavy sled dragging or pushing a prowler with a certain stride, then again you're getting into different muscle groups that are training from a loaded position now, (yeah) and presupposing all the other factors were in place for recovery. (Yes) Then the outcome of that training should be to have something that they don't currently have. So, if I were to break that down, we'd say one, we want to do some things that are restorative. (Okay) Two, we want to focus on weak point training. Three we want we would want to then focus also on adding a different quality of strength. So, seven miles is inherently an endurance type thing. But if he's just jogging seven miles, that doesn't require much stroke volume, from the heart. That's, in other words, your heart's pumping at a certain rate. (Yeah) If you were to do something much shorter and much heavier. (Yeah) Your heart has to pump way harder and it forces the blood through your body at a higher rate. That's what stroke volume essentially is. So, it also gives them some stroke volume work. So again, in that case of dragging a heavy sled or a prowler, they just did that, along with some special corrective exercise, and they would most likely radically transform their performance. I've worked with runners like this, like a couple of marathoners who have shaved more than a half hour of their time. (Wow) In a short period of time. These are people who've been doing this for 5-10, 15 years (Yeah) just by adding in some of these components, because you can't give someone who's doing that kind of volume a huge workload. They're not going to recover from it. So, we have to be super selective. And if someone has, and if you said, you can only give them five or six things to do. (Yeah) I could probably still do something that would completely alter them as a runner.
0:23 Jon
Welcome to the Ted O'Neill program. I want to talk about the importance of variety when it comes to training. Specifically, when we condition, we have a number of things that we lean into and those things are our we've identified great levers to pull. But we have a number of other things that we introduce from time to time and we move things around. (Yes) So, what is the importance of variety to our conditioning medleys and how do you arrive at the amount of variety the introduce?
0:57 Ted
I think variety whether it's the conditioning medleys or in the barbell training, you can prevent or what's better said delay accommodation. (Okay) So, in other words, the body becomes accustomed to what you're doing. And then it ceases to get better at that, because the body isn't in the brain, generally speaking, isn't designed to be forward moving all the time. In fact, we have all manner of stopgaps in place to keep us the same. So, in the most linear description say someone goes out and they jog for one mile. (Yeah) That'd be a very basic form of exercise with little to no variety, like their stride length is the only variable. Right? And so if someone does that for a month, they're probably going to improve their conditioning relative to their starting point. But in a very short period of time, nothing new is going to happen.
1:51 Jon
Well, let me say two things first, that I thought, you know, musical surprise, really entertains us, like a lot of times when you're listening to a song and it really has a groove and then all of a sudden, they introduce a different time signature. Oh, they just went into seventh. (Yeah) You know, we get surprised and it's novel, and then that's cool. I thought you were just entertaining us by throwing in different things in the medley. So, to hear that there's an importance there in avoiding accommodation. That's great. The second thing though, is I have a friend who runs seven miles every day, and he's in great shape. But he does run seven miles every day. What would you introduce to a guy like that who has a great training regimen that just doesn't have a whole lot of surprise built into it?
2:44 Ted
I wouldn't say if that's the only bit of information I'm going to get. We'll just say that that's all you get. (Yeah) Because otherwise, from this vantage point, everything I'm doing is a wild guess. (Right) So, then I would think, well, this is someone who has a lot of cumulative microtrauma. (Okay) They're bouncing off the pavement for several miles every day. (Cumulative microtrauma) Yeah. So, I would probably introduce something like reverse hyperextensions Okay, to get blood flow and a little bit of a buffer zone for the low back. (Okay) I would probably incorporate some high rep work that doesn't have any kind of traditional eccentric phase like band work for the knees and hips. (Okay) So we're not creating more or greater accumulation on the eccentric or on the negative loading phase. And that can pump a lot of blood into those areas for restoration. (Okay) And to kind of create more of that buffer zone. And I would probably do at least one other thing that would offset the repetitive motion that that person has. So, if they are running, I might have them do some kind of a wide stance box squat. For example, just learning those mechanics and doing it with some amount of weight to offset that very linear, very limited pattern of just running toward them. Now they're heavily in their posterior chain. (Okay) And I would do that in combination with those reverse hyper because if you add just those two things, (yeah) and you develop a much greater level of hamstring. Then every stride instead of landing and pushing can be striding and pulling from the hamstring so one, you begin to reduce the stress, the accumulation of the stress through the impact by changing mechanically how you're maneuvering through space, and now two, you have a new gear that you didn't have before and so then also really basic things like if someone was just a runner, and they introduced some amount of heavy sled dragging or pushing a prowler with a certain stride, then again you're getting into different muscle groups that are training from a loaded position now, (yeah) and presupposing all the other factors were in place for recovery. (Yes) Then the outcome of that training should be to have something that they don't currently have. So, if I were to break that down, we'd say one, we want to do some things that are restorative. (Okay) Two, we want to focus on weak point training. Three we want we would want to then focus also on adding a different quality of strength. So, seven miles is inherently an endurance type thing. But if he's just jogging seven miles, that doesn't require much stroke volume, from the heart. That's, in other words, your heart's pumping at a certain rate. (Yeah) If you were to do something much shorter and much heavier. (Yeah) Your heart has to pump way harder and it forces the blood through your body at a higher rate. That's what stroke volume essentially is. So, it also gives them some stroke volume work. So again, in that case of dragging a heavy sled or a prowler, they just did that, along with some special corrective exercise, and they would most likely radically transform their performance. I've worked with runners like this, like a couple of marathoners who have shaved more than a half hour of their time. (Wow) In a short period of time. These are people who've been doing this for 5-10, 15 years (Yeah) just by adding in some of these components, because you can't give someone who's doing that kind of volume a huge workload. They're not going to recover from it. So, we have to be super selective. And if someone has, and if you said, you can only give them five or six things to do. (Yeah) I could probably still do something that would completely alter them as a runner.
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