Smart Performance Training

First, train smarter…

Many years ago, I was asked to sum up my training philosophy in one sentence. This question took me by surprise. I didn’t really have an answer. I wanted to talk about functional training, movement quality, bridging the gap from science to application, but one sentence to encompass my entire philosophy on smart performance training? “My philosophy was much bigger than that”, was my initial reaction. Then as we continued with our discussion, I began to distill these concepts down. By the end of the discussion, which literally took a couple hours, I had come up with a sentence I felt represented what my philosophy was about:

“It’s not how much you train, it’s how you train that matters.”

This was nearly 20 years ago that I camp up with this phrase. I made t-shirts with this slogan. I still use it today (not the t-shirts). It serves me well as a way to communicate what smart performance training is all about. For example, when I’m explaining to a client what their training program is going to look like and how I’m going to be working with them. It helps me illustrate that quality is a higher priority when training for performance than quantity.

So many clients and athletes I’ve worked with over the years have been taught the opposite. That more is better. That it’s OK for your form to falter when you are pushing through to the finish. Sometimes this is done in a negative way (push-push-push, shouting and demeaning) and sometimes in a positive way (rewarding and praising hard work). I’ve had some athletes that were very hard workers. They were very skilled when it came to pushing themselves. (Yes, this is a skill that can be taught, trained, and improved.) But they often did this at the expense of quality movement, good form, proper mechanics (we call it so many things). This is not smart performance training, and their performance suffered.

This is when I remind them… “It’s not how much you train, it’s how you train that matters.”

So the next time you are struggling with the movement priorities for a workout, more vs. better, allow this slogan to communicate your starting premise to first, train smarter…