Energy System Development
Answering The Call, Pages 9-10
Content on Long Term Strength and Conditioning Substack will always be free. If you enjoy these posts, please share, donate, or consider my book:
Answering the Call: Proper Physical Training for Police and Military in the in the 21st Century
For daily programming, I have joined We Go Home LLC as their Director of Human Performance. Start your free trial here.
Excerpt from the Book, Answering the Call: Proper Physical Training for Police and Military in the in the 21st Century
In the mid 2000’s and 2010’s I will never forget the massive craze for high intensity interval training. At that time it was learned that you literally never had to do any long form conditioning or what boxers traditionally called “roadwork”. It was useless. You were simply training to look like a marathon runner and will lose all of your strength and power. I mean LOOK at marathon runners...they run a lot, therefore if you run a lot you magically transform into a skinny distance runner. It was a total reprisal on the 1980s aerobic class and jogging sweatsuits. Now don’t think that I am trying to say I was one of the smart ones off to the side nodding skeptically as everyone blasted themselves exclusively with high intensity intervals. I was right there making myself nauseous every time I stepped on a track or picked up a kettlebell.
As Dan John says everything in strength and conditioning works for about 6 weeks. High intensity intervals are no different. I don’t know why this happens with conditioning methods, but if we look from the strength training or dieting perspective this looks even more ridiculous. Would you always restrict calories if you were satisfied with your weight loss? I mean the diet worked so why not keep doing it?
Would one always go into the weight room and do heavy singles or triples the rest of your life because they typically build strength? Or maybe because Reg Park popularized 5x5 we should do 5 sets of 5 reps forever? Actually, 3 sets of 8-10 should be done because Dr. DeLorme had so much success with it. It all works, depending on your goals, your training age, and current fitness.
Why would conditioning be any different? Conditioning has similar variables to strength training: Total duration or volume, intensity, loaded or unloaded, length of intervals, number of sets and reps, modality used, specificity, and probably more I haven’t thought of. I am sure most would agree all of these variables above are going to play a role in what the outcome is at the end. This is something that I learned when Craig Weller helped me with my train up before heading into the military.
I followed Craig’s programming while I was still a cop in the months leading to shipping off to basic training/One Station Unit Training (OSUT). Then after that black hole, mind numbing, 14 week experience, he again helped me during Airborne School and leading up to Ranger Assessment and Selection. After being selected at RASP, and while on my first deployment at Regiment, I followed his programming prior to heading to Ranger School. Thankfully I graduated straight through the course without a serious injury. These experiences taught me it was possible to still be relatively “strong” while developing high levels of overall conditioning.
At least stronger in comparison to the average person or even the typical soldier. For most people, other than the incredibly gifted, you are not going to be able to hit competitive marathon times and then walk into a powerlifting meet the following week and win. Now is that the goal of a hopeful military candidate or the patrol officer? Probably not. Although that is an extreme example, one can get surprisingly strong while developing high levels of overall conditioning. The key is the long term dance between the different qualities that unfortunately compete with each other.
Tons of volume of conditioning will certainly impact your strength while the lack of conditioning and focus on strength training will probably have the opposite effect. The key is the balancing and training focus of these qualities over time. We maintain some while work on others. It is the timing and balance that is crucial.
Let’s compare a couple different hypothetical police officers. If one officer has a 500lb deadlift but can’t climb a couple of flights of stairs without being totally gassed, is he or she an effective street cop? I would argue no. What happens if there is another officer that can deadlift 450 but can also run a 6 minute mile? On paper I’d rather work with the second officer.
Through this illustration I am attempting to show how sometimes in these fields there is a point where you are strong enough. Now before everyone who is wearing a squat suit and covered in chalk starts throwing their ammonia capsules at me, just hear me out. I get that you can never be “too strong.” I wish every cop and soldier in this country totaled elite and ran 4 minute miles. I just don’t believe giant extremes are possible for most people, with the obvious exceptions being the kind of people we watch on Sundays hitting one another with car wreck speeds.
Now how do we get to that point of “balance” that I am attempting to poorly describe? We spend the majority of our training working on the facets of strength and conditioning that typically don’t interfere with each other (as much) for targeted time periods or “blocks.” I don’t believe that means you need 100% block training methodology, but if somebody is trying to do max effort lifting plus puke inducing intervals every other day for weeks on end there is a high probability they don’t get anywhere. I say this as someone who did this. You convince yourself because you are out of breath and covered in sweat that you did something, but there is no progress. Then you probably get hurt.
This doesn’t mean you don’t work hard in the gym or in training. This is the total misconception that happens when you try to explain this to motivated populations. I caught a ton of flak from my peers, especially in the Special Operations world. A lot of these guys I worked with were still in their low to mid twenties and just didn’t see the long term issues with doing this.
A commonality I have noticed is when you look around certain unit's so many of the higher level enlisted leaders can barely even walk right. They are still phenomenal soldiers and can do their jobs, but they are not training like they did when they were twenty anymore...because they physically can’t. Ironically many of them, once they make this transition and learn smarter training methods, they’re just as fit as they were in their younger years. Imagine if we started from those programs and continued into our older years in the tactical world.
Daily programming with We Go Home LLC on the TrainHeroic App!