Chapter 2: First, principles.

The key ingredients in any successful training plan.

In the first chapter, we dove into the “why” of living an athletic life. We looked at the benefits of a lifelong commitment to athletic training, both from an individual and societal health perspective. We investigated the significant benefits of maintaining high levels of fitness throughout the lifespan and the role that competitive sports can play. Now that you’re, hopefully, convinced, the next step is to begin to ascertain the “how”…

If we’re going to spend a good portion of our lives being athletes & guiding others to be athletes, how can we do it right? How can we organize the training to get the absolute most out of it?

While we all want a simple “If you want this, then do this” prescription, the individual human response to training is too varied and complex for that. Rather than prescribing specific practices that will work across the board, a more effective place to start is with principles, i.e. the key ingredients in any successful training plan.

While the specific weights and ratios of the ingredients may differ somewhat in different variations of the recipe, according to individual ‘taste’, there are always some commonalities to a good blueberry muffin. Before we get too far into the specifics of your blueberry muffin, let’s take a look at those.

In this chapter, I will outline my guiding principles in working with an athlete. Depending on the athlete, the same principles may result in wildly different training programs, but the principles are always there. The principles are universally true.

Let’s begin with the root principle, the first principle that all others come from, the principle that sums up my job as a coach: