In Search of the "THE".

As I talk to my friends, athletes and fellow coaches, I often here talk of "THE" method or "THE" answer to a particular problem or challenge. I think that it is important to remind everyone to keep an open mind and realize that the human body is unique and physiology can be very individual. We should be looking for "A" solution or "AN" option or solution. Ideally we would arm ourselves with a diverse array of tools and resources to help us accomplish our goals.

If you find yourself in a coach-athlete relationship with someone that is single-minded in applying "THE" method, you may end up in a situation where the method employed is out of phase with your physiology.  The analogy I like to draw from comes from my experience in cancer research. There are biomarkers that exist to screen patients to identify whether or not they will respond to a particular treatment (e.g. HER2 positive breast cancer lesions or folate receptor positive ovarian cancer lesions). If a patient doesn't present these biomarkers, we know they won't respond to the respective therapy. Unfortunately we don't have validated "biomarkers" to stratify our training methods. There are industry standard first line therapies that are employed which are less "individualized/personalized" and work but there are also examples where we know there is no statistically meaningful response yet they still manage to be used as gold standards of first line therapy. This exact situation can be seen in many of today's training methods.

There are generic plans and training methods that work quite well and help athletes achieve their goals and that is enough; BUT, if you take the time to understand how your body responds to training (in lieu of these elusive biomarkers) AND you arm yourself with learning about various training methods, you could develop that personalized method. There are SEVERAL options to choose from if you take the time to educate yourself. Try not to fall into the trap of settling for THE method unless you know from experience that it actually works for you and you respond well to it.