I heard a really good quote recently from rising UFC star Conor McGregor. He said “Everything does work. There’s a time and a place for every single move”. I think this really applies to training and human performance. I regularly see trainers and coaches making sensational claims about different training techniques and simultaneously bashing others. I think it really reflects a poor understanding of human physiology when these types of claims are made. From my experience every technique or protocol is beneficial in its own way. The trick is to know what works when, and why.
The body responds accordingly to any stress it’s placed under. How it responds varies greatly from one thing to another. A perfect example for training protocols is the LSD vs. HIIT debate. The recent consensus is that HIIT is far more effective in promoting cardiovascular endurance and that LSD is a waste of time. What may take three hours of slow jogging can be achieved in minutes with hard sprints, making LSD totally redundant. HIIT has been proven to be an effective training tool but so too has LSD on numerous occasions. Both methods create different physiological impacts which cause adaptations, which in time lead to improvements in overall performance. Despite this, LSD has taken a huge amount of criticism in recent years. The same goes for several other training techniques.
The worst possible approach we can take is to think that there is a black and white in terms of training. There are so many complexities in the way our body functions that we cannot possibly assume to understand it fully. We need to accept every concept, every theory and every idea. We don’t necessarily need to act on them all but we must at least consider them.
Part of the reason I became so interested in human physiology was because of the endless ways in which we can make improvements to performance. I felt that by understanding and studying human physiology I could make the best use of the vast amount of training techniques to achieve a goal. So McGregor’s quote is something I’m pretty fond of. I believe there is a time and place for every technique and by learning more about how our bodies function we can utilise an appropriate strategy to achieve the desired result.