People have been asking why I haven’t blogged as much recently. I actually average about two blog articles a month which I feel is sufficient as I would rather put more thought into a few blogs instead of just writing filler stuff every day or every week.
To tell you the honest truth, the more I read the more I realize I don’t know – and I have been reading a lot lately. The body is extremely complex, and I often find myself sitting here trying to wrap my head around all the potential ramifications of my training and/or treatments.
These days the profession seems to be striving towards making things as simple as can be. Now, I am all for simplicity and K.I.S.S. when talking to clients and athletes or even when trying to draw up a training program and not getting too bogged down with every little thing. That being said, in the back of my mind (and hopefully yours) I try and consider the fact that things really aren’t that simple. In fact, they are very complicated and sometimes when we distill things down to such simplicity we lose sight of this fact.
There are many systems in the body all working together to create balance or homeostasis. Things like the central nervous system, autonomic nervous system, immune system, metabolic system, digestive system, endocrine system, musculo-skeletal system, cardio-pulmonary system, etc. In previous interviews I have said that, “in a crude way, the nervous system rules the roost”, and I still believe this to be true as when things – muscles, organs, etc – are deinnervated they don’t work. But, we should also keep in mind that all of these systems do have their own time frames to adapt and react to our training or treatment stimuli/stress. Additionally, they all may adapt in a different manner depending on what we are doing. In order to embrace this complexity you need to try and step outside of your box and attempt to oversee the complete person….this can be difficult!
For example, if all you do is focus on the musculo-skeletal aspects of training you may miss out on some key endocrine system or metabolic system changes that you can make in your client (changes that the client may actually need to succeed and progress in their training program). On the flip side, if all you did was focus on the endocrine and hormonal adaptations/ramifications of your training programs you may be destroying your clients musculo-skeletal health or, if you are really doing things foolishly and push to hard and to frequently with loads of metabolic work you may compromise their immune function.
I believe there is a delicate balance with all of these things and being a good coach means trying to sit down and figure out what you are actually attemping to produce with your training stimulus.
As I said, it can get complicated and I don’t have all the answers (or even some of the answers) but I am sitting here trying really hard to figure out how to make all of these pieces work together. Hopefully one day I will have a better grasp of it all and of course, as I dig further down this rabbit hole I will be sure to share some of my ideas along the way in future blog articles (averaging about two a month).