There's something about the experience of being extremely fatigued that makes some coaches, athletes, and parents assume that it should be priority #1 of any quality training regimen or practice. I've had athletes tell me and my employees after sessions "That workout was really hard!" as if to suggest it's the only thing that matters. I was recently included in a social media thread in which one individual boasted their program as being "Probably the hardest!"
The first thing we need to understand about doing "really hard workouts" is that fatigue is a limiting factor in the development of almost every conceivable performance trait we wish to develop in our athletes. This means that unless the goal of the session is fatigue, you are creating a sub-optimal training session by allowing fatigue to set in. Most "experts" that put athletes through these "really hard workouts" and then slap them with a badge of honor for surviving it are usually just compensating for their inability to develop the other cognitive and physical qualities necessary for sport performance improvement.
I theorize that our obsession with providing extreme fatigue in our training exists for a number of reasons. The first is that it's really easy to do. It takes an expert to deliver desirable adaptations that actually improve an individual's performance, but just about anybody can guide a session that will make that same individual feel like vomiting and defecating at the same time. The second reason we have a love affair with fatigue is likely due to the hormonal response associated with it. Rigorous exercise signals a cascade of hormonal responses that can make us feel good. These hormones are highly reliant on the intensity and duration of the exercise regimen and longer, more intense sessions typically yield a more robust hormonal response. It's important that we don't let our emotions misguide us in this scenario. If the goal is to achieve a hormonal response to improve mental health, a hormonal response that will leave the trainee with a better chemical balance is win, but if we're in pursuit of more efficient neuromuscular coordination and fine motor skill acquisition or improvements in force output, doing a really challenging conditioning session won't deliver optimal results.
As coaches we have to be able to ask, "What does this individual need from me and what is the primary goal of this session?" If the answer to those questions are either of the aforementioned traits (more efficient neuromuscular coordination and fine motor skill acquisition or improvements in force output), then avoiding high levels of fatigue while trying to deliver them is in our best interest.
We are all human so we are inherently at the mercy of our own emotional states. When a session gets rolling and blood gets flowing it's really difficult not to cut the leash and let our athletes push themselves into a state of oblivion. It's important we don't allow ourselves to fall victim to these emotions and there are ways to do it, but we must remain highly disciplined and trust what the science tells us is true. I've conducted basketball skills sessions for players for roughly 5 years now and worked consistently in a weight room for almost a decade. I've worked really hard to understand what is and isn't best practice (according to scientific literature) in the development of the fine motor skills necessary to excel in basketball and force output for team sport athletes. Because of my experimentation and experiences in these realms, I'll share with you some of the things that have helped me keep my exercise prescriptions aligned with what the sports performance literature suggests is optimal.
1. Identify the goal of the session or drill and KEEP THE GOAL THE GOAL.
I learned this from Dan John. If you're a young coach I would highly recommend reading all of his books. Often times, in our S&C and skill sessions we get so wrapped up in delivering multiple qualities with one stimulus that we diminish our ability to deliver the quality we originally set out to deliver. In a basketball session, for example, it's not uncommon for ball handling drills to be performed so dynamically, for such a long duration that we allow extreme fatigue to set in and compromise our athletes' ability to improve the skill we're really trying to improve: ball-handling. This happens all too often in shooting drills too. We say things like "game-speed" and fail to realize that athletes can go "game-speed" during the repetition and then we can allow for proper rest in between reps to insure fatigue isn't compromising our ability to acquire the fine motor skill. As a coach, it's our job to challenge our athletes, but it's also our job to be the experts and identify when practice is becoming sub-optimal. Learn to identify when fatigue is limiting your athlete's ability to develop the skills you want to develop and stop the drill to take a break, coach them up, or move onto something else. If the goal is metabolic conditioning, great, keep them moving. But if you're trying to develop a fine motor skill, keep them fresh and fast.
2. Organize sessions optimally
Hopefully by now you understand that fatigue compromises our athlete's ability to achieve high levels of cognition, produce high levels of force, and acquire fine motor skills. To give ourselves the best possible chance of not allowing fatigue to interfere with our ability to deliver these things we can organize our sessions in a systematic manner. Stimuli that require these qualities should be delivered at the beginning of the sessions, in micro-doses, and managed properly to keep fatigue from negatively affecting them. In S&C sessions if we want to develop speed, which requires high levels of force development, we run our sprints before we do anything else and we NEVER allow our athletes to get tired while performing them. In a skill development session, the tasks that demand the highest levels of fine motor skill should be performed first, while the CNS is fresh. This strategy should apply to team practices as well. Drills and teachings that require high levels of cognitive demand such as learning a new play or defensive scheme should be taught early in practice before fatigue limits an athlete's ability to learn.
3. Practice prescribing the minimum effective dose (MED)
The MED is a term that we use to describe an exercise or performance training prescription that achieves the goal we set out to achieve while subjecting the biological organism to the least amount of stress possible. This is where holding ourselves accountable to the concept of micro-dosing can be incredibly effective. I'd rather see an athlete run sprints 5 days per week at 3-5 repetitions per day than 2 days per week at 10-12 repetitions per day. In the former example we get 15-25 reps in a week, never in a fatigued state, and the skill of applying high levels of force are reinforced on a daily basis. Comparatively, the latter example has an athlete engaged in roughly the same amount of volume, but they don't get daily reinforcement, and a number of reps will likely be ineffective because of the ill-effects of CNS fatigue. Emotionally, this may be difficult for some coaches to lead because the athletes will never put their hands on their knees and gasp for air, but scientifically, it works.
Closing
As coaches it is our job to facilitate adaptations in those we work with. In order to facilitate an adaptation we must apply stress. No stress? No adaptation. What we have to learn to grasp, however, is that stress doesn't always have to equal exhaustion. I understand the fear that coaches have of their athletes not being well conditioned enough to compete, but allowing fatigue to creep into sessions where fatigue is not the goal is not only limiting your ability to deliver desirable adaptations in the current session, it's likely creating some kind of "hangover" so your ability to optimize the next session is also compromised. Being under conditioned really only comes back to bite us during a specific time of year so it's important that we're patient with the stimulus. I've always said, it doesn't matter if you're in great shape if the other team is so much bigger, faster, stronger, and more skilled that we're down by 20 at halftime.
I'm hoping this writing can help you identify when fatigue is affecting your training sessions in a negative way and provided you with solutions to make your training sessions/practices more optimal.
As always, thank you for reading!
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