There are practically innumerable ways you can classify training. A lot of times the manner in which you describe your training is dependent upon your goals, or where your mind is in the moment.
In many situations, a great way to consider your workouts is in regard to two distinctions. Is the session geared toward improving the mechanical efficiency of your movement, or is it targeting metabolic parameters of conditioning? Both ways are good, and we need each of these areas of emphasis in order to be fully functional and high performing.
Uniquely, there can be times when we are solely focusing upon mechanical technique. One example might be doing a warmup set of an exercise with a very light load as you work on grooving in the motion as perfectly as possible. Or you are practicing starts coming out of the blocks. Or working on any sports skill such as batting practice or shooting free throws.
On other occasions, you might place great emphasis on an energy system or a certain capacity. This could be a long Zone 2 run or ride to develop endurance. Intervals on the rower, on the track, or in the pool with a target of VO2max. Or you are grinding out some heavy sets to build strength.
Those examples probably sounded quite familiar and I bet you could come up with many more. In today’s discussion, I’d like to explore a few ways in which mechanical and metabolic training intermingle. It’s always fun to consider these relationships.
Minimizing metabolic demand while focusing on mechanical technique. The key here is the nervous system. You’re trying to teach your body what you want it to do or what you believe to be ideal (or what is known, or what your coach says, etc.). It’s been said that practice does not make perfect…perfect practice makes perfect. While we could get into a debate over that statement, let’s just take it at face value for the sake of today’s discussion. Motor learning takes reps. You want to be fresh. You do not want fatigue to cloud your neuromuscular signaling. You are in the quest for artful, poetic, graceful movement. When you’re practicing a skill and refining a technique, take your time. Do things in brief bouts with long rest breaks. Many of these applications use high intensity. It’s all about efficiency. The “one, most important, now” thing you are doing is skill execution. Don’t complicate this by adding in unnecessary fatigue management.
Maintaining good form when concentrating on metabolic output. Concentration is definitely the key word here. Hopefully your good form is already ingrained in your system by doing some of the things we just mentioned. But there is always a possibility, if not tendency, that any athlete can either get reckless or sleepy regarding technique. Let’s say with recklessness you bang right up against 100% effort and end up straining a bit, throwing form off. This is when a tweak, or even an explosion, can happen. There are times when we want max effort (or very nearly so) but these are the precise moments when we need to be very mechanically correct. The sleepy thing can happen a lot during endurance or submaximal training. You’re just going through the motions, maybe allowing your thoughts to wander (that’s OK to some extent), and your form starts to slip a bit. In the pool, slipping is a term commonly used to describe a loss of proper mechanics so that’s a great example. In running, an easy pace or jog sometimes deteriorates into a bit of schlepping. Good to avoid. Same with lifting, especially in high rep sets (anything double digits and up). Synchronize movement with mojo.
Improving your mechanics when that is indicated and you have relatively high metabolic capability. Let’s look at a couple of examples here. A trail ultra runner has excellent aerobic capacity and endurance. But she never quite reaches the breakthrough performance her fitness suggests is reasonable, and which she desires quite seriously. She’s never thought nor cared much about running mechanics. She just goes out and goes on and on quite admirably. But her running form is a bit herky jerky (inefficient, suboptimal, pick your term). Tuning this up is essentially free speed. Better form allows her to spare energy and oxygen consumption with every stride. That’s economy defined. How about a shot putter. He’s clearly strong as hell and has been hitting new personal bests in his Olympic lifts. But his timing in the shot put circle is a little off, and he’s just not harnessing his power ideally. Some analysis and cueing from his coach, and a lot of reps on refinement might be just the ticket.
Building metabolic capacities to complement your proficient technique. Let’s say your form is quite good. You’ve had good coaching, you’ve practiced it a lot, you’ve got some natural gifts. But putting in the work(out) has never been your jam. You’re a first quarter baller whose shining performance tanks as the game goes on and you get exhausted. Your opponents figure this out quickly and take major advantage of it. You bolt off the line in a race and then die a slow, painful death. Your skiing is beautiful but you can only do a couple short runs before your legs are toast. All of these situations are relatively easy to remedy. It’s simpler to build a little capacity than it is to hone technique and skill. Just enhance your training habit a bit.
Managing metabolic workload to prevent breakdown. We often talk about the acute to chronic workload ratio. Like looking at how your most recent week of training compares to the past 6 (as one of many examples). Volume, intensity, and density in your sessions should be monitored and progressed (as well as regressed) appropriately. Failure to do this can result in a situation where the body is receiving too much stimulus, too rapidly, for its normal adaptation processes to work. Such states can result in tissue failure or systemic breakdown. But they can generally be avoided with a little prudent behavior. And…probably not surprising, the better your technique or mechanical proficiency is…the more workload you can absorb/tolerate and recover from.
Fixing form flaws to prevent or solve an injury problem. You might be aware of a deficiency you need to address. Or you could seek out a professional to analyze your form. Whenever there is something that doesn’t look/work quite right, we have to ask ourselves a few questions. Is this impairing performance? Is it increasing injury risk? Is it something that can be changed? What is the best way to address this problem in this particular athlete? As the answers to those questions reveal themselves, we can put some corrective strategies in place. This can allow you to keep doing what you love and not have to temporarily or permanently give it up.
All of this sassy talk leads us to the essential concept of The Lifetime Athlete. You and I and everyone else need to be Hard to Kill. You’ve heard me say that many times in many contexts. Yes, on the playing field (whatever that looks like for each of us). And yes, in all aspects of life including LIFE itself. Remaining a high-performing human with a long healthspan. That condition is contingent upon two things…being a MOVEMENTSMITH and having baseline or better capabilities in the 5 Capacities of Human Performance.
A movementsmith is someone who owns every position and who has mastery of motion in every direction. We put that into all of our programming and it speaks to mechanical efficiency. This isn’t easy and it gets more difficult as we mature, but those who engage always do better in the long run.
Developing and maintaining reasonable abilities in strength, speed, power, agility, and endurance provides us with the metabolic conditioning we need and deserve. More energy, more options, better recovery…things that across the board lead to higher life productivity and satisfaction.
If you’d like to hear a little more about mechanical and metabolic training, check out Ep090 of The Lifetime Athlete Podcast. It’s a brief listen from the archives but it is a good one.
My goal with this message was fairly simple. Just think about how mechanical and metabolic training exist in your program and consider making a few adjustments if you deem it necessary and valuable. You might be interested in becoming a subscribed member in The Lifetime Athlete App so you can take advantage of our programming, resources, and community engagement. As always, thank you for joining me today.