The idea of “striking a balance” is one that I’ve supported for quite sometime, and it seems that in the process of doing so, I’ve been misunderstood by several individuals.  For clarification, when I say balance, I am referring to the appropriate mix of training components to optimize performance in a specific sport or event group–running, sprinting, paces, jumping, mobility, flexibility, strength, power, therapy, etc–and not the ability to maintain equilibrium.

There have been many who have heard me say “balance” and who have immediately jumped to the conclusion that I am supporting an equal distribution of time spent each week with all training components.  For example, if an athlete were to do a 60 minute run, these people would assume by balance that I meant they needed to spend another 60 minutes of training for strength, mobility, or power, but this view is highly mistaken.

Striking a balance is sport specific, individual specific, and is done by understanding the proper distribution and the demands of the individual event, training age, experience, and time available to train among other things.  When looking at a program of an elite middle distance runner, many may claim that it is decidedly “unbalanced” as the running work appears to dominate the majority of the athlete’s “training time pie” whereas the ancillary components take up a smaller portion, but this seeming imbalance is ergogenic.  The sport of middle distance running requires that an athlete develop high metabolic efficiency, and the role of the ancillary work is in place to primarily facilitate the efficiency of running and consistency in the training process.

The problem with the assumption of said program being “unbalanced” is that the onlooker is using time as his variable.  While time works well for metabolic demands, we must also understand that different systems and different biomotor abilities respond to vastly different training modes, volumes, intensities, and frequencies.  Generally, the more intensity required for stimulus, the less total volume is going to be necessary.  In cases such as this, it is important to consider the idea of a loading pyramid.

The higher the loading, the less total duration is needed to elicit an appropriate training response, thus we must be careful to consider multiple variables when determining if a program is “balanced.”  Additionally, other important variables exist as previously noted, and will be explored more in the future.

Have a great day.

Regards,

Carson Boddicker

Boddicker Performance