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Other/Mixed Difference between pros and amateurs

Other strength modalities (e.g., Clubs), mixed strength modalities (e.g., combined kettlebell and barbell), other goals (flexibility)
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Kozushi

Kozushi

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I may have asked a question like this in the past, I don't remember, but in any case I don't think there is much dispute that professionals are the ones typicaly leading the way in pretty much every field. I'm wondering when it comes to exercise, what is it that makes professionals different from amateurs, and what can amateurs do to make their training more closely approximate that of professionals, since I imagine it's the professional way of doing things that ought to be the model. I'm not saying I'm forgetting that the goals of pros are not necessarily the same as amateurs, I'm just saying that pros typically are a lot better at exactly the same movements and skills, and so what is it about how they train these things that makes them so much better?
 
Well I believe there's a Pavel article around that discusses this. And that is that the same resources for pros can be effectively adopted to some degree by amateurs. He made connections to glock handguns ("the dubious distinction of being the choice of professionals and the first gun recommended to beginners") and Globe knives, for professional chefs and home cooking enthusiasts alike.

I agree a lifestyle more focused around training as a priority will always have better recovery and less missed sessions. Both things that really help consistency and thus reaching higher levels.

I suppose drugs will enter this discussion eventually - it can't be ignored as being a professional sportsman without drugs is likely impossible. Except for competitive darts maybe?
 
A pro will have all resources available to him/her as opposed to a armature who will have a job to put food on the table.

look at rugby before the game turned pro in the 90’s and see the difference in the size of players and their abilities to now. Although the players back in the armature days were mentally tougher working in the steel industry farming or coal mines. A good book to read is by former welsh front rower Bobby Windsor
 
Kozushi said:
I may have asked a question like this in the past, I don't remember, but in any case I don't think there is much dispute that professionals are the ones typicaly leading the way in pretty much every field. I'm wondering when it comes to exercise, what is it that makes professionals different from amateurs, and what can amateurs do to make their training more closely approximate that of professionals, since I imagine it's the professional way of doing things that ought to be the model. I'm not saying I'm forgetting that the goals of pros are not necessarily the same as amateurs, I'm just saying that pros typically are a lot better at exactly the same movements and skills, and so what is it about how they train these things that makes them so much better?
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I wouldn’t try to train like a MMA Pro. Or any other pro, for that matter.

It’s not healthy, it’s not compatible with a normal life and it serves no purpose other than boosting one’s ego.

As a matter of fact, not even pros train like pros once they quit being paid for it. Most of them end up quitting training for good.

I like being reasonably strong, but I won’t ever need to, say, pull 600 lbs. from the floor. So why invest so, so, so much time and effort and potentially risk getting hurt when I could pull 440 lbs. (which already puts me ahead of 98% of the general population) while still running a 10K under 50 minutes (which already puts me ahead of 98% of the general population) and training martial arts several times a week while still having a life?

My goal is being reasonably competent in a wide variety of domains without detracting anything from the rest of my life. And I kind make it a point to being able to do that until I’m at least in my 70s.

Something quite close to what Chris Rice (Climber511) has been doing for half a century.
 
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Hello,

Discipline and toughness are also factors. Even tired or so, they'll keep going.

Beyond the mental aspect, they probably also pay attention to [little] details:
- nutrition: what makes they perform well, what they digest well or what they feel good with
- programming: when to tackle a specific cycle, with the proper drills, the proper weights
- recovery: they know what works best for them (some do not tolerate cold, some prefer massages, etc...)
- training partners / staff: even a champion, if poorly advised, will poorly perform

Kind regards,

Pet'
 
This article by Pavel is relevant to the topic

www.strongfirst.com

The Cost of Adaptation | StrongFirst

The path to health seems simple: train hard, increase health, live happily ever after. But the cost of adaptation makes you vulnerable to other stressors.
www.strongfirst.com

I think atheletes are more interested in the maximum effectice dose, whereas average people are more concerned with the minimum effective dose. People here on the forum are probably somewhere in the middle.

Thus, our training should differ to some degree.
 
Kozushi said:
I imagine it's the professional way of doing things that ought to be the model.
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I disagree with this assumption. We can learn from watching professionals and can apply some of the same principles to their training, but the application must be done with care and with respect for each student's background, skills, and desires. One could, e.g., say that amateur musicians should "train" like professionals. (This is my field, music and music teaching.) I am a professional, and I believe my education and experience informs my teaching very well, but I treat each of my students as an individual case. I talk about what professionals do, but I certainly don't subject all of my students to the expectation that they prepare themselves the way I did and do.

-S-
 
Many athletes in the major sports have the same appetite for training that the general population has, not much.
Easy these days with the web to find someone doing what you want to be doing and to speed up your learning curve by reading/listening/watching what they do..
A pro will have an advantage of learning by teaching.
 
And a fairly unanimous consensus here that professionals are in a world unto themselves!
This might be why it can be hard for a professional athlete to turn into a coach of amateurs?
All very good points. When I think of my profession (which has nothing at all to do with exercise), how I keep myself in the game is totally different from how I teach others about it. What I do for myself would not work for them, although like Steve mentioned, some of the higher level learning methods that "pros" use can inform a bit what we do from time to time.

We were lucky enough to have a two time World Cup (and still young!) judo champion train with us and train us for two years! It was amazing how differently he saw everything! I don't really think we had it in us to fully train like he did, and he beat all us students easily no matter our size, strength nor experience levels.
 
Don Fairbanks said:
Many athletes in the major sports have the same appetite for training that the general population has, not much.
Easy these days with the web to find someone doing what you want to be doing and to speed up your learning curve by reading/listening/watching what they do..
A pro will have an advantage of learning by teaching.
Click to expand...
Good point.

Which brings us to the question: Which professional?

Pro powerlifter? Bodybuilder? Football lineback? Firefighter? Cross fit athlete?

Quite possibly we are mostly hearing about training from those that like training.

Which is why I prefer to listen to good coaches. When Peter Park says that pro Baseball athletes like Q&D because it gives them what they want without burning them out, well, I listen. When Johnny Parker says that Soviet style programming (Waviness, PlanStrong style) works best for sustainable strength training, I trust him. Same for Dan Johns park bench concept.

And all of this confirms Pavel's work, so we are already following the pros by following Strong First.
 
Bauer said:
Good point.

Which brings us to the question: Which professional?

Pro powerlifter? Bodybuilder? Football lineback? Firefighter? Cross fit athlete?

Quite possibly we are mostly hearing about training from those that like training.

Which is why I prefer to listen to good coaches. When Peter Park says that pro Baseball athletes like Q&D because it gives them what they want without burning them out, well, I listen. When Johnny Parker says that Soviet style programming (Waviness, PlanStrong style) works best for sustainable strength training, I trust him. Same for Dan Johns park bench concept.

And all of this confirms Pavel's work, so we are already following the pros by following Strong First.
Click to expand...
True story. I believe the cert. manuals and the current crop of magazine size books, S&S,Q&D, etc are highly condensed, very effective. Think of everything that is Not included in these writings. Very hard to do. Not the thinking part, the writing part.
 
Be
Kozushi said:
And a fairly unanimous consensus here that professionals are in a world unto themselves!
This might be why it can be hard for a professional athlete to turn into a coach of amateurs?
All very good points. When I think of my profession (which has nothing at all to do with exercise), how I keep myself in the game is totally different from how I teach others about it. What I do for myself would not work for them, although like Steve mentioned, some of the higher level learning methods that "pros" use can inform a bit what we do from time to time.

We were lucky enough to have a two time World Cup (and still young!) judo champion train with us and train us for two years! It was amazing how differently he saw everything! I don't really think we had it in us to fully train like he did, and he beat all us students easily no matter our size, strength nor experience levels.
Click to expand...
t his news a was unreal strong
 
I may coming from an endurance perspective, but I’ve seen versions of this question asked a zillion times. The answer is always some variation on:

The pros keep their easy days Easy, and their hard days HARD.

So in other words, discipline. They follow the program. Amateurs fall into a gray no man’s land of sorta hard all the time.

Other aspects I’ve thought about:
Coaching, both for skill and programming. Amateurs wing it and make mistakes.
Basics, pros never tire of working the fundamentals.
Accumulation, years of those basics.
Genetics, not so much being a freak, but responding to training better.
Drugs, amateurs use gear too, but the pros are better at it.
 
Kozushi said:
And a fairly unanimous consensus here that professionals are in a world unto themselves!
This might be why it can be hard for a professional athlete to turn into a coach of amateurs?
All very good points. When I think of my profession (which has nothing at all to do with exercise), how I keep myself in the game is totally different from how I teach others about it. What I do for myself would not work for them, although like Steve mentioned, some of the higher level learning methods that "pros" use can inform a bit what we do from time to time.

We were lucky enough to have a two time World Cup (and still young!) judo champion train with us and train us for two years! It was amazing how differently he saw everything! I don't really think we had it in us to fully train like he did, and he beat all us students easily no matter our size, strength nor experience levels.
Click to expand...
Bauer said:
all of this confirms Pavel's work, so we are already following the pros by following Strong First.
Click to expand...
Principles and Practices.

The thing I've taken away from Pavel's work is: understanding the principles of what the best do, then finding a way to apply those principles to the practices of a larger population. In my music teaching, there are many things I teach that I had to figure out on my own to some extent. I have figured these things out - the principles - and created ways to turn them into "do this" tasks for my students - the practices. I am blessed to have had a wonderful piano teacher when I was in college who understood things in this way, and I have spent my time incorporating what she taught me to my teaching of other instruments, and further expanded on the idea of "reverse engineering what the best do naturally"* as time has passed. I began giving music lessons in the Spring of 1971, so I'm coming up on my 50th anniversary in my profession, enough time to have thought about it a great deal. I've tried to incorporate best practices from all areas of my own life and experience into how I guide my students.

If I could state the most common teaching/training error in a sentence, it would be treating an intermediate student like an advanced one. There are best practices for starting out, there are best practices for building journeyman** levels of competency, and there is, only for some people, the level of artistry.

-S-

* - Louie Simmons describing Pavel.

** - journeyman: from Journeyman - Wikipedia
"A journeyman is a worker, skilled in a given building trade or craft, who has successfully completed an official apprenticeship qualification. Journeymen are considered competent and authorized to work in that field as a fully qualified employee. They earn their license by education, supervised experience and examination. Although journeymen have completed a trade certificate and are allowed to work as employees, they may not yet work as self-employed master craftsmen. The term "journeyman" was originally used in the medieval trade guilds.
 
Jamesjones said:
Be

t his news a was unreal strong
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Yes, he was unreal strong, and never ever ever got tired! These physical attributes already gave him a huge edge over us amateurs. Added to this was his unreal level of technique and knowledge of movement patterns specific to winning judo. I'm 220lbs and strong, he was 165lbs and strong, but he was much faster, much more tactical, much more energetic, much more aggressive. Literally NOTHING worked against him, NOTHING! Nothing! Standing, on the ground, nothing!
 
What I expected to read here was going to be something like "Volume of training sets pros apart from amateurs." but instead got a lot of wisdom I didn't expect, which is revelatory!

What Steve is saying about there being universal principles that apply to everyone learning or practicing the art is something I hear a lot from a lot of educators in a lot of different fields. They often seem keen to impart these principles to all and sundry! This is key to Strong First methods, to how my coach teaches us judo, to how Kendo is universally taught around the world, to how I teach what I teach (history and French - it's the principles of them that are the most critical, the rest comes down more to specifics which are much more easily acquired with the principles constantly being kept in mind!)

I have to admit though that I've always been fascinated by the idea of a "silver bullet" (no idea where this expression comes from though!) in learning a skill where I could focus on something for a little while which would propel me way ahead of where I should be for my time investment as an amateur. I suppose the principles we're talking about fit the bill for this... To make this concrete, I mean something like "If I do S&S I'll perform a lot better at judo than an amateur should, even though judo is not the same thing as S&S..." I'm still looking for this kind of thing. Okay, we all know strength makes EVERYTHING better! So, this is no "secret", but I'm still in such awe at what professionals can do! We all have more or less the same bodies and minds but they can be so far ahead of everyone else. It's just mind boggling!

What I've learned from this thread so far is especially that the wisdom of professionals may not apply to amateurs like me even at all! That is revelatory!
 
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