North Coast Miller
Level 9 Valued Member
So, I think where I'm headed with all this, mostly just what I've been thinking the past few days, is that I need a hard look at what my goals are, what my recovery looks like, and I just need to write my own adjustable program to suit those needs.... sticking rigidly to someone else's program is not guaranteed to give me the same results that they've gotten on it and that's a hard fact that I think I need to come to terms with.
As someone who has written their own programming for many years, I would highly advise starting out on the easy side of things. It is never difficult to add more, but removing things can get tricky if you're not sure how individual components work with the whole. Stay within your recovery abilities - burning calories that don't contribute to an adaptive response will only stall you out or at best slow your progress. Adaptive response is NOT LINEAR to any single training factor.
You absolutely need a few qualities to become your own trainer and go this route with success:
- patience. You need to be capable of "sitting back" and studying the adaptive response of the client and whether this aligns with their goals.
- confidence. You need to have enough experience to know a given approach will trigger an adaptive response if conditions are met. There is always some guesswork but it should be a matter of degrees, not fundamental.
Having too much flexibility in the program is def not a good thing over the long haul. That is not the same as auto-regulating, which works great over the long haul. Think of yourself first as a client, secondly as the trainer. Don't allow approaches or attitudes that would be unprofessional for a trainer to use, or that you would be incapable of applying to someone else if asked.
Have a reason for what you're doing and be able to articulate it. If you cannot, this is a big red flag that you're just chucking stuff at the wall. Sometimes its OK to chuck stuff at the wall, but only if your goal is to gain information and not to progress. Be honest with yourself about this and have a fallback if a given experiment heads South. Give yourself deadlines.
tl;dr:
Getting strong "workout of the decade vibes" but with some strong intentions of personal input rather than dogmatically and robotically following another's program.
Ultimately every person who makes fitness a permanent part of their life will have to go this route due to changing physical conditions as we age, and changing circumstances/availability of given fitness modes. Generic programs will become increasingly irrelevant. Good Luck!
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