Don’t Train the Freak Out of the Freak
by- Josh Bryant
I’ve seen coaches do this forever. An athlete is really good at something, has an obvious weakness somewhere else, and pretty soon the entire program revolves around fixing it. On paper, it makes sense. But, quoting myself, you gotta bring your biggest gun to the fight. Get too hell-bent on fixing the weak link and, through neglect, the quality that made the athlete a Cadillac can slowly turn into a used Honda Civic.
Take an explosive football player. He’s fast, violent, changes direction well, and has Irish honeymoon speed. But he’s playing offense, defense, and special teams, and starts running out of gas. Obviously, condition him. Just don’t get so obsessed with building the gas tank that you start taking horsepower out of the engine. Get him in shape to do his job without training away what made him special.
This matters even more with the naturally explosive kid. You know the type. He was the fastest kid the first day he stepped on the field, or he can walk by the weight room, sniff the iron, and grow. These fast gainers aren’t built the same as the kid who needs twice the work for half the response, and they shouldn’t necessarily be trained the same either. That’s another newsletter for another day. For now, just remember: when an athlete comes with a factory-installed superpower, don’t train it out of him trying to make everything else equal.
The weight room has its own version of this. Say a bench presser is an absolute animal off his chest but has trouble finishing heavy weights. You add board presses, bands, chains, more triceps work or whatever else fits the situation. That just makes sense. The problem starts when the weak lockout becomes an obsession. Pretty soon he’s living on five-board presses and doing every triceps exercise known to man. Six months later his lockout is better, but the violent explosion off his chest that used to be his calling card isn’t quite there anymore. You fixed one problem by creating another one.
Take a conventional deadlifter who rips the bar off the floor and struggles at lockout. Work the lockout, but you’re probably not going to turn him into some Olympic-lifting-style puller who patiently builds tension before the bar leaves the floor. If the goal is lifting the most weight possible, not calming his nerves, lowering his blood pressure and improving his WHOOP score, let that son of a bitch rip. To steal a line from Anthony Schlegel, train violent, be violent.
The goal of individualized programming is not to make an athlete equally good at everything. In fact, a lot of the best athletes aren’t. The more qualities a sport demands, the more bases you have to cover, but every weakness doesn’t need to become a strength. Sometimes taking something from the gutter to getting the job done is better than good enough. Chasing it any further, especially when it starts stealing resources from the qualities that make the athlete special, is a no-no.
Bring the weakness toward the strength. Don’t bring the strength toward the weakness. Know why the athlete is good before you start trying to fix everything that’s wrong with him. Sometimes the freakiest thing about an athlete is the exact thing you need to make damn sure you don’t train out of him.
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