A feeling or results… which do you want?

Let’s talk about chasing that feeling… the burn, the agonising soreness.

Any session can be curated to make you feel burnt out, sore and sweaty but not every workout will actually be curated to make you better.

Here’s the hard truth: You don’t need to destroy yourself in the gym every day. You don’t need to feel dead inside and out every workout. You don’t need to torture and punish yourself to get results.

Brutal/long/crazy doesn’t mean better. Only better means better. 

Walking away from your session tired, beaten up, sore and sweaty doesn’t automatically mean your workout was better or more effective. It does mean you are tired, beaten up sore and sweaty… but maybe thats it. 

You might be working your butt off and not getting results. If this sounds like you then its time to rework the problem and sort out a new plan. 

Because here’s the thing. It doesn’t take a great coach to program a workout that will beat you up.

It sometimes feels like some “coaches” are constantly trying to outdo each other with how “hard” they can make a session.

But… it’s easy to make a session hard and have your athletes or clients finish feeling like they left their soul behind… but what did it actually achieve?

I’d bet that if I asked for someone to put together a session that will make everyone exhausted and sore, most of you reading this could do that. 

However, it does take a great coach to produce meaningful outcomes for their programmes. A great coach knows what is required to get those real, visible, tangible results. 

I personally am a huge fan of implementing the Minimal Dose Response, which basically means getting my athletes to do the minimum amount of work for the biggest amount of progression.

Endurance athletes often suffer overuse injuries due to amount of training they do and I have spent a long, long time cultivating and mastering a program that means I can minimise these risks.

Let’s not get it twisted though. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t hard work, and that it isn’t going to completely suck at times. It is and it will. 

There will still be long sessions and hard sessions but every session has a point. There is a specific planned stimulus and a clear objective.

As I tell my athletes often “If I cannot explain why you are doing something, we shouldn’t be doing it”

Real results take real work but you have to be smart about it. It’s all about working smarter, not harder, and thats where a great coach can really make all the difference.

If you are not seeing the results you believe your hard work deserves it’s because the work isn’t quite right. It may be hard, and it may feel like you are doing all the right things but the proof is the results.

Stop chasing a feeling and start chasing results!