Training is Meant to be Hard!

Author: RTS Coach John Garafano

Training is meant to be HARD! But that doesn’t mean it has to crush you either!

This is intuitive, right? I mean, we are here to do something hard. We are here to push our physical bodies to limits that we often don’t think are possible --exploring the uppermost limit of our strength potential, winning championships, podium finishes, breaking records, beating our personal bests, and being the strongest human we can be.

At the same time, there is a trend occurring in strength sport which seems to suggest that you should be careful about working ‘too hard’. Some athletes are afraid to over-train, do too much volume, and even exceed the RPE of their program for fear that they are going to develop so much long-term fatigue that their block is ruined. Being afraid to add load on the bar and do something hard CAN be holding you back. Training should challenge you!

But, how do you know if you are doing too much? These questions might help:

How’s your progress? Are your e1RMs trending in the right direction? Are you gaining fast enough? Do you lose too much strength during a pivot? If you aren’t seeing incremental improvement across training blocks, you need to make a change.

How’s your recovery? If you aren’t optimizing your recovery, you aren’t able to do more work. The more work you do (up to a point) the faster you can make gains.

Are you embracing the difficulty? Look...there is no other way to say this. Training is meant to be HARD! That means being sore, tired, being afraid of an intimidating weight, and going through periods of low motivation. But you are an athlete! Training isn’t always going to be easy.

Trying to figure this out is hard. You don’t have to do it alone. This is what coaching is all about.

Sign-up for a consultation with us today and we’ll help you figure it out.