Sep 11
8
The benefits of sustained process management
?
Its this time of year people start writing their 16 colour training programs. We sit down after winter and start thinking about how to turn our training around. To “take it to a new level”. How many “New and Improved” labels do you see when shopping for nearly anything. Its human nature to seek higher utility/want something we “better” or will potentially yield greater satisifaction. Why wouldn’t we? This is what has advanced mankind over the generations. But man has also become very good at processing- ie finding something that works well and then repeating with greater efficiency or bigger scale to obtain larger returns. Mining is a good example of this- once you know where the Diamonds are and how to dig them out well then you use larger excavation and drilling equipment and load the stuff into bigger trucks to increase your productivity.
Success in training/(maybe life?) is strongly correlated to consistency. The whole theory of progressive overload is very hard to achieve if you dont have a consistent method of applying it. So why is it that we can be prone to want to mess with our programs so much?
Do you really need a different mesocycle every 3 weeks or do your swim sets or run sets have to change every week?
One thing we have seen in rather large number of cases of success whether it be business,sport or religion is that these people/groups employ a sustained and consistent process- often to the point of obsession
There’s that fine line the continuum between creativity and control, entrepreneurship and risk aversion, flexible and inflexible
So going back to our training life what does this mean? Is it possible that we can take smaller controlled risks with our program (creativity) whilst maintaining a stable proven pattern (control and risk avoidance)
if you are coached you potentially leave the risk taking part to the coach (he may actually use you for creative risk taking without you knowing it or stick to whats proven)
if you are self coached think about whether you have the risk/reward ratio right. Just because the internet is filled with complicated programs and that book you just bought has very catchy looking programs -it doesnt mean you should copy it
Seldom do those who jump around from one thing to the next repeatedly succeed. You take a risk and follow it through until you can see a sensible conclusion(works or does not) or you stick with whats proven
This is the principal of sustained process management. Have a think about it before getting those highlighters out
It can get to be boring at times or feel like a “grind” but the payoff of sustained process management can potentially be very great
Have a look at the guy chiselling the statue in the photo above. If you walked past him for a few weeks you could comment “wow look at that guy just tapping away at that piece of marble-he’s wasting his time -still just looks like a piece of marble- he should quit get out the cutting saw and turn it into tiles”. Then after weeks and weeks a finished artwork appears that may sell for many times more than all the tiles you could have made from the same marble
The creative part doesn’t emerge until right at the end-all that boring sustained process management has to come first
