The Eight Laws of Adaptive Training
The rules I use when the plan meets the week. They decide what changes, what stays and what gets removed.
Training creates the stimulus. Recovery creates the adaptation.
- 01
A plan is a hypothesis.
The plan is our best current guess. Changing it when the evidence changes is the system working.
- 02
Something can be worse than nothing.
A compromised hard session can cost the full recovery bill while paying back very little.
- 03
Arrive intact.
The goal is the strongest athlete I can reliably put on the start line, healthy, on the day.
- 04
Life stress is training stress.
Work, sleep, illness, family and training all spend from the same account.
- 05
The athlete can outrank the watch.
Once calibrated, your own read can beat the device. Data and the person are interpreted together.
- 06
Interrogate every number.
A number gets no vote until we know what it represents and why it matters this week.
- 07
Great coaching is subtractive.
Preventing unnecessary work is coaching too. More training can produce less adaptation.
- 08
Communication is a training variable.
What you believe changes what you do next. Communication changes behaviour, and behaviour changes physiology.
Protect the days after the race.
A recovery decision inside a marathon block. The useful part is what the review valued that week.
- 01
The context
Callum was training for Chester. This review came two days after a half marathon.
- 02
The evidence
The published record logs a controlled 8km recovery run.
- 03
The decision
The review valued that controlled run rather than another hard effort. Protecting recovery was part of preparing for the marathon.
Put the method to work.
Tell me your goal, the time you have and what training looks like now.
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