Making someone exhausted is the easiest thing you can do in training. Fatigue is simple to achieve. It’s time to stop making it the proof that a workout is good or that it worked.
Good coaching is about knowing what that fatigue is for, how much the athlete is prepared to handle, and when to stop.
No, mindless fatigue does not “toughen” players up. No it does not cause some sort of “shared suffering” when the activities are pointless. All it does is put people in danger.
In August, Arizona State hockey player Matthew Mayich collapsed during a preseason workout that included, according to reports, about 90 minutes of calisthenics, pushups, planks, bear crawls, sprints, and capped by a run carrying a 10-pound medicine ball. All in the early-morning heat of Arizona. His family’s attorneys called it a military-style workout run by an outside instructor, a former Green Beret.
Mayich is currently in a coma.
Sadly, we’ve seen this movie so many times before. I previously wrote about the 2018 Jordan McNair death after a “conditioning” workout at Maryland. And there are sadly many many more examples of college and high school athletes getting rhabdo or heatstroke from poorly planned exercises.
Can we stop doing stupid workouts where their entire aim is about creating ‘suffering’? It’s dangerous. It’s time to let that go.
Stop Suffering for Suffering’s Sake Workouts.
The university and the family dispute important details. But ASU’s own review acknowledges that the coaching staff did not submit the training activities for review by its strength and conditioning coaches. We know that a former Green Beret was brought in to do a “team building” activity that included lots of calisthenics and various exercises for somewhere between 60-90 minutes in the heat.
These ‘team building’ exercises by former military personnel used to be big in the college athletics scene. I got asked to do one every year as a college coach. Now, I’m sure some do them well. But, the basic gist is we’ll come make believe some boot camp style training for a day or two, get some shared suffering and it’ll “toughen them up” or “create bonds.”
I’d reply: Do you understand our sport? We do shared suffering all the time. It’s called training.
Sometimes, coaches take it upon themselves to do a variation of this. Again, you used to see the coach prescribe endless bear crawls, burpees, etc. to teach a team a lesson. It’s an extension of the misleading “Junction Boys” camp idea that I covered in Do Hard Things.
We need to let these ideas go. Why? Because doing random, pointless hard things for the sake of suffering, that has NO connection to the actual sport your athletes care about does NOT create toughness. It is NOT a great way to create bonding. It does NOT transfer to athletic performance.
Shared suffering can bring people together. But it’s shared work towards a meaningful goal. It’s the mile repeats because you know it’s going to help give you a chance to compete at the state cross-country championships. The early morning weight room sessions because you know that strength will help you on the football field. We already have opportunities to work through difficult things together. They’re built into the sport itself.
This isn’t a message to just train easy, to never do a hard workout. It’s to use SMART hard work, that is functional, and relevant to the athlete themselves. My entire sport is based on gradually and intelligently pushing your absolute physical and mental limits. We go to the well. But we do so in a progressive manner, in a controlled setting, in an activity they are used to performing, where they have a choice.
It’s how you get an 800m runner to do crazy fast 300m or 400m repeats where sometimes they puke. They’re prepared for the demands and their motivation is high because it’s directly tied to the sport they care about.
But what we can see with our own eyes is the short video of part of the workout is that this was not a well designed workout. We see college hockey players struggling to hold a plank or do push-ups.
What does this tell us? They are so far gone past the point of local muscular fatigue that these college athletes planks and push-ups look like the form my toddler would have…because they are so freaking fatigued. This tells us a lot. These guys are at failure and they’re being told that “Those teams that have won, they're soft… It makes you soft” while they continue to push on.
When athletes are struggling with the movement you’ve asked them to be, that’s crucial information. You have to decide whether the demand is still serving its purpose or whether they need more recovery or even to stop. You can’t make that decision if your only interpretation of fatigue is that they need to toughen up.
Everyone in the world of conditioning knows what this workout is. It’s not well designed to improve a physical parameter or to elicit positive adaptations. It’s to break the players or to “show them something” by getting to that edge.
The problem…it’s idiotic and dangerous. And it’s not connected at all to something they care about or are preparing for. The problems are as follow with these style workouts:
No control. The power dynamic is such that they can’t stop, slow down, take a break, voice a concern.. It’s do this or else. Punishment or threat of it is often used.
There’s wildly inappropriate rest breaks that don’t allow them to complete the desired exercises with any sense of holding their form together.
There’s no progression. They introduce exercise types or volumes that haven’t been built up. It’s like taking a new runner and saying go run 40x400m repeats because Jim Ryun did it.
There’s no understanding of fatigue or what to look for by the people guiding the workout. Fatigue is nuanced. Experienced track coaches understand when to push and pull, what normal fatigue looks like for each kid, and what may signal danger.
There’s not an appreciation for the environment, heat, acclimatization, or anything. You label any extra break taken or water as being “weak” or at least its often implied.
Now, contrast that to a middle distance runner going to the well on their big 400m repeats to prepare for a race. They’ve spent months getting to that point, progressively increasing volume and speed to give them the capacity to push to that point. It’s an activity that they’ve done before, are prepared for, and is directly tied to their sport. The rest breaks and workout itself are designed to get to the edge, not break them and keep going for several more repeats. As a coach, you want that last 400m repeat to be just at the edge. And you adjust the rest periods or speed based on what you’re seeing to make that happen.
If they are gassed at rep number 4 out of 10 planned, you don’t just keep pushing. The plan has to change. Maybe you give more rest or shorten the reps or even call it a day. You understand what normal fatigue is and what abnormal is. You have athletes’ water right there at the track, able to get a drink whenever they want between reps. There’s no water break because water is literally always there and encouraged.
You learn how to selectively give athletes the ability to choose to go into the depths of fatigue. And as a coach, you understand your job is to pay attention, monitor their fatigue, and more often than not prevent them from pushing too far and doing something stupid.
I could go on. And no I’m not saying track coaches always do it perfectly. But in general, they do it pretty well because when your entire sport is managing fatigue, you get to understand the nuance of it. When your entire sport is about navigating discomfort, you realize that pointless suffering doesn’t move the needle.
Far too often, what happens is that coaches or 3rd parties that don’t have the background of physiology, conditioning, fatigue, or what have you get in these positions and think “just make them suffer a bit. That’ll do.” It’s a 1960s mindset. One we need to leave behind.
And when we don’t. This is the end result. We put athletes in danger. Yes, freak accidents and incidents occur in sport. Sometimes tragedies can’t be prevented no matter the preparation. But, what pisses me off about the many situations where an absolutely idiotic pointless workout, where we can see people pushing past local muscle fatigue, is that these incidents are so easily preventable.
Just stop doing stupid shit. Learn about fatigue and actual conditioning. Understand about training in the heat. Know what the signs of regular fatigue and those that go beyond are. Be intentional and prepared. You don’t go to the well mindlessly, you progressively build to where it’s even a possibility. Go talk to your cross-country coach and see how they get kids to go to the brink in training without using exercise as a punishment or mindless suffering as the point.
I’m begging coaches, trainers, strength & conditioning folks, to please educate yourselves.
An athlete’s determination should never become something we use against them.
My thoughts are with Matthew and his family.
As coaches, trainers, and practitioners, we have to do better.
We’re teachers. We’re not dictators. We shouldn’t be cosplaying a 1960s style drill sergeants. We’re responsible for the people in our care. That responsibility matters more than finishing any workout.
Quote I’m Pondering:
“The results of this study seem to suggest that the 'keys' to promoting mental toughness do not lie in this autocratic, authoritarian, or oppressive style. It appears to lie, paradoxically, with the coach's ability to produce an environment, which emphasizes trust and inclusion, humility, and service.”
-Christopher Hammer, Eastern Washington University
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How do you bounce back when you’re in a fatigue hole or overtrained? I broke it all down in a video.
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