Bargain

If you put a bunch of strength and conditioning coaches in a room it’s not long before the conversation turns to bargains and trade off’s.  

“Pre-season is 6 weeks long and aerobic conditioning requires longer than that to make a significant difference. “

“Racket sports players show up for 2 weeks blocks of fitness training, at a time, which is never long enough.”

And so it goes on. 

The job of the strength and conditioning coach is to understand the principles of strength and conditioning. A way of understanding the forces that might be at work when applying training doses without consideration for social conventions.

The alternative is to dose the training to fit social conventions. A rather “Hobbesian Bargain“. In exchange for protection, peace, and stability (income) we confer our rights and freedoms (obedience) to the client.

We imagine our bargain to be time versus the desired effect. “If I had more time then I could produce a bigger effect”. But the bargain is much more than that. It is the freedom to think.