Training Variation - The Need For Varied Stimuli

We always hear trainers and coaches say: "beginners can literally do anything and they will get better". Why is this?

In young athletes or athletes with a low training age, training adaptations can be achieved with relatively small amounts of volume load and variation. A wide variety of physical attributes like strength, endurance and coordination can all be trained simultaneously with limited interference because the functional limits of those systems have not been met (low start point).

At the intermediate and especially the elite level, there is a need for more strategic planning of training stimuli in order to achieve the gains we want to see. High-intensity training required to induce anaerobic adaptations and other top-end adaptations such as speed and rate of force development in advanced-level athletes can only be performed for a certain amount of time before overtraining symptoms begin to appear. A study looking at training intensity and volume in elite endurance athletes found that adding extra sprint or high-intensity days to already-well-trained athletes resulted in little to no improvement in performance variables. This is does not mean high-intensity training doesn't work. This means extra intensification of already-intense training programs yields no improvements, the recovery costs outweigh the benefits. More is not always better. These elite endurance athletes actually performed better when varying their training stimulus by performing low to medium intensity work while strategically performing high-intensity training when and where it counts.

Training monotony, or lack of variation, can lead to increased risk of overtraining, higher risk of injury as well as poor performance. Including the right amount variation in a training program can result in better performance measures, less risk of overuse injuries and a healthier mental state for athletes and trainees. Why do I say "the right amount of variation"? Because if a training program includes too much variations, energy and time is spent on too many different physical attributes and skills, watering down the progress and improvements that could be made on the more crucial components of performance. If there is too little variation, athletes will experience the detrimental affects of training monotony.

This is the same reason why powerlifters don't lift exclusively lift in the 1-3 rep range, and why sprinters don't exclusively run 100m every practice. There are benefits to varying your training stimulus - manipulating variables like exercise selection, intensity, volume, movement patterns, etc. In layman's terms: We can't do the same thing all year-round. So what do we do when we're not practicing the competitive movements? How much variation should a training program?

This all depends on the level of athlete, type of athlete, training age, the sport itself, amongst other factors. Different periodization models have their own way of undulating variation, but they all share a common trait: physical attributes and performance measures are developed in a general to specific fashion.

The general - specific continuum

Training stimuli can be categorized into general and specific. Specific qualities are movements, mental states and physical attributes that are seen in the sport the athlete is preparing for, while general qualities are defined as variation of sport-specific attributes that build the base that allows specific qualities to flourish in the long term. Diving further into the details, general and specific qualities can also be divided into: general preparatory exercises (GPE), specific preparatory exercises (SPE), specific developmental exercises (SDE) and competitive exercises (CE). The graphic below outlines the definitions of each classification of exercises and how they play a role in training. It was created by the famous sport scientist Dr. Bondarchuk and is still used as a form of exercise classification in many elite sports today.