A Point of View on Training Variance

“We fail at the margins of our experience.”

-Greg Glassman

The above is precisely why our GPP program aims to enhance fitness across multiple metrics and domains. Said another way, it’s why we make you do things you aren’t great at and don’t like. Despite how it might feel sometimes, the goal of our programming isn’t to be hard. It’s to drive adaptation. We try to be as thoughtful as possible about making you a different human. 

The primary concern when driving adaptation in an individual for a particular outcome is specificity.

Training becomes focused, monotonous, and highly specific to the desired result. Specificity is why similar training sessions are repeated throughout our 12-week macrocycles. You will only improve your ability at a task if you perform efforts with similar demands for similar durations.

Driving adaptation for less specific goals (such as increasing a general base of fitness) for a broad demographic of individuals is a delicate marriage of variance and specificity. This is why training is periodized into different phases year-round in our GPP program, with plenty of surprises that seem both exciting and terrifying to our students.

The demands of life are varied and often unknowable. That is why we put you in different positions, have you move in multiple planes of motion, lift and move at different speeds, vary the times on conditioning pieces, and ask you to do new movements that make you nervous. 

If you Handstand Balance on Tuesday and Deadlift heavy on Wednesday, that’s not a lack of focus but an inclusion of variance that will expand your experience, ability, and capacity. It’s our way of preparing you for the rigors and challenges life is going to throw your way. 

Next time something shows up in class that you don’t like or feel unprepared for, I challenge you to see that thing as a gift that will unlock new abilities.