One year in the early 2010s during the Sectionals qualification period for the CrossFit Games (roughly March to mid-April), Rich Froning made a comment that shocked a lot of people.
At the time, Froning’s ranking would allow him to advance to the Regional phase of the Games, but he wasn’t in the top spot for his section and most of his event scores didn’t stand out among any of the sections. This was big news because he already had one or two titles under his belt, and people were beginning to think that his championship streak would be broken by another athlete.
When responding to a question or criticism (I don’t remember which) about his current performance he said something along the lines of, “I might not be the fittest in the world right now, but I will be when the Games take place in July.”
To which the general response was, “What?!? How is he going to go from ‘not the fittest’ to ‘the fittest’ in a matter of 12-14 weeks? That’s not possible!”
But as you already know or might have guessed if you don’t follow CrossFit, I wouldn’t be telling this story now if he hadn’t gone on to win the championship that year. (He eventually won four consecutive individual titles and then six team titles over the following eight years.)
What I’m going to briefly cover today is the concept behind how he did it and how you can apply the strategy to make progress on your own goals.
The seasonality of training
Anyone who participates in any type of fitness program, from CrossFit to kettlebells to running to Zumba, intrinsically understands or quickly learns that training plans which produce results begin somewhat easy and end somewhat challenging.
In other words, effective programs progress.
What also seems to be reasonably well-understood is that the process should repeat whenever a program is completed in order to continue experiencing results. But what seems to be less understood is that applying some degree of seasonality enhances progress even more.
What do I mean by seasonality? The easiest way to explain is to look to the world of sports.
Whatever your favorite sport, you know there are four seasons and that gameplay varies among them:
- Off-season: No competitions take place.
- Pre-season: Competition begins after a break in the action. However, outcomes are basically meaningless, and the main point is to “knock off the rust” and to get into “competition shape”.
- In-season: Competition results matter, with the goal being to win often enough to qualify for a championship competition.
- Post-season: Competition results are vital. Winners take all, and losers go home until next year.
What you might not know if you haven’t participated in sports (or what you might think only applies to sports if you have) is that both weight training and sport-specific skill training also vary by the season.
The specific details will vary by sport—power lifting will look very different than volleyball which will look different than speed skating—but the general process might look like this:
- Off-season: In some cases, both sport-specific skill and weight training are completely avoided in order to allow the body (and mind) to recover from the rigors of competition. In other cases, weak sport-specific skills are trained in order to improve problem areas, and weight training is either heavy in order to improve strength or variable in order to correct imbalances and improve resiliency.
- Pre-season: Sport-specific skill practice increases from nothing or very little during the off-season. Weight training frequency may increase, stay the same, or decrease, depending on the intensity of the season and what happened the prior off-season. Weights are generally heavy and/or moved with high speed/power.
- In-season: Sport specific skill practice increases in frequency and intensity. Weight training frequency may decrease slightly. Intensity (i.e. weight) is often moderate, with the goal of maintaining strength and improving sport-related endurance.
- Post-season: Fine-tuning of sport-specific skills takes place. Weight training frequency is minimal. Intensity will vary by sport but is always focused on producing or maintaining peak physical capacity without producing fatigue that would interfere with championship play.
Now the point in telling you this isn’t to try to get you to remember the details (because they’ll vary by sport anyway), but rather to explain that there are large variances in the type, frequency, and intensity of activities that are performed throughout the year. At least in professional sports (more on that in a minute).
This combination of consistency (which I mention often in these tips) with variability enables a quick return to a prior baseline (as in Froning’s case) and continued progress year after year because it provides adequate time for both intense, focused training and recovery.
Compared to the monotony of following every progressive program with another progressive program or the all-too-common option of always training hard, it also reduces the potential for physical and mental burnout. Which, of course, results in the continuation of further training and progress.
Putting it into practice
It’s not uncommon for some high school athletes to focus on a single sport and to practice or play that sport on school and club teams throughout the entire year. And the same can be said for adults whose preferred activity can be enjoyed both indoors and out or which doesn’t have a clearly-defined season (e.g. running, most fitness programs, rock climbing, yoga, martial arts, pickleball).
While I often mention in these tips—and am fully convinced—that any activity is better than nothing, varying the frequency, intensity, and type of activity throughout the year can also have a profound impact on our results.
So if you’re the parent of a young athlete who plays a single sport or find yourself participating in a primary activity throughout the year, consider occasionally adding a completely new activity to your (or your athlete’s) routine. You’ll become a better athlete† for having done it.
† The etymology of the word athlete stems from the Greek athlētēs which means “one who contends for a prize”. So if you don’t consider yourself an athlete because you don’t participate in sports but you are interested in “contending” for better health, then you might also reconsider your status as an athlete.