Once again
the time has come for one of my drier works on the topic of using the correct
meaning for words. I constantly see
conditioning and work capacity used interchangeably online, and I believe this
does a disservice for those that truly seek to maximize the benefits of one
compared to the other. Though it’s true
that a superior athlete is going to have both of these qualities available in
great supply, how they go about achieving them are going to be different, and
those differing methods of acquisition also imply differing benefits of these
qualities. Below is how I understand this terminology, and how I employ it with my own training.
Believe me; it's about to get worse
I’ve already
discussed conditioning in length on my post “cardio versus conditioning”, but
to provide a quick overview on conditioning; it is both a verb and a noun. The “verb” of conditioning is essentially
engaging in those activities that suck a lot and get us out of breath; prowler,
strongman medleys, tire flips, some crossfit WODs, etc. This verb of conditioning allows us to build
up the NOUN of conditioning, which is what we will be discussing here. By engaging IN conditioning, we improve our
conditioning, which is the ability to recover between EXERCISES. When you have superior conditioning, you
recover between exercises better than someone with inferior conditioning. You require less time between sets before you
can engage in another hard, heavy effort when you improve your conditioning. This of course extrapolates to other sports
(a fighter takes longer to gas and recovers better between rounds, football
players recover better between plays, etc).
While
conditioning is the ability to recover between exercises, work capacity is the
ability to recover between WORKOUTS.
Though both are about recovery, WHAT we are recovering from is
significantly different and worth understanding. One can be in possession of great
conditioning (which in truth does not take a significant amount of time to
develop) and capable of recovering well between exercises, but if they are
lacking in work capacity, they will accumulate a massive amount of volume
during a handful of workouts before eventually exhausting their ability to
recover from accumulated volume, overreach, burn out and stall. When one is in possession of superior work
capacity, they can recover from very high volume workouts over long periods of
time, which means an ability to accumulate greater volume for significantly
longer periods compared to those with low work capacity.
Seen here: poor conditioning and great work capacity
Why do these
2 terms become conflated and interchanged?
For one people just plain don’t know how to actually improve these
qualities specifically, so they attempt a “shotgun” approach of advice to cover
all bases. “Yeah, some prowler pushes
will go a long way toward building your conditioning and work capacity”. Sure, MAYBE they’ll do that, but not for the
reasons you’re thinking of. Conditioning
growth can be FORCED by a hard focused attack on weak conditioning. You decide to spend a solid 8 weeks just
absolutely hammering your conditioning trying to bring it up, and suddenly your
ability to recover between exercises has improved. Try doing that with work capacity and you get…8
weeks worth of work capacity improvement.
Sadly, the most significant variable to the improvement of work capacity
is simply time. You must spend many
years training hard and often and improving your body’s ability to recover from
all of this work. It’s the day in, day
out, consistent application of effort.
Consequently, this is why those with a background in athletics have
better work capacity than those who do not when it comes time to start lifting;
they have improved capacity of their body to do work. This is also why we can observe instances of
people acquiring rhabdomyolysis in the span of a single workout; their
conditioning was great enough that they could push themselves BEYOND their work
capacity.
So why is
the prowler and other conditioning type work brought up in the discussion of
improving work capacity? Because work
capacity DOES get improved via the gradual introduction of increased
volume. By constantly introducing the
body to slightly more volume, you improve your body’s ability to recover from
said volume, and conditioning is a great way to sneak in a little extra volume
while keeping all other variables of training the same. You can keep the exact same set and rep
schemes for all of your lifting, but if you add in the prowler, you’ve added
more volume and in turn are forcing new stimulus for your body to recover
from. However, this of course is not the
only way. You can also increase volume
in the weight training itself, with more sets, reps or exercises. We also know this to be an accumulation phase
of training, and speaks to one of the many positive qualities inherent in
spending some time increasing volume even at the expense of intensity.
Here is a fantastic way to develop none of those qualities
Hey, while
we’re at it, wanna talk General Physical Preparedness (GPP)? People love to lump that one in there too. We used to just call GPP “being in shape”,
but essentially it refers to one’s ability to be prepared to engage in any sort
of general physical activity. Why is
this even a thing? Because people tend
to do the things they like and not do the things they are bad at, so when one
starts getting serious about training, it’s typical for them to specialize in
their one activity and spend no time improving their ability at other
activities. They engage in the same
highly specific motor patterns (say, the squat, bench and deadlift), get very
talented at those, develop only the muscles and motor units necessary for those
movements, and then, one day, when they go to sprint in a straight line, they
tear their hamstring, or they go to cut a diagonal movement pattern and rupture
their ACL. They were prepared for
specific activities, but lost the ability to be an athlete “in general”.
And of
course, people will quickly lump GPP in with conditioning and work capacity
because yeah, that MIGHT work. If all
you’ve been doing is squatting, benching and deadlifting and you start throwing
in the prowler, you have rapidly expanded your physical ability here and significantly
improved your GPP. But if that’s all you
do NOW, you quickly stop building your GPP and now have just become a larger
specialized athlete. GPP necessitates
practicing a variety of physical skills, to include lateral movement, throwing,
jumping, rapid starts and stops, etc etc, all the stuff you find in *gasp*
athletics! And when you maintain your
ability to do all of these athletic things, you reduce your propensity to
injury, improve mobility, and will most likely also see improvements in
conditioning as a result of simply being a better athlete. You also have a wider base of athletic
abilities to draw upon when it comes to developing assistance work to bring up
lagging areas, and in general maintain your ability to be athletic, which is
never a bad thing.
Ok: SOMETIMES it can be bad to be a good athlete
So, quick
review. Conditioning is recovery between
exercises. It’s built by doing things
that suck and get you out of breath, so that you aren’t as out of breath when
you workout. Work capacity is the
ability to improve between workouts. It’s
built over a long period of time by gradually increasing the volume of your
workouts, which in turn allows you to recover from that volume. GPP is your ability to engage in general
physical activity. It is built by engaging
in general physical activity.
You often differentiate between athletes and the untrained when it comes to undertaking strength training, but you leave out a distinct third group that I think would really help to make your point in this case. The manual labourer. While the athlete will probably have good conditioning and work capacity, someone with years of experience of grafting for 8 hours, waking up feeling destroyed and then grafting for another 8 hours will have outstanding work capacity, but is likely to have poor conditioning.
ReplyDeleteHey man, I appreciate your comment. I don't intentionally leave out laborers; I simply have no experience in being one, and could not speak intelligently to the subject. Anything I would say would be speculation, which I try to avoid.
DeleteHaving held a variety of labor jobs, its been my experience that they will get you to a baseline of conditioning and work capacity, depending on the job. Unloading trucks allowed me to pull (and by extension) push just about anything walmart required of me.
DeleteI have never seen an out of shape landscaper, groundskeeper, general laborer, or construction person. Physical labor, 8 hours a day, gets you to a baseline. I saw more than a few unloaders who came in fat, out of shape, and dying after work. A few months later they had lost weight, were working fast and hard and basically able to keep up.
Even then, it wasn't anywhere near the limits of where the body could go. Some of my best workouts were after a hard day of throwing freight, pulling pallets, and stocking 50lbs of dog food. I imagine anyone doing construction or ironwork could potentially exercise after hours, and be even better shape than not. I have never been either of those so i couldn't say for sure.
Regardless, I think the principle would be the same. If you want to increase conditioning, do more than you are currently. At least that's the take away I got from this.
I wonder if people mock CrossFit as an excuse to not work on their GPP. It seems that the randomness of doing a WOD would lend well do towards building a lot of different athletic abilities.
ReplyDelete