There is more
in the work.
Enough to change what
we think training is for.
Draw out what
is worth keeping.
Parfiler: to pull valuable threads from a woven fabric. It takes effort, attention, and enough precision to keep what matters intact.
Training comes with a lot already woven into it. Ideas about discipline, health, progress. Assumptions about what discomfort means, what a capable person looks like, and which results count.
Fieldwork is where we work through that material. The research, observations and arguments that help us examine what we've inherited—and what happens when we put it into practice. What holds up. What needs more care. What becomes possible when a familiar explanation loosens.
We want training to give people more ways to understand and respond to what happens. Physical strength belongs in that ambition. So do attention, judgment, and the ability to reconsider. Developing one gives us an opportunity to investigate the others.
What is
true human
performance?
Getting fitter changes what a body can do. We're interested in what someone can learn to do with that change.
A hard effort can bring fatigue, impatience, confidence and doubt into the same few minutes. How do we tell them apart? What changes when the pace, the environment, or the guidance changes? Which discoveries survive beyond that session?
These questions shape how we coach, in person and remotely. The prescription gives us a place to begin. What someone experiences gives us material to work with. We compare accounts, change the conditions, and return to the work with a more useful question.
Psychology helps us examine how effort acquires meaning. Health and nutrition bring us back to the conditions that make participation possible. Together, they let us ask more of training while staying accountable for what it actually does.
What counts as improvement if someone gets fitter
but their world gets smaller?
AN
INTRODUCTION
TO FITNESS.
WHAT TRAINING CHANGES, AND WHAT CHANGES THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAINING.
A field guide to adaptation and the person doing the adapting: physiology alongside attention, expectation, emotion, learning, behavior and other people.
A six-week plan can tell you what to do next Monday. It rarely has room for why effort feels different today, how attention changes a movement, or what makes a practice stick. This guide gives those questions room.
INTRODUCTION
TO FITNESSTRAINING THE PERSON,
NOT ONLY THE BODY.
- 01THE BODY ADAPTS
- 02ATTENTION SELECTS
- 03EXPECTATION SHAPES
- 04BEHAVIOR REPEATS
- 05CONTEXT CHANGES THE TASK
THE NEXT SESSION IS A QUESTION YOU CAN ACTUALLY ASK.
WORKING CONCEPT
BETTER IS
SPECIFIC.
We train hard because we want people to do things they once thought were beyond them. But completing the work is only part of the record.
A spreadsheet can track load, pace, and reps. Coaching also has to pay attention to what the effort does to someone: whether they can stay present, recover, ask a useful question, and take the next step.
THE WRITING.
Longer arguments about training, the assumptions behind it, and what changes when we examine them closely.
For the love of fitness, stop trying to be smart, be dumber.
Training has become optimized. The problem 20 years ago was not enough quality information. Now, a random Joe on Facebook is doing oblique dips and single-arm deadhangs while snorting electrolyte powders and drinking Shilajit through a boba straw—and guess what? The majority of us aren't any fitter.
This is a report on why being smart in training will only get you so far, and why being the dumb one in the room will not only mean you're fitter than the optimized-bro, but you'll probably have a lot more fun along the way.
SUBSTACK / COMING SOONYour Hyrox class is probably teaching you to survive Hyrox class.
Mixed fatigue can feel specific while taking time from strength, running economy and pacing. What are we actually getting better at when every session becomes another race simulation?
SUBSTACK / LINK COMING SOONWHY STRENGTH PROGRAMS EVENTUALLY MAKE STRONG PEOPLE WEAK.
When one adaptation is asked to carry too many jobs. A look at what gets crowded out when every training problem is answered by adding more weight.
SUBSTACK / LINK COMING SOONTHE TEST IS NOT THE ADAPTATION.
A benchmark can reveal something. Repeating it can become practice for the benchmark. How do we tell a useful measure of capacity from a result we have simply learned to produce?
SUBSTACK / LINK COMING SOONTHE NOTEBOOK.
Observations about attention, recovery and the conditions that help us participate. Questions with more work left in them.
When effort changes what you notice.
A familiar demand can become a different experience when the information, expectations or surroundings change.
What are we asking food to solve?
A continuation of Unfucking your gut for beginners. Basic digestion hygiene, habits worth examining, and where supplements might have a useful role.
In development / PDF coming soon.What's left to adapt with?
Sleep, inflammation, and the reserve needed to meet the next stressor.
When more information makes training worse.
When does another cue help, and when does it take someone out of the task?