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Posted: March 7, 2006

Science of Sport: The Truth Can Not Be Imitated

By Owen Anderson, Ph. D. (Copyright © 2004-2005)

As a coach, I know that the training program I provide for one runner, even though it is scientifically sound and well-balanced, will never be exactly right for another competitor. My runners, even the ones who are performing at a similar level, can never be doing the same thing at the same time.

In his enlightening book, Later Masters (which was not, by the way, about Masters runners), Martin Buber summed up this basic coaching dilemma with the following aphorism (1):

"Everything in the world can be imitated, except truth. For truth that is imitated is no longer truth."

This maxim enlightens us about the nature of truth and expresses the supreme value of individual autonomy. Re-phrasing the epigram in general terms, we can say that it may mean something like "Only you have an authentic connection with your own soul. So, always rely on yourself to become what you desire to be; do not depend on others."

As Yaella Wozner and Howard Polsky point out in their book, Everyday Miracles (2), the dictum indicates that although you may be very impressed with a "truth" that you have read about or heard from another person, such a verity can only belong to someone else - the person who first conceived it. If you try to make the "truth" your own, you will only succeed in establishing an imitation of another's conception.

The utter impossibility of imitating truth applies directly to the world of running. For example, scientific research tells us that there is enormous heterogeneity in the responsiveness of runners to training, even when highly standardized training programs are utilized (3). To put it another way, a great-looking training program which improves performance by 25 percent in one runner may cause another, seemingly similar athlete to fail miserably in competitions. The training truth for one runner is never the bright pathway to top performances for another.

Over and over, scientific investigations have shown us that when a large group of individuals embarks on an apparently sound training program, many will respond with about a 10- to 15-percent upgrade in fitness. A small number will even boost physical capacity by 40 percent or more. But - there will also be those who have a negative response to the training, who will experience significant drop-offs in VO2max and will actually end up running more slowly than before.

In the field of exercise physiology, we have traditionally written off such people as "non-responders," individuals who - for genetic reasons - are unable to adapt to training in a positive way. The lack of improvement is considered to be part of the normal biological variation in training response.

However, in reality the real problem is that many of the "non-responders" have simply been involved in a training program which is not true for them.

This fact is borne out by recent research carried out in Finland (4), during which 73 individuals (35 males and 38 females) embarked on a straightforward "aerobic" training schedule which called for them to work out for 30 minutes, five times per week, at an intensity of 70 to 80 percent of maximal heart rate. At the end of the program, several individuals had improved VO2max by more than 20 percent, and a very large number were able to boost aerobic capacity by greater than 10 percent. Nonetheless, a significant number of the subjects actually experienced negative changes in aerobic characteristics.

It would have been tempting to view the latter folks as unfortunate "losers" in the fitness game and to expound about the importance of genetic factors in training-related adaptive processes, but the Finnish researchers had other plans. The Finns took the "lowest quartile" of the aerobic trainees, individuals who were unable to improve aerobic capacity significantly (and several of whom actually notched negative changes in VO2max), and placed them on a similar-in-time-duration program of resistance training. This strength work included 15 exercises involving a variety of different muscle groups. Resistance was progressively decreased or increased so that subjects could perform at least eight but not more than 12 reps of each exertion per set during their workouts.

Guess what? At the end of the strength program, the "non-responding" quartile, composed of individuals who seemed to be unable to lift aerobic capacity, had elevated VO2max by an average of 7 percent (incidentally, there was a two-month "wash-out" period between the aerobic and strength-training periods, so the oxygen boost associated with the strength training was not due to a combination of endurance and resistance work).

The Finnish research showed that individuals who were non-responders were actually responders, provided they could find their own, true training methods.

As a coach, I am excited by the challenge of finding the program which is optimal for each individual, the training arrangement which produces the best-possible responses. I view this adventure on two basic levels: I have to find the training configuration which stimulates the best-possible physiological adaptations - and which also creates the greatest degrees of personal excitement, motivation, and belief in self.

I know that any formulation created by a coach can never be completely true for an individual athlete. And so, my goal is to help each runner open the door to his/her truth. I have to recognize that an athlete's performances will always depend on his/her underlying fitness but also on something called kavvanah - the intention he or she brings to races. Runners will bring an intention to win (or to make great performance breakthroughs) to competitions only if the various training processes have helped them find their own, non-imitated truths.

Of course, such "training processes" include not just the workouts - but also the dialogues between coach and runner. Since truth can not be imitated and thus each runner must develop autonomy, an effective coach employs truth-seeking metaphors, "stories" and accounts about important issues which an athlete can accept as having strong connections to his/her athletic quests and personal difficulties. These metaphors should contain strategies and re-orientations which an athlete can accept and then use in his/her own unique way to solve specific problems.

If you are coaching yourself, please be mindful of your uniqueness and autonomy. Instead of blindly accepting standard approaches to workouts, study yourself carefully, noting how you respond to various kinds of work. Patterns of training which produce your strongest running and create your greatest excitement for the sport will be the ones which help you achieve your goals, even though they may be far different from conventional training practices.

Develop autonomy and kavvanah at our beautiful running camp in Malibu, California.

References

(1) Buber, M. (1948). Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters. Vol. II. New York: Schocken Books
(2) Polsky, H. & Wozner, Y. (1989). Everyday Miracles: The Healing Wisdom of Hasidic Stories. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson Inc.
(3) "Cardiovascular Autonomic Function Correlates with the Response to Aerobic Training in Healthy Sedentary Subjects," Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol, Vol. 285, pp. H1747-H1752, 2003
(4) "Individual Differences in the Responses to Endurance and Resistance Training," European Journal of Applied Physiology, In Press, 2006

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