Creating fatigue is very simple. It takes very little skill or knowledge to create a workout that would beat the brakes off of any client. Once you’ve done it enough, creating fatigue is mindless.
Creating a complete athlete or higher functioning human is much more difficult and requires far greater thought, patience and long-term planning.
U.S. Military Tactical Performance Coach Blair Wagner put it best when he said “You need to have a plan in place that takes the accumulation of stress into consideration. You don’t have to walk out of the gym feeling like you got the crap kicked out of you in order to have an effective training stimulus. If we beat people down day in and day out, there will be no performance enhancement, and we will probably cause problems for that person. Making people tired and sore is easy. Making them better is a much more difficult task.”
Always remember, just because you’re tired doesn’t mean it was a great workout, and a harder workout is not necessarily a better workout.
To be clear, I’m not talking about taking a few sets to failure or adding a finisher at the end of a workout. I’m talking about workouts that include so much volume you can’t walk for a week. I see this happening, and glorified, daily by those who mistake fatigue for progress.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that every workout needs to end in a puke-fest for it to be productive. Instead, concentrate your efforts on developing qualities like strength, speed and power – which take a lot more precise work to enhance – and learn how to insert intense workouts at times that allow for recovery and continued training.
