“There is no such thing as overtraining, there is only under-recovery” is a common refrain in functional fitness coaching. And while there is some truth to the fact that, yes, your average three times per week gym-goer is a far cry from the training volume of pro athletes attempting to peak… context matters, and you are not the statistical average.
“There is no such thing as overtraining” also absolves the coach from taking responsibility to critically think about the workouts they are writing in the context of the client’s entire lifestyle, and to help the client investigate their lifestyle factors that may be holding back their performance/results… without laying a generic blame on the client for not living a certain way outside of their workout time.
Practically, I think this is more of a systemic fault than the coach’s: they are often being set up to fail by being put in a position to write a generic program for dozens of people, and simply don’t have the time or resources to customize it for each client’s varying lifestyle factors and stressors. Similarly, the client gets set up by being indoctrinated into a fitness marketing culture where everything is presented as simple and often easy too. “Just do/buy this one simple thing to achieve your dream body!”
So, the onus gets put on the client to figure their own lifestyle out to make it fit the demands of the workouts they are given, and on the coach to sell simplicity. Sometimes they are offered nutrition coaching, but this often begins and ends at meal prep and tracking macros, rather than unpacking overlapping habits and systems that affect those things as outcomes rather than causes.
Access to quality childcare. Past trauma, food related or not. Current, ongoing stressors at work or in the family. Health or medical complications. Getting older. There are so many factors that can lead to a person being under-recovered for a given workout or training plan. And while some of these may simply be beyond the scope of practice for a coach to try to unpack or directly integrate into their planning, it is a far more holistic and effective approach to acknowledge that a person is not simply under-recovered… they may also be structurally overwhelmed, and it’s not all on them or their mindset.
So what can we do? Collect data, ask questions about life outside of training, and remain open to asking for less from the client when the weight of information leads to that conclusion.
Collecting data means regularly asking for subjective feedback (“how are you feeling this week?” — “what’s going on in the rest of your life at work or at home?”), and looking at their objective performance data (weights, reps, scores, etc.).
Explain why this seems appropriate in the context of the client’s whole life and as it relates to their stated goals. They are not mutually exclusive, as reaching these deeper understandings is what will enable them to eventually reach their goals. Without this understanding there is only the blame game and frustration for all parties involved.
Being a professional means having these conversations. I wouldn’t even call them tough conversation, unless you came up in a model where everything should always be sunshine and rainbows. They are necessary conversations for actual humans who do more than workout for a living.
If someone is structurally overwhelmed and still showing up everyday to try, they will likely give a sigh of relief at this news. In my experience, the people that show up consistently feel pressure to perform and to not let their coach down, in such a way that it is even difficult to articulate when they’re feeling uniquely stressed outside of their workouts.
Most people who show up in the first place try. They really try. Sometimes they succeed, and sometimes they come up short and don’t know why. Help them understand why by asking better questions, and showing them that they can best move forward by working towards their goals in a way that includes their whole story.
Coach Mauricio