It was late October and the weather had just turned cold.
After a few weeks of warmer than usual temperatures, the Fall had caught up with us.
So we bundled up and took the long walk down Henry Street towards the Brooklyn Bridge and Grimaldi’s Pizzeria, one of the most famous pie spots in the country.
Back then we had nothing else but each other. No kids. No dogs. No business to run.
But this was the last moment that we’d be alone for a while. The next morning we’d pack up the car and drive north where friends and family would meet us for our wedding weekend. The opposite of the peace and solitude we were experiencing in that moment as we walked arm-and-arm down Henry Street.
And thus started one of my favorite traditions. Every year, on our anniversary, my wife and I get a pizza.
It’s rarely from Grimaldi’s anymore. Sometimes we’ll take a road trip to some new place we’ve wanted to try but just as often we’ll order take out and eat it at the kitchen table and try to enjoy a few moments together while the old records play and we juggle all the responsibilities of our current life.
As someone who loves routine and is an absolute sucker for nostalgia, I am the perfect candidate for traditions. I sit directly in the overlapping circles of that particular Venn diagram.
Tradition resides squarely in the artsy-creative side of my brain. Which, truth be told, is the side I value the most.
But I’ve been considering how tradition might appeal to the science side of me as well.
Science is certainly reliant on a tried-and-true evaluation of evidence. And that method hasn’t changed for centuries. Which is not nearly as romantic as traditions that come from love stories or spirituality, but at least it’s something.
When it comes to training it’s actually a bit dangerous to rely on traditions. They can preclude you from incorporating new evidence or experience that may deem the old ways suboptimal and less effective.
But because the standards of scientific tradition are robust I do think it is worthwhile to look back at the training-related ones we’ve been following for a long time. Because if you aren’t following these you are probably leaving some progress on the table.
The first is specificity. Specificity is fairly simple. Essentially this principle states that if you want to get better at something the most direct line to progress is to do that thing.
An easy example might be running. If you want to get better at running you need to run.
However, where things get more complex is that to truly optimize for a training outcome you likely cannot rely on just doing that thing exclusively.
A runner who includes cross-training and strength training will likely perform better than one that just runs. A weightlifter who only performs one rep maxes in the clean and jerk and snatch (the competitive lifts) will likely not perform as well as ones who add back squats and complexes to their workouts.
Why? I’m glad you asked.
First off, certain training outcomes are enhanced by particular strength or energy system enhancements that may live outside of the specific activity. In plain English, getting stronger in the squat will really help your clean and jerk performance. Doing single-leg lower-body movements will make you more resistant to common injuries faced by runners. Which, in turn, allows you to accumulate more miles over a training block or career.
But you can’t bench press your way to a better barbell snatch if you never practice the snatch. It will be unlikely for you to complete a marathon if you never run.
The second is progressive overload. This principle states that things must get more challenging over time to remain effective.
The easiest way to demonstrate progressive overload is with weight. If you did 5 reps at 80kg last week and do 85kg for 5 this week, congratulations, you just got stronger.
But while most people refer to weight when discussing progressive overload, that is only one of the variables that can be manipulated. Number of reps, number of sets, decrease in rest periods, increase in range of motion and even subjective measures such as technique improvements or mind-muscle connection can be considered progressive overload.
The important thing to consider with progressive overload is that you want to view it in an appropriate time horizon and realize that the process isn’t linear and will ultimately use many of the techniques I mentioned above.
In the example I gave, you wouldn’t simply be able to add 5kg to your sets of five each week. If you could you’d be squatting over a thousand pounds in a matter of months. Manipulation of volume, deload weeks and alterations in program all have an effect on the road map that is progressive overload.
The last tradition we are going to talk about today is exercise order.
Just as with progressive overload, there are a variety of ways to look at this. But you are going to essentially have three acceptable choices here.
The first is to put the most complex and demanding movements early in your program and simpler movements later in your program. So you may start a workout with sprints or power cleans, move to squats and end with barbell curls (essentially putting the movements with greatest demand and coordination first and ending with very simple single-joint exercises at the end).
The second would be to place the area of highest priority first in your workout when you are the most focused and physically fresh. If your biggest priority is growing large arms - aka the only goal that really matters - that you might want to put those low demand curls right at the front of your day’s exercise selection.
The last would be to just arrange from heaviest to lightest. Exercises with the most load get done first and you just work your way down to bodyweight only movements.
This may seem related to the first option (and in many ways it is as complex, full-body movements such as the deadlift are going to allow you to lift the most weight) but it’s not entirely the same. In our earlier example sprints would be a first order exercise where in this model they would be closer to the end. And they could be effective in either placement.
There’s a second part to our anniversary tradition. After the pizza is gone and the plates are cleaned up, we sit on the couch and look at our wedding album. At this point we’ve looked at it so many times that I feel like weI have it memorized.
But this year my wife threw a curve ball at me. She took out our honeymoon album. It was lovely.
I hadn’t seen those pictures in quite some time and it was actually shocking to see how much time had passed. Who was I back then? Where did those carefree children go?
As I washed up for bed, I dimmed the lights in the bathroom, took off my glasses and squinted a little to see if I could recreate the person from two dozen years ago that I saw in those honeymoon snapshots.
Time, like traditions, seems to just keep moving along.
Like an arm-and-arm walk down a long, chilly road.