Training in my 40s - Reflections on my journey

In my earlier years I played a lot of sports and I played outside with my friends. I primarily played soccer and baseball, but I also dabbled in basketball and golf. I didn’t do any type of gym strength work or similar until I was almost 18. As i’ve gotten older I have tried more sports like rock climbing. When we had practice in my youth we just played the sport. We worked on our technique and our tactics. Technical work and Tactical work are 2 of the Athletic qualities mentioned by Tudor Bompa in his book ‘Periodization: Theory and Methodology of Training’. Ian King also references the Athletic Qualities extensively in his teachings to myself and the other coaches of King Sports International. The other 2 athletic qualities are Physical and Psychological. The physical qualities are flexibility, strength, speed, and endurance. This means strength training is 1/4 of Physical training and therefore is 1/4 of 1/4 of all training possibilities. Up until I was 17 I had not done any organized training outside of technical and tactical work within the sports I played. And, we became conditioned to the sport by playing it in practice. Nowadays youth sports exposes kids more to the same trends of the fitness industry that adults participate in.

When I got to be in my late teens I had an interest to strength train in order to change my physique. The 2 main reasons were that i wanted to look more muscular so that I could be more confident and to attract more girls. I followed the mainstream fitness guidance and my training was based around strength and conditioning. I never included technical or tactical again and I certainly didn’t do any stretching at all. Then again, nobody stretched at the gym so I didn’t even think about it. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s (after almost 15 years of strength training) that I developed chronic pain in my lower back, my knees, and my shoulders/neck. I refused to accept that I was just getting old and I started to look for a solution cause i don’t like being in pain. I will do just about anything to find solutions to get out of pain. That was when I learned of Ian King and King Sports International and enrolled in his coaching program. In that program I learned a whole plethora of things that made so much sense but were not part of the recommendations by the mainstream fitness industry. When you’ve spent a lot of time and energy training and learning to train you are able to smell truth versus bullshit. Ian was the real deal. He was the first ‘guru’ I had ever met that really deserved that title.

I learned about the importance of recovery which was a concept i intuitively understood but had not deliberately implemented in my training prior to this. I learned about the value of stretching, but more importantly how to do it properly! This was LIFE CHANGING. Why had no one ever taught this to me before? It felt so good to stretch that I committed myself to doing a minimum of 1 hour every morning. In fact, it felt so good that many times as i stretched I would just keep stretching instead of doing my regular strength workout. And my flexibility changed dramatically and holy shit it felt amazing. I no longer had ANY pain. When i did resume my strength workouts I implemented Ian’s ways of training instead of what I did before. It was less volume, more variety in joint angles, and more intense. This made it more fun and less daunting cause it didn’t take all day! And, the results were even BETTER. At this time I was following programs in his Get Buffed books (worth a read if you do strength training). The programs in this book take you through how to do it better.

Then I began to learn more about those Athletic qualities again, and about the other physical qualities like Speed for example. Speed is not done by personal trainers. Its also not done (not done well) by sports teams or strength coaches. These teams (even as high as the pros) always seem to think speed training is just more strength training, but they are WAY DIFFERENT. Until this point in my journey I didn’t know you could change the way you move like that. I also started to learn about the specificity of endurance training. I have never liked running for the sake of running so it was never hard for me to do less of that. Playing the sport was always my preference and turned out that is the most effective way to gain ‘fitness’ for a sport. It’s the reason NBA players need the beginning of the season to get into game shape and now NFL players too because the starters don’t play in the preseason. I am an Eagles fan and in the beginning of the season they were really poor at executing. As the season has gone on they have gotten better. I believe all because they had not played yet!

Now that I’m in my 40’s I continue to learn how to individualize the training process for clients and for myself. I don’t recover as easily as when I was in my 20s. I have made changes to the volume in each workout. I need more stretching than I did when I was younger. And i learn the consequences of training decisions i made in the past. And even recently realized that I can gauge my emotional well-being by my flexibility on a day to day basis. When I am happiest it is easiest to let go and go further. When I am going through difficulty it is harder and I am tighter. This is why training is far more complex than is appreciated. We are all so unique as human beings. There are general principles (Ian has a great blog on this) that can be used as a guide, but the individualization of the process is the secret sauce. I’ve had to let go of old beliefs and values. I’ve had to be willing to grow and to make mistakes in order to learn and in order to develop my thinking skills. I’ve had to learn the art of communication. And now I am on the verge of being a KSI graduate. An achievement I thought impossible when I first attended a seminar with Ian more than 10 years ago. As Jim Rohn says, You can’t change other people but you can change yourself. I don’t know what your journey will look like, but if you’re determined like me to find a better way than I believe anything is possible.

Coach Tom