Creativity, art and training programming
The importance of experimentation, failure, and learning from it
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. This quote is from The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams in 1996.
Creativity is often something that’s discussed within sport, but less so within exercise science. Exercise science, or more specifically in this case, towards generating training programs to improve human performance, are built on scientific principles which have been researched, and decisions are made in training programming in order to impose training stress over a long period of time to increase human adaptation.
This approach may sound quite rigid as it sticks to scientific rigour. However, this is why I think creativity and art is important to the training programming process.
Firstly, every coaching decision is based on contradictory advice. We may try and optimize our programming decisions based on research which supports X, Y, and Z. However, there will be other research which contradicts this, which is inevitable when there are so many factors you’re trying to control for. Art is knowing which decisions to make for that person in that exact specific time, knowing which research and experience to follow, and what to ignore.
Secondly, how do you know what works truly for that individual without experience of what doesn’t? Creativity is allowing for decisions to be made where there could be a chance of failure or no impact at all. Creativity gives you license to do that and gives you a better picture of what decisions to make in the future.
Thirdly, furthering on the point of experience, creativity is important when you’re reflecting back on years of worth of information coming from training sessions, data collected, wellness data collected etc. These data will tell a story of that athlete, made up of all that went right and wrong. Creativity will in turn tell the most exciting story and end up giving us the most valuable information of what to do and what not to do in the future.
Creativity is not about doing a load of random stuff in order to figure stuff out. Creativity allows for experimentation and rational decisions to help us figure things out in the future. Without it, we are limiting our knowledge and inhibiting our ability to produce art in the form of training programming.
If you like discussion on creativity in sport check out this conversation I had with S&C coach Tom Farrow
And if you want to learn more about programming for Hybrid Training check out my book ‘The Science of Hybrid Training’. Amazon links below:
Amazon UK 🇬🇧: https://amzn.eu/d/bD86gIi
Amazon USA 🇺🇸 : https://a.co/d/j3cTnx2
Amazon Canada 🇨🇦 :https://a.co/d/g4HL37g
Dr Phil Price
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