I was recently running with a friend who quit before I did. I also had a solo workout in which I quit before I completed my intended volume. And last week a client of mine told me that he couldn’t do any more [reps]. All of these situations raised in me the question…

What If you HAD to do more?

What if you were forced, FORCED, to keep going? Could you?

I remember the most mentally destitute I have ever been during a workout – this wasn’t my hardest workout physically, but mentally it still sticks out in my mind.

Every year at UMBC we had winter sprint workouts twice a week with Coach Cantor that consisted of agilities, sprints, GPPs and the like. The workouts started out hard and got progressively harder as the weeks went on, peaking in difficulty right before Thanksgiving break.

The most difficult workouts were ladders and “22 22s.” In the latter we ran in 2 or 3 groups, performing 4 baseline touches on the basketball court in 22 seconds. The other group went when 22 seconds elapsed, giving each group 22 seconds of rest (or 44 seconds if we were lucky enough to go in 3 groups). Ladders were baseline sprints that ascended in number, from 1 to 17, with a proportionate rest period, then back down on the even numbers until we ended on a single. A full ladder session would end up with a total volume of 154 baseline-t0-baseline touches.

So in 2008 we ran ladders to 17, and I gave each interval the best I had. I didn’t loaf, and I really went after it. Your prize for working hard is that you get a diminishing number of sprints after the ladder reaches its apex, and the countdown helps you push through til the end.

As we approached the single sprint, having completed 153 sprints, my mind was excited to check out and relax. My legs were exhausted, but their work was done for the day.  Then, after completing sprint 154, we were told that we had another interval to go: 36 touches with a goal time of, I think, 5 minutes. We were all horrified.

This was the exact situation I was thinking about this week – when you’ve given it everything you have, and you’re ready to and feel like you absolutely NEED to quit, could you keep going?

I felt mentally and physically crushed at that point, but I, like the rest of the team, sucked it up and kept going. We did 36 more touches at a time when not one of us would have thought we could have done even a handful more.

Even then, what if it was 36 more after that? And 36 more after that? When do you draw the line and prove to yourself, by walking away, that you really can’t? Ordinary people meet these challenges in Boot Camp, extraordinary people in SEAL and Special Forces training, IronMan triathlons and those crazy adventure races (no, not the Amazing Race).

Here is a great excerpt illustrating my point from “Beyond KettleBells, an Interview with Mike Mahler…”

When Richard [Machowicz, author of Unleashing the Warrior Within] went through Navy Seal training, he saw a lot of physically impressive people give up because they weren’t mentally tough, an example being when his group was ordered to run several miles. Just when everyone thought it was over, the instructor ordered several more miles. Half the class collapsed on the spot.

Were they defeated physically at that point? No, they probably could’ve kept going if they were mentally prepared for it. They were defeated mentally. Richard pushed through not just with great physical conditioning but by giving himself the right messages via self-talk. No matter what was happening to him, he knew that he was going to pass. He burned his bridges with failure and there was nowhere left to go but the other way, to success.

So I thought about this as I chickened out in my running today – I felt like tired garbage while running 4x400m and 4x200m. What If I had to run a ridiculous, outlandish number more, say 50, with my baseball career on the line? If I quit, I would be voluntarily ending my career. Could I meet that challenge? I don’t know, but it’s an interesting question. My Dad, who was and still is a World-Class runner, said his hardest workout was 80 100 meter runs at a 12-13 second pace with 30 seconds rest in between. 80! That’s a volume only fit for an elite runner, but what if you had to rise to that occasion just to prove to someone that you could, or because you would lose something if you didn’t? Your body wouldn’t collapse – that takes hours and hours to happen. Your mind would be the only thing holding you back.

This video is from an IronMan triathlon, and these two women (I think they’re women) completely bonk at the end. It’s not funny at all, but pretty amazing that they actually were able to push themselves to their physiological limits. “Bonking” happens when you have no muscle glycogen left for your body to use as energy, and so you literally run out of gas exactly as a car would. If Phidippides actually died upon running the first “marathon” and yelling “Nike!,” then this bonking phenomenon was probably what did him in.

I also read a great story by a former Navy Special Forces soldier, who described how he pushed himself to the brink of death and learned to run and vomit simultaneously during training. I want that life experience. You can find his account on pages 4-5 of this collaborative  article. It’s worth the read, and it will make you feel like (even more of) a pansy.

I’m not one of those motivational people, but this stuff makes me feel inadequate, and inadequacy motivates me. What motivates you?

Now understand that pushing people to puke isn’t the sign of a good trainer, nor is it ever my goal.  Furthermore, I never insist that someone on the brink of vomiting would continue to work – it’s simply not productive for any of us.  If they let me know, I’ll insist that they rest.

Yet, I can at least respect those who work until they puke, because it’s not easy and it’s not a good feeling.  Like I said, I don’t want or ask them to do that, but if they quietly go to that point, then hey, at least they worked hard.

Reason for all the fluid loss this week was that I had a large group of college players with whom I have been working 3 times per week for 4 weeks now.  Workouts started out tame, and have progressed to be pretty difficult.  The guys who have come consistently are in great shape, and can now handle a heavy conditioning workload.  Those who, because these workouts were voluntary for their school, decided not to come regularly but DID decide to show up on the last week got a rude awakening.  They were hurting, and left with a leaky, smelly trash bag in hand.  Shame.

Oh, and don’t drink a quart of blue gatorade 10 minutes before working out.  Turns out, it comes back up in a beautiful shade of green…

Today at the Athletic Edge we had a nice little workout.  Our day consisted of deadlifting, flexibility and mobility, weighted push up and rotator cuff work.  We capped it all off with a Tabata Interval set of Front Squats @ 65 pounds.  What is a Tabata Interval, you ask?

20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated for 4 straight minutes. In other words, hard work with virtually no rest for way too long.  You won’t see any of us high level athletes lose our composure in battle, but believe me, when the camera turned off Steve, my workout partner for the day, and I were both hurting.

Our spotting method worked flawlessly – instead of racking and re-racking (which takes precious seconds) we had two spotters (trainers Steve Evans and Matt Acevedo) take the weight for the 10 second rest periods.  This interval was brutal, even with only 65 pounds on the bar.  The fact that we did a lot of high-rep deadlifting beforehand probably didn’t help either. Enjoy!

Interesting thing is, though, that pitchers have historically been part-time distance runners, doing tremendous amounts of sustained running between outings.  The validation for this practice was that pitchers needed strong and enduring legs to go deep into games.  

While it’s true that during a 7-inning outing a pitcher will be pitching over the better portion of two hours, he isn’t doing it in one sustained effort.  

Rather, any pitching performance is broken down into half-inning intervals of pitching and rest, which is further broken down into shorter intervals between each batter, and then even shorter intervals between each pitch.

Training is supposed to make the athlete better prepared for game situations.  If we want a pitcher to best prepare himself for his act of pitching, then it doesn’t make sense to perform sustained cardio work between starts.  Rather, pitchers should be condition like they play: by working in intervals.

Furthermore, sustained running and cardio are done anywhere from 60-85% of one’s max heart rate.  Do pitchers throw at 60-85% effort?  I think not.  Try 98-100%, every single time.  Pitching is explosive, powerful and anaerobic.

Conditioning in bursts at high effort levels also builds and converts muscle fibers into fast twitch, which are responsible for powerful movements.  Fast twitch muscles fatigue quickly, but would have plenty of time to recover between pitches. Distance runners have a predominance of slow-twitch muscle fibers, which produce less power but are more resistant to fatigue over long periods of time. Pitchers who throw hard likely do so because they have a high percentage of strong fast twitch fibers in their arms and throughout their bodies.  Training should be done to keep these fibers intact and not convert them into slow twitch.

So what should pitchers be doing, if they are to be well prepared for game situations?  High-intensity, repeated short-duration sprints.  If your body is going to go all out 110 times over 7 innings, then train to do that, don’t train to run a marathon.

Pitchers are as powerful and explosive as any athlete around.  Ever seen a distance runner?  Not powerful, not explosive.  Ever seen a sprinter?  Big difference.

High Speed: the commonality between sprinters and pitchers.

I’m still for varied training, and I’m not claiming that we should run 100 1/4 second sprints each day between outings.  Varying the distances and rest intervals is key to keeping your body from plateauing and preventing diminishing returns. But whether it’s 10 yard or 60 yard sprints, it should be high-intensity, and done with enough repetitions to allow 10-25 minutes of quality conditioning, depending on how many days of conditioning are to be had between outings.

If one is considering whether or not his conditioning program is appropriate, maybe it best boils down to one question: Does this program mirror the demands of my sport?  For a pitcher that means summoning the explosive, anaerobic leg strength to throw pitch #125 just as hard as pitch #1.  For a position player, it means being able to leg out a triple with one out in the 9th inning.  Does distance running get the job done in either of those cases?  I don’t think so.