In my early years in the industry I used to take customer complaints personally, as if they were trying to tell me that I wasn’t worthwhile. But those were my personal issues, and helping people means that you need to suspend your ego to do so. That can be a long and painful learning experience, if you do have the opportunity to learn from it. Thankfully, I have a “yoga” or “martial art” approach to business. I approach business as a method of personal development, of becoming a more socially useful individual. But swallowing the pride-punching lessons is never easy. That I know.
Yoga organizations, for instance, always assume that how yoga is taught in India is how it should be taught to everyone. But that defies reality. If you practice yoga from the age of four with perfect form and incremental development with a quality teacher, then you likely never encounter or understand the problems that a 50-something faces when she first enters class and attempts to perform a downward facing dog.
The same is true, for instance, in kettlebell or parallettes training (TACFIT Parallattes 101 Available Now!). Recommendations are based upon the fact that the coach practiced with perfect form and incremental development from an early age. Because the coach trained as a professional, they were not permitted to use poor form, or force advancement of weight because of ego. As a result, when some mid-40s fitness enthusiast picks up a “lightweight” kettlebell for the first time and starts following the program, they are plagued with lower back and shoulder pain.
Is it yoga and kettlebells that are the problem? No. The reality is that no program and no piece of equipment is perfect.
There is no piece of equipment and no training approach which, if followed, will not eventually lead to diminishing returns, decreased performance and eventual injury. Every program, equipment and protocol must specifically be compensated for. The law of SAID (specific adaptation to imposed demands) means that we always adapt specifically. If we adapt to only one thing, we become weaker to other things. It doesn’t matter if it’s dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, Clubbells, sandbags, gymnastic rings, parallette bars, yoga, pilates, kickbox aerobics, etc. The nervous system cannot differentiate between pieces of equipment. It only knows (specific patterns of) resistance.
On top of this, we have the reality that people are unaware of this fact. So they move from one piece of equipment or one program to the next without compensating for the previous one, until they’re the walking wounded… and everything they touch hurts them.
Unfortunately, fitness companies feel that if they promote “compensatory programs” they’re suggesting that programs or equipment are inferior. What they fail to realize is that no matter what their customers do it must be compensated for, or their customers will not only lose their adaptation benefits, they’ll eventually lose their health. Realizing that is not weakness. It’s strength.
The benefit of programs within the TACFIT training systems, and the advantage that our instructors have over other fitness professionals, is that they are inherently compensatory. The approaches are crafted with compensation as its primary springboard, from which you jump and to which you always are pulled back: the stronger that trampoline, the higher you can go!
Very Respectfully,
Scott B. Sonnon
This is the physical fitness reason why I am still following you and what you do years later. When I was in the military, I used to train folks for the “physical fitness” tests that they used to “measure” physical fitness (wrongfully so in my opinion). However, what I used to drill into their heads was the following acronym: TFTE! TRAIN FOR THE EVENT! In the Air Force, we had push ups, sit ups, 1.5 mile run, and a useless body composition measurement (around the waist). Three of those were trainable and required an individual to train for that event. Of course, self-control is what is needed for the body composition measurement in controlling the amounts of what went in. Reason why I bring this up is because you had mentioned something about the concept of SAID and I used that concept to establish TFTE to help troops improve their training and it proved the concept. Thank you Coach Sonnon! I have my clubbells and love swinging them too!
Thanks,
Tom
So true! Brilliant words as always from Coach Sonnon, distilling a complex process down to succinct and memorable advice from a truly selfless place. Amazing, thank you
What does this mean. Talk to me like a five year old. What does it mean Tacfit programs are built with compensation moves, ? Practices built in? I’m trying to understand as I’m 67 and just coming to your suggested reason to practice an exercise program.
Cheryl, the primary point is that TACFIT is a system of recovery from intense exercise and a compensatory practice. There are no “randomized” workouts. Every movement is selected specifically to help enhance your movement, occupational skills, etc., versus simply exercising for exercise sake. In the more advanced TACFIT programs, beyond the 101 series, active recovery days are programmed in, meaning that even your “off” days are contributing to your overall health and wellness and preparing you for the next round of intense exercise. All workouts are designed with warmups and cooldowns, which are mandatory for training longevity (how long you can continue working out without burning out, or worse yet injury). There are also specific compensatory programs (FlowFit and Intu-Flow for example). Hopefully this helps clear up some confusion.