End on Perfection

I have been watching the Parisi Speed School DVD series and right now I have finished the first disc of the combine training DVD. There is a ton of great content on these discs, but one thing that really stuck out to me was something Martin Rooney said at the end of this past disc. They were demonstrating the L-drill and he said at their facility they have a rule where if an athlete performs a PR in any test that athlete is done training for the day. The reasoning was that they wanted the athlete to end on a high note and also because they wanted the athlete's Central Nervous System to feel what a perfect time felt like.

I think over the past year my mindset has changed a lot such that I am now more accepting of an idea like this. Whereas before I would continue to push myself if I was having a great training day in an attempt to see how far I could go, I wonder if this would be a better training philosophy. Martin was saying this comment in reference to speed training, and I wonder if the same is applicable to strength training as well.

I think the biggest thing to take into consideration here is the technique being used. If you hit a strength or speed PR using perfect technique, and then hit the same time/weight but with flawed technique, I think it would make sense to either lower the weight or slow down the drill such that the final set/rep can be done perfectly. Clearly it doesn't make sense to end on anything less than perfection both from a motor-learning standpoint and also from an adrenal standpoint, the latter meaning if you continue to crank out sets at extremely high intensities until you execute perfect technique, you are only setting yourself up for injury and extreme fatigue.

Overall, I would say this training philosophy makes sense, but I think it needs to be put into perspective as well, more so for strength training than for speed training. Reason being, if after you warm up you hit, let's say, a 10-rep PR on squat and you got that tenth rep easy, meaning you probably could have hit at least three to five more but you stopped because you are testing 10RM, maybe you go up in weight and see if you can't hit another 10 at a higher weight. I guess you could create a thousand different hypothetical situations in which you could excuse yourself from this philosophy, but, as a general rule of thumb, I think it makes sense for both speed and strength training.

Get big or die tryin'.