What Are You Actually Training?

There is an argument going on in strength training, and it has been going on for years. Should training be heavy or fast? How much jumping belongs in the programme? Should an athlete focus more on force or speed?

These are useful questions. After almost twenty years in physical preparation, I have rarely heard anyone ask the more basic one.

Not how is the athlete training.

What is the athlete actually training?

Before we argue about intensity, speed or method, we should identify which directions of movement the programme develops and which ones it ignores.

The Six Basic Directions of Strength

For the purpose of building a strength programme, most of the major work divides into six basic directions.

An athlete can push overhead or pull from overhead. They can push in front of the body or pull towards it. They can place more emphasis on the front of the legs, or they can load the hips, glutes and hamstrings.

None of this is complicated. The body adapts to the work it repeatedly performs.

In almost twenty years of receiving athletes from other programmes, I have rarely seen those six directions developed in a genuinely balanced way. Not balanced badly. Not trained with the wrong exercises. Simply not considered.

That does not happen because athletes or coaches are lazy. It happens because some forms of strength are far easier to measure than others.

The Three Numbers That Shape the Programme

Ask an athlete how strong they are and you will usually get three numbers.

Squat. Bench. Pull-up.

It is a good trio. The tests are simple, honest and hard to fake. They produce numbers a coach can record, compare and improve.

That is precisely the problem.

The squat measures strength through the knees and the front of the legs. The bench measures pushing in front of the body. The pull-up measures pulling from overhead.

Three tests. Three directions.

What gets tested gets trained. Once we attach a number to something, the number becomes the target. The target shapes the programme. The programme gradually shapes the athlete.

Nobody deliberately ignores the glutes and hamstrings. Nobody decides the muscles of the upper back do not matter. No standard number represents those areas, so they enter the conversation less often, they receive less attention, and their absence leaves no obvious gap on the spreadsheet.

The three directions that survive are the three we measure. The three that disappear are hip-dominant work, pulling towards the body, and pressing overhead.

Why the Programme Still Looks Balanced

Think about that in a rugby player.

The glutes and hamstrings matter in a sport built around sprinting and collision. The upper back matters in an athlete who spends years pressing and rarely strengthens the shoulder from behind. Overhead strength matters in a body that has to reach, lift and absorb force above shoulder height.

The pull-up is what allows the programme to feel balanced. There is a push, a pull and a leg exercise. Every box appears ticked.

One pulling direction does not balance every pushing direction.

This is where balanced strength training gets confused with a tidy-looking programme. The athlete who says they train everything is usually not being careless. They have trained extremely hard for years. They have trained hard in only a few directions.

Hard Training Can Still Be Incomplete Training

I saw this in one athlete earlier this year. He played rugby and GAA, he was twenty-nine, and he worked as a fitness coach himself.

His training was serious and his numbers were respectable. His injury history kept returning to the same areas: repeated hamstring problems, a hamstring tear that took months to recover from, a quadriceps tear, a groin injury.

That does not prove his programme caused every injury. Hamstrings and groins tear for many reasons, and anyone who claims a single cause is overselling the answer.

The narrower point is harder to dismiss. His body kept failing in directions his training rarely developed.

He was not undertrained. He had trained thoroughly and precisely in three directions out of six.

The Answer Is Not Simply to Add a Deadlift

Balance does not belong to the gym programme alone. It belongs to the athlete’s total training. Gym sessions, team training, matches, running, jumping, contact, and everything else the body experiences repeatedly during the week.

A programme can look balanced on paper and still be wrong for the athlete using it.

A rugby player already performs large amounts of sprinting, braking, jumping, landing and collision. The gym should not repeat what the sport already provides in abundance. It should strengthen what the sport leaves underdeveloped and support what the sport repeatedly demands.

The gym’s job is not to be balanced. Its job is to balance the athlete.

Why Generic Programmes Miss the Point

Balanced strength training is not a checklist.

A coach needs to know what the athlete’s week actually contains. The coach needs to look past the lifts that produce impressive numbers. Sometimes that means programming work for which there is no popular test, no personal record and no bragging rights.

That requires coaching judgement, which is why a generic programme cannot solve it.

The squat, bench and pull-up make a useful test battery. They make a poor definition of a complete athlete.

Before you argue about whether the work should be heavy or fast, find out which direction it is going.