Going Over Every Damned Hill

Stop picking and choosing which ones to die on

Mark Brown

February 16, 2022

Selecting a metaphor for figuring out what specific things hold more importance than others is far from a hard task. The media scene in 2022 is full of opinion pieces called “takes” in which a media member renders their verdict on what is happening in the sports world given all of the information currently at their disposal. Part of the “take” culture is attaching oneself to particular opinions and never deviating from that path. One of the most popular things to talk about in the mass media space, whether that’s ESPN or Facebook, is resting healthy players. This is because that space I just referred to is full of people from all generations and the way professional athletes used to play the games they did. It is a highly debated topic for a couple of reasons: Fans are demanding more entertainment value from spectator sports than ever before, comparing players of different generations, the importance of winning titles on legacies, the current direction of spectator sports and its effect on lower levels of competition. The last 2 reasons listed are the ones that are most important to me from a training perspective so that is what this entry will primarily address. It is the primary difference between practicing, playing and training between the “old” days and the current era of sports.

If we are talking about the current discussion about the importance of winning titles as drivers of legacy conversations, Michael Jordan gets top billing for being the force behind the mass media direction towards titles being the major part of a professional athletes legacy. I’m 37 years old and have taken in enough media in the 1990s to understand how MJ’s 6 titles positively or negatively effected older players accomplishments. How mass media at large highlighted the titles as a major part of his legacy effected how every professional athlete going forward was going to be judged. Statistical dominance matters less in the grand scheme of mass media. The result of that winning mattering more than statistical dominance led to Gregg Popovich, the long time head coach of the San Antonio Spurs, to prioritize rest for healthy players, especially aging superstars, during the regular season to preserve them for the playoffs. In the NBA, and other American professional sports, the playoffs have always mattered more than the regular season but prior to Popovich’s “Tim Duncan Plan” the latter still had some value. In 2022, that value has diminished to a startling degree. That has led to fan frustration with the entertainment value because superstar participation is key the NBA’s value as an entertainment product. The struggle to balance contending for NBA titles and being good entertainment has never been harder.

For those born around 1997 or later, the recently retired Tom Brady, who won the Super Bowl 7 times, filled the championship void left by Michael Jordan. What Brady shares with Jordan is that regular season dominance to go along with the titles won. The NFL will never deal with a coach who employed a rest plan to keep people ready for the playoffs because of the nature of their regular season, 17 games. The comparison of Tom Brady to Michael Jordan is much more apt than the one the mass media makes when comparing LeBron James to MJ. James, an NBA player since 2003, has used rest strategically to elongate his career, make long runs in the NBA playoffs and sign more lucrative contracts. This has not endeared him to multiple generations of fans and players where taking games off for rest wasn’t a major part of the plan. Games off for rest has become the norm for NBA teams in the last 15 or so years because Popovich’s plan successfully led to playoff success and lengthening Tim Duncan’s career. When one combines that fact with rising compensation for players, it’s obvious why resting healthy players works for both team and individual athlete, supposing their skills are wanted for that length of time. The success of plans that involve de-emphasizing the less intense “regular” season and overemphasizing the ultra intense “playoffs” has reset how athletes and coaches work to peak at the end. It is also endlessly frustrating to to fans who just want to see the best play every night.

Why is this important for the person who goes to the gym a couple times a week? Trends in sports tend to start at the top and work their way down the chain back towards youth sports, stopping by non-athletes along the way. There are 2 different trends at work: 1) Using game days as rest days and 2) devaluing everything before what really matters. These trends that have been active for almost a decade and a half directly run counter to what I did growing up and all of them bother me to some extent. The two trends have a cause and effect relationship. Using game days as rest days causes the devaluation of “regular” season by leading everybody watching to question the merit of playing the games in the first place. Practice is done to become better for when game time comes around. If the games become just practice with points being officially counted then why does anyone pay them and why pay to see the games? That’s the question that gets asked when stars skip games as a “healthy scratch – rest.” Colin Cowherd, of Fox Sports Radio and FS1 and a person whose opinion I am often in line with, is an example of a person who is okay with “healthy scratch – rest” because ultimately the playoffs is what matters more than anything else. He doesn’t care about random January games against Charlotte and cares about the one in May against Golden State. The fact that professional sports is mostly a television show no different from scripted series is compelling and I understand his point of view here.

That is the justification of picking and choosing which hill to die on, so to speak, instead of just going over every damned one like we used to in the past. As a strength athlete, I can’t abide by it. How I translate this to the gym, especially for people who will never compete at a meet, is that it sends the message that one can skip days they’d normally be lifting to get “extra” rest and still get the progress they want. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Missed lifting sessions cannot be caught back up even if one re-arranges them to “make up” for a day missed earlier in the week because the next week will be impacted by those changes. Players who miss games as “healthy scratches” are missing crucial team development that will be important at some point in the future. Even worse is if a lifter gets used to skipping sessions when they didn’t need to, it can create a pathway to excusing their actions to themselves and others, if they lift as part of a group. That particular act of skipping is damaging to the group and grounds for eviction from said group if it is done too often. For non-competitor lifters, hard days or max out days are our playoffs. Those are the days that have to be planned out well in advance to stand a chance at seeing the improvement one desires. I started to use short term periodization in the 12-16 week range last year to “peak” when the planned time comes to hit a 1 rep max on squat, bench press, deadlift or overhead press. That “regular” season lifting sessions aren’t practice. Those are our game days and should be thought of as such, not practice.

Getting better at whatever sport one chooses to do mean doing it at times that are disadvantageous to peak performance at said sport. That could mean something as general as training and playing without proper nutritional and sleep intake or specific as playing golf on wet and rainy day. There are cases where extra rest must be taken to ensure that the goal gets accomplished. I learned that in November of 2021 when I felt I needed to cut 1 day a week off my training schedule because I was running myself into the ground with the intensity, both physically and psychologically, of the lifting I was doing. There are times to pull back but I will always be in favor of going over every damned hill because the positives of constantly being on edge of failure outweighs the negatives.