The one word that stood out the most to me, while thinking about and chewing on this conversation was Work Capacity.

"Work capacity is, essentially, the total amount of work you can perform, recover from, and adapt positively to." - Greg Nuckols.

"If you want to do more, you have to become more!" - Martin Rooney

The more layers you accumulate in life, the more precious your time becomes and the more balance you need in life.  Training, exercise and self-care will need to be a regularly scheduled part of your life, but the amount of the pie chart you devote is up to you and/or with input and support from your dream team.  

Some people who's lives are so busy might do better with 30 minute workouts.  Some people who are really out of shape might do better with 30 minute workouts.  

Some people who are super busy, but know regular scheduled self-care is important, will make the time for 60 minutes because they want the results it yields, the satisfaction of making the time and the benefits of doing a full hour.  People who are out of shape or in shape, might also do o.k. with 60 minutes.  30 minutes would be fine, but they can both do and make the time for 60 minutes, so they choose this route.

These are most athletes, but not the extremes like competitive body building or power lifters, olympic lifters and some non-weight lifting athletes who might train 2 or 3x per day or for longer than 90 minutes / workout.  They're willing to make the time, often times have the time and need to make the time to get the results they need to achieve the goals they want.  This doesn't mean they have the work capacity to do the full 90min or are in shape enough to do it, but in many cases they will anyways.

Gosh, when I was in my heyday, 2007 was my peak year, I was training a solid 10 hours per week.

No wonder I could sleep anywhere at anytime in those days.  Gosh, my cousin, brother and I used to all live together and we split groceries, but I ate way more than them, so splitting groceries didn't last very long.  I wonder why.  During these days I was still in the work hard, play hard days, but much, much less.  Maybe Saturday night was my play hard day.  So a wasted Sunday, while hungover was both great and not great.  Great because I got the physical recovery I needed, but not great because it wasn't great physical recovery.  And let's be honest, unless it's a free massage, it's not that easy to work on recovery when you're young, because it's not sexy.  It's a lot easier to do as you get older because it's more valuable to you.  Look at Brady.  He's way different now too and values recover just as much as his work.

You need strength & stamina to be able to get stuff done.  You need the durability that comes from building up strength & stamina.  You need the mental toughness that comes with making the time to do it, showing up to do it no matter what and actually doing it both when it's hard and when it's easy.  

You need work capacity at work.  Do you remember the first time you did 8 hours or 10 hours or 12 hours or more?  Do you remember the first time you worked 40 hours, or 50 or 60 or 70 or more?  Did you ever have a month where you got maybe 3 days off or 6 if you include on call days?  This is work capacity at work.  This was my life with the Red Sox.  Or try standing for the whole day, for 40 hours a week or more.  That's work capacity, but even more so because there's no sitting.  A whole lot of different muscles get tired and need to get stronger and more capable.

This one is way different.  You need strength, stamina and patience, but not necessarily physical strength it's more like physical courage.  "God, please give me strength to survive today...or do the right things...or figure out the answer to do the right things".  I mean everyone knows about the sleep deprivation that happens with newborns, well it turns out that the sleep deprivation was training for worrying, which you get to do until you die.  So, I'm officially on the journey with my fellow parents and I need more #parentworkcapacity and #morecowbell!

I grew up in the environment where, everyone was self-sufficient or they helped each other.  Uncles had trade skills.  Aunts ran the homes.  My parents had health care and accounting skills.  Everyone helped everyone, but were dismissive to hiring people unless absolutely necessary.  That's nice.  I appreciate that community and those talents.  I don't have that network out here in Boston.  Who can do the job, because I want to hire them to do it, because I don't want to, or I don't have the energy or I'd rather do something else with my time."  But until you get to Eddie Murphy status in Coming to America with 3 people bathing you and dressing you, you still gotta do stuff, so even after a long day, you better have the strength & stamina to get stuff done at home and you get the built in accountability and motivation to do it sooner vs. later, if you're fortunate to share space with others.  

We talked about how long, now how about, how often.  There are a lot of different guidelines out there.  Look, if you know the 80/20 rule, and you did CYBBC, 3x/wk and followed our nutrition plan, you'd get most of what you needed, health, body transformation and performance wise, but most people won't be that disciplined with their nutrition all the time, and most people need more activity than only 3x/wk and many people need to make some dramatic changes fast to inspire them to keep going, and some people have really big goals and need to do really big things to get those goals, so 3 hours a week won't cut it, so like most things, ... it depends.  It depends on you and your unique situation.  That's what I'm here for is to help you understand what will and won't work for results.  And what you can expect for the amount of time you can realistically give and the amount of effort you'll give with your nutrition.  

If you can make the time to train 1x/wk, you'll need to take a long view at building work capacity.  It'll take a lot of consistent workouts to build momentum, but after somewhere between 4-12 weeks straight, you'll begin to build it, things will get a bit easier and you'll be able to do more.  Translation, you'll now be able to squeeze more out of your scheduled time than before and that ALWAYS feels good.  

Your health, schedule, support system and/or budget have allowed you to train twice as much as a 1x/wk person so its fair to expect twice the results, IF ... you bust your butt twice as hard as the 1x/wk person.  If that 1x/wk person hustles and squeezes every ounce out of they're time and the time their not at the gym, they might still get better results than you.  You always have to do most of the work.  Remember, "you get out, what you put in".  That's because it's true.

Well it's fair to expect 3x the results of a 1x/wk person and 1.5x the results of the a 2x/wk person, IF ... you bust your butt 1.5 times as hard as the 2x/wk person and 3x as hard as the 1x/wk person.  Again...YOU get out what YOU put in!  

If you train anymore than 3x/wk, then it's also fair to expect more, better and faster results, IF ... you bust your butt more than those who train less frequently than you, but there begins to be a law of diminishing returns because you have to recover from your efforts.  The whole, Work + Rest = Success thing begins to matter even more as your workouts get compounded together and your need to recover compounds as well.  

Healthy:  1-3x/wk

Active:  4+x/wk

Athlete:  4+x/wk, but the what's, where's, when's, how much and how many's, how often, with who and why's put you in this additional lifestyle category in addition to the healthy & active.  

All scheduled and unscheduled self-care, exercise and training time, help develop work capacity and at different rates.  The more you put in, the more you get out.  What do you need to get out (results) will help determine, what you need to put in (time, effort & $), as well as what do you have to give (time, effort & $), will help you determine, what you can expect to get out (results), and we're talking work capacity, but you can see how this applies to many other things in life.  

Thankful you choose to read my writing,

Coach Mike Alves

p.s.  Monday, Nov 27, starts Phase 13, our last phase of the year.  If you know someone who'd like to be a guest that week, please do an email introduction and let me know.

p.p.s.  Keep working on your work capacity this week.  Consider viewing holidays and vacations as opportunities to come back better, not worse!

p.p.p.s. That 16 y/o is building himself a tremendous work capacity that will help him to dominate baseball, school and life if continues to develop the love and habit of exercising and he keeps exercising.