“…life…is poised between order and chaos,” writes Stuart Alan Kauffman, a medical doctor, theoretical biologist, and complex systems researcher.
“…Networks…near the edge of chaos—this compromise between order and surprise—appear best able to coordinate complex activities and best able to evolve as well.”
To use a political analogy, a country with no rules dissolves into anarchy, while a totalitarian state with too much structure is doomed to stagnate. Successful democratic societies thrive “on the edge of chaos.”
If your training schedule is totally erratic, there is no structure or direction. You get very sore, but you are not building much strength. On the other hand, if your training hardly changes at all, eventually you will hit the wall. You need enough change to stimulate continued gains—but not so much that your training loses its focus.
This is why rolling a die is a common tactic in StrongFirst strength and conditioning programming. Limiting the number of options and “loading a die” in favor of some allows an experienced coach to design powerful and flexible plans.
Following are several examples of how it is done in Pavel’s program “Enter the Kettlebell Plus”—now available on the StrongFirst Training App.
The weight of the kettlebells in double kettlebell exercises is prescribed by a roll of a die. Depending on the number of kettlebells the girevik or girevichka owns and his or her ability in the given exercise, he or she will assign the values to each roll.
For example, a girevik owns pairs of 16s, 24s, and 32s and can strictly press a pair of 32s two to three times. He might assign the following values to various rolls of a die:
