sunday coffee vol. 9: Adversity Training

sunday coffee vol 9.

I have a friend who ran his first ultra marathon a few weeks ago out by San Francisco, let’s call him John.

A 30+ mile race is no joke - but as an experienced marathon runner, John knew what he was getting into.

John trained hard, ate well, and did a good job of getting his body ready to crush it on race day.

But when race day finally came, the conditions were far from what he’d hoped for.

It was…

And overall - gross outside.

But you can’t change the weather. No matter the conditions, you still have to go get it done.

John thankfully knew this and crushed his race regardless of the conditions. He had built up his mental toughness through hours and hours of hard training.

This is why it’s important to make sure that your training prepares you for anything the world may throw at you: wind, rain, snow, hot, cold, etc

You can’t control the weather - and sometimes, even in shit conditions, you’re still gonna have to go get it done.

We need to train accordingly - we need Adversity Training.

Adversity training is a deliberate exposure to challenges that will force you to grow and build mental toughness.

Here’s an easy way to think about it:

It’s easy to go for a jog when the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and you slept great last night.

It’s much harder when you slept like shit and it’s cold + raining outside. You probably wouldn’t want to go at all. But if you want to build that mental muscle - you need to expose yourself to hard things, you need to do it anyways.

Much like our muscles, our mind + toughness need to be trained so that we can grow and function at our best when conditions are at their worst.

However, there is a line with this.

For example, running when you didn’t sleep the best is fine and could push you far enough to grow.

Running when you’re extremely dehydrated on the other hand, would push you too far past a point of growth to a point of danger and deterioration.

We want to find the sweetspot where you grow from the training/stimulus, but you don’t go too far and overtrain.

So how do we find this sweet spot?

The word ‘stress’ has a pretty negative connotation to it - but stress isn’t all bad, it’s how we grow.

There are 2 kinds of stress - and it’s important that we differentiate between the 2.

To find the ‘stress sweet spot’ then, we want to push ourselves to do something challenging that feels within our grasp. If we go too far, we don’t see adequate growth or recovery from the stimulus.

I could go deeper into this, but in an effort to keep this article as a promised ‘quick read’, I’ll leave it at that.

Keep this sweet spot concept in mind as you think about which of the 5 types of adversity training to try.

Before we get into these, please BE CAREFUL when trying any of them. Pushing yourself too hard can easily put you in the hospital.

Remember - we’re trying to find that eustress sweet spot. If you go to far and overdo it, you’ll fall into distress and potentially overtrain (like we discussed last week).

That said, here are 5 ways you could start working adversity training into your program today.

In other words - make your environment more challenging so that you’re forced to adapt.

Workouts that challenge you in various environments or conditions can improve adaptability.

This might involve outdoor workouts in changing weather conditions, such as running in the heat or cold, performing strength training exercises on unstable surfaces, or incorporating agility drills to simulate unpredictable movement patterns.

High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is intense and challenging by nature. The short bursts of intense effort followed by brief rest periods put a physiological stress on the body, pushing people to their limits.

The mental strength required to sustain high effort levels throughout the workout helps develop resilience and mental toughness, making HIIT a form of adversity training that challenges both the body and the mind.

Cold exposure, whether through ice baths, cryotherapy chambers, or outdoor cold exposure, can…

It will also build mental resilience as you learn to endure some pretty intense discomfort.

Training at higher altitudes, where oxygen levels are lower, challenges the cardiovascular system and helps improve the body's ability to utilize oxygen.

This can enhance endurance and overall cardiovascular fitness. You can train at altitude if your location permits, or you can use altitude simulation techniques (for example, wearing an oxygen deprivation mask).

This is the easiest of the 5. Don’t always train in the same place.

Today, we covered Adversity Training and why it’s worth working into your program every once in a while.

We live pretty comfortable lives compared to our ancestors. It’s wise to put ourselves into positions to struggle from time to time to build our mental + physical resilience.

We discussed 5 types of adversity training you could try tomorrow, they are:

Thanks for reading 🙂 

Dane

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