How do I train my clients hard enough while still keeping them safe? Recently, while building the Obsessed about Speed Transfer and also the Obsessed about Energy System courses, I noticed that usual Personal Training courses leave us short of answers when it comes to managing a client through fatigue and work rate. Our FTE student Paul Chipp inspired the question “How do I train my clients hard enough, while still keeping them safe?”. This seemed to be about how you would train a client to get maximum power, over the period of time you wish them to train for, while at the same time preventing them from a total burn out, if that is possible. Managing the fatigue levels of your client is important because, it can help you to prevent an injury in the session, improve the longer term physical response to training and gives you a good measurement to evaluate your program. Injuries are prevented by you the coach noticing that power output has dropped enough for the client you are training to have changed their biomechanics. Changes in physique and physical capabilities come from a mixture of the right intensity, volume and recovery. However if you are not getting enough out of your session for a good over load, then the improvements in physique or performance will be limited. In order to ensure a better result, then a focus on managing power output is vital. Fatigue There are two ways to look at fatigue, as an event where you hit a point of fatigue and as a process where you manage the effects of energy use. Fatigue as an event is similar to the way AV Hill described it, as in the body hits a terminal state and exercise stops. Due to the work done, one of the systems runs out of energy or hits an environment that causes it to stop working. This includes the central nervous system, heart, lunges and muscles. This is the way most academics measure performance and fatigue in the lab. They create artificial environments that then allow the athlete to work as hard as possible, before running out of energy completely. This is done without competitors and so limits some of the factors surrounding a competition, making the transfer of the test to the field difficult in a lot of circumstances. Fatigue as a feed forward protection control, is reliant on a whole number of factors. This model was put forward by Noakes and is called the central governor model. In this model, power output is initiated based on the knowledge (or lack of knowledge) of the up coming task by the athlete or client, experience and skill will determine this initial pace when knowledge of the upcoming task is not present. This initial pace will be one that is conservative to all the athlete or client to complete the task ahead of them. During the task, the pace will undulate to maintain a homeostasis, and then a final spurt of energy will be allowed to complete this task. Read the rest at www.fasterglobal.com