What Is Training?
Training is any physical stimulus that is significant enough to cause your body to adapt. Think of it as a biological lesson: if the information is clear and challenging enough, your cells and systems learn and adapt. If a session isn't hard enough or long enough to elicit a meaningful response, it's not training—it's just movement.
To put it simply: if you want to become stronger or improve your endurance, you have to give your body a reason to change. That adaptation comes from the necessity of overcoming a challenge.
To get stronger? You have to make your body feel weak.
To build endurance? You have to continue well past the point where you want to stop.
The Importance of Recovery
Training requires recovery. You can't just slap a number on how many times a week someone should train because we don't know how they respond to a given session.
A loose rule is that most people can handle around three hard sessions a week. It’s likely that many people need even less, and very few can tolerate more and fewer still, sustain it long-term.
Many people claim to "train" every day, but this is often a misconception. They've likely fallen into a "grey area" of intensity that feels hard but isn't sufficient to drive real change. These are the people who often feel stuck, making no significant physical progress for years despite hours spent “training”.
Structuring Your Sessions
For general physical preparedness, the best way to structure your training is by focusing on different energy systems. The main ones to focus on are:
Strength/Power: Sessions designed to improve how much force you can produce or resist.
Aerobic Capacity: Sessions that improve your body’s ability to utilize oxygen.
Endurance: Sessions that build the capacity to sustain low-to medium effort over a longer duration.
When you train, dedicate each session to a clear focus and respect the intensity required for that specific goal. The best way to know if your training is hard enough is if you can't repeat the same performance multiple days in a row. Following a truly effective training session, you should feel a level of fatigue that might lower your motivation for the next 24-36 hours.
Training vs. Exercise
Limiting your training to three hard sessions a week doesn't mean you have to be sedentary on other days. In fact, being more active will help you recover faster. We can think of these non-formal efforts as exercise.
Exercise is more about exploration. These sessions can be looser, mixing in mobility work, strength-endurance, or what we call “grunt work” (moving around to get sweaty). It’s a chance to address your limitations, improve movement patterns, and build body awareness. The key difference between exercise and training is the intensity or duration.
The best part? Everything else should be considered rest or recovery. This includes walks, hikes, or various forms of play. There’s no formal requirement to train or exercise every day. In fact, a great predictor of your recovery status is simply your desire to train.
So, here’s an easy rule to follow: exercise or play unless you feel motivated and recovered enough to train. Err on the side of recovery first, exercise next, train when you feel motivated to.
