Most coaches and therapists treat programming as a design problem. Run the assessment, write the program, follow the calendar. Day one, week one, block one.
That frame is why programming eludes and is hidden from so many people. You design the starting point from Point A. You discover the program in real time, as the athlete responds to treatment and training and you conjugate those so the work is propagating them to Point B.
Rigid, linear block perdiozation programs can’t discover anything. Lock the tissue, joint and nervous system into a fixed calendar and you never find out what actually works for that athlete.
Uncertainty is part of the programmer. When we worked with the Pittsburgh Pirates staff, head strength coach Alan Burr brought up the concept of uncertainty when programming a conjugation of trainable elements.
Logic: The more you know about the neural network of absolute strength, the less you know about the connective tissue network of reactive strength—and you have to accept that reality if you want to know how to operate a conjugate strategy.
Treatment and training are the feedback loop. Their response is what reconstructs the program, so it meets the athlete where they are and keeps moving them toward Point B.
Optimal in Time, Not Perfect
