Constraint Based Coaching
Constraint Based Coaching
I've been brainstorming about this idea for a while, and after listening to a recent podcast with Steve Magnus and David Epstein, it inspired this blog. If you want to listen to that podcast, it can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/76vjoiesP3hYdkmEMzwgrv?si=IkywYOzDTwmVtdJnQBfl9A
Epstein, if you don't know him, wrote The Sports Gene and Range, and his latest book, Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better is about how to improve anything that you do. The core concept is straightforward: whatever is preventing you from performing at the next level is the thing that needs to be the center of your training. Your constraint is your bottleneck, and until you identify it accurately, everything else is just busy work.
In sports like running, this is much easier to identify. For instance if you look at a runner who has a 5 minute mile and their best 400 meter sprint is 68 seconds, but they can hold 75 second laps for four straight, raw speed is clearly the cap. As that athlete trains to pull their 400 down to a 62 second PR, we would expect that they are going to improve their potential in the mile dramatically. Conversely an athlete with a 52 second 400 as a 5 minute mile athlete needs to develop endurance. These things are very clear when running an assessment.
CrossFit isn’t quite so straightforward.
The Constraint Problem in CrossFit
In this sport, constraints don't live in clean, linear boxes. An athlete can have a strength limitation, but that limitation might be specific to one pattern or one movement, not strength as a category. A big one rep max, beyond a certain point, doesn't mean anything about performance in a heavy Isabel. And crushing a heavy Grace doesn't mean someone is walking into a one rep max test and winning.
When I'm working with an athlete who is trying to punch their ticket to quarterfinals, I can afford to be somewhat general. I can say something like they need more slow strength, or more speed strength, and that's going to move the needle in a very meaningful way. The constraint window is wide enough that a general solution still fits through it and is more appropriate because that athlete needs exposure to a wide array of movements in their developmental process.
Once someone is competing in the top half of a semifinal field, that window closes fast. It's not specific enough to say they lack pressing strength. That pressing strength can be classified in a variety of ways and planes which dictates that athlete’s proficiency. They might have excellent kipping handstand push-up endurance, shoulder to overhead strength and a solid overhead position in a walking lunge, but fall apart the second a strict handstand push-up workout hits the floor. These are similar patterns so we need to make sure that the program is constructed around the limitation.
The Constraint You're Not Talking About
Something that gets overlooked in most conversations about programming and sport development is that the mental side of this sport is often the actual bottleneck for athletes sitting right at the top. This is something I have written about in the past but in this context I want to think about it in a different lens. That lens is that you have to make yourself vulnerable and uncomfortable if you want to thrive in this sport.
Racing Your Peers Is Not Optional
This is the piece I see athletes avoid most often, and it might be the most important of all.
In running, you can reverse engineer your goal. If you want to run a 2:45 marathon, you know you need to be able to sustain a 6:18 pace and repeat it over and over. There's a very clear number that doesn’t change on you. You can train to that number with precision. Having peers can and will make the training better BUT you know the exact pace you have to run to accomplish the goal.
CrossFit doesn't have that clear time goal for any workout. I can't tell every athlete who wants to qualify for an in-person semifinal that they need to hold 18 burpees per minute. Sometimes that number is 24. Sometimes you can get through on 18 per minute, depending on the workout. Because the sport is so varied, the only way to actually understand what qualifying feels like, physically and psychologically, is to race the people who are already there.
Some athletes are around camps or near training environments with high-level athletes, and they still won’t seek the group session. They tell themselves that the session wasn't designed for them, or the stimulus isn't right, or whatever the reasoning needs to be to avoid training with people. Racing someone who is better or equal to you is uncomfortable. You know that you have to bring your A game and some days you are going to get your ass kicked. Unless your engine is genuinely in a different universe from everyone around you, those ass kickings are needed. The athletes at the front keep getting faster and if you spend four to six months not racing anyone at that level, you will fall behind a step without even knowing it. Then the season comes around and you realize that there is a gap you can’t close in the short time frame between quarters and semis.
Competing in the offseason matters. Not as a full peak or an “A” competition, but as a calibration tool. You need touches on the sport, exposure to pacing and intensity, and a chance to stress test your assumptions about where you are. Because sometimes those assumptions are wrong in a good direction. What looked like a weakness six months ago might not be a weakness anymore, and you just unlocked a new bottleneck you didn't know was there.
When You Unlock One Bottleneck, Another Appears
This is one of the more interesting dynamics in long-term athlete development. The classic example I keep coming back to is toes to bar.
Early in an athlete's career, grip is probably the limitation. You train grip endurance, you get the grip to an acceptable level, and the movement improves. But then suddenly there's a trunk compression issue. The athlete's hip flexors are blowing up during toes to bar workouts. So you start addressing hip flexor endurance.
However, that may not paint the entire picture. In some cases, you might see that the hip flexors are blowing up because the posterior chain was so tight that every rep required fighting against additional tension. Every rep was 15% harder than it needed to be, not because the hip flexors were weak, but because the position was fighting them the entire time. The solution was never to layer strength on top of the problem but to make the positions easier and thus the rep more economical.
That's what accurate assessment does. It keeps you from spending valuable resources on symptoms instead of causes.
Where Coaching Gets Hard
I'll be completely honest. I have been very wrong about athletes. I have gone into competitions confident that an athlete was elite in a particular movement, and watched them get exposed. That is part of coaching. It is also part of what makes this job difficult and worthwhile.
The goal is never perfection. The goal is to minimize the number of holes in an athlete's competition toolkit. There will always be gaps because you can’t train every possible stimulus in a single season but you can attack the things that are most likely to matter. It’s imperative that you continue developing the athlete's strengths, and make sure that the constraint identified at the start of the offseason is still the right one as the season approaches.
When you have accurate information about the limitation, you can prescribe better training, structure the program more intelligently, and give the athlete a clear reason for every piece of work they're doing.
But nothing I say as a coach reinforces the "why" the same way a competition does. Getting exposed in a moment that matters and deciding you never want that feeling again is the most powerful moment in the sport. That moment of discomfort becomes purpose. The athletes who train with that kind of purpose behind the work are the ones who keep rising year over year.
The ones who don't address their bottlenecks honestly, and continuously avoid the environments that would expose them, are the ones who plateau. Or worse, start to trickle backwards relative to the field.
Assess thoroughly → Address the constraint → Update information periodically → Re-adjust training. This cycle lives on indefinitely until we decide that competing is no longer a priority. Embrace this and watch yourself continue to climb relative to your peers. As a coach, I will always facilitate this to the best of my ability.
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