An interesting antidote in a book I just finished by John Will who is reminiscing of the habits of a guy he used to run with:
Patre would do the run with a plastic over-suit on top of his uniform. For some reason he figured the more he sweated, the fitter he would become.
Now without diving into all the silly ideas and assumptions this guy had around sweat rate and its correlation to fitness I think it is not such a completely ridiculous idea that it first seems.
The reason: this guy is simply applying a principle of overload during his runs. It may be that he was a quite fit, and given he would be running with training partners (whom he was faster than) wanted to challenge himself. Undoubtedly he achieved this with his suit (and accompanying sweat that would accumulate) – but could have achieved it by carrying a weighted pack of some kind, or simply running ahead by himself.
Ideally when designing a training program you should look at fundamentally what is your goal and how much time you have. A classic example is someone doing shoulder presses whilst sitting on a Swiss Ball. The premise is that you are working your ‘core’ whilst working your shoulders. This is true, but why not challenge the shoulders more, and then the core more?
Well if your goal is to lift things overhead whilst not completely stable (like a line-out lifter in Rugby) then great, but if it is to look good in the beach then you are probably better doing them separately.
Applying overload is a time efficient way to train, and brings other social benefits, such as training effectively – and mutually beneficially, with people of different levels. For example a grappler may not use one arm when training with a novice partner, or a cyclist may always take the front when cycling into the wind with a partner.
