First Principles of Performance – Matt Shannon, Security Pro

First Principles of Performance – Part III

What Do Performance Programs Actually Look Like?

The same physical qualities. Different priorities. Intelligent application.

Part I, we dismantled the myth.

Part II explained the physiology.

Part III shows how to construct the program.

The Central Thesis

Programming is not the indiscriminate accumulation of desirable exercises. It is the deliberate allocation of finite adaptive resources.

Every athlete would benefit from being stronger, more muscular, more powerful, better conditioned, more mobile, and more resilient. The problem is that no one can maximize every quality simultaneously.

A sound program therefore asks:

What must be developed?
What must be maintained?
What may temporarily be deprioritized?
What forms of training deliver the greatest benefit with the least conflicting fatigue?

That is where the individual disciplines separate.

The Framework

Before discussing specific populations, let’s discuss a common framework that can apply to anyone.

The Primary Objective

The primary objective determines what receives the athlete’s best energy, highest-quality practice, and largest recovery allocation.

Olympic weightlifting: technical power, speed, athleticism, and maximal strength
Bodybuilding: hypertrophy and muscular symmetry
CrossFit: develop broad competitive capacity across the 10 general physical skills and also have “home run” capacity in several of those skills
Tactical readiness: durable, repeatable performance under uncertain conditions
Healthy aging: preservation of strength, power, muscle, mobility, and cardiorespiratory fitness
General physical preparedness: broad competence without narrow specialization

Developing Secondary qualities

Secondary qualities support the principal objective but must not compete excessively with it.

For example:

An Olympic weightlifter needs aerobic fitness, but not marathon fitness.
A bodybuilder needs conditioning, but not enough running volume to degrade lower-body recovery.
A tactical athlete needs strength, but not at the expense of movement endurance and occupational durability.
An older adult needs muscle mass, but also enough power, balance, and aerobic capacity to remain independent.

Establishing the minimum effective dose

Not every quality requires maximal training volume. Some qualities can be developed with relatively little work. Others can be maintained with substantially less work than was required to build them.

This allows a coach to place most resources toward the current priority while preserving other capacities.

Control competing fatigue

The interference problem is not merely molecular. It is mechanical, neurological, metabolic, and logistical.

Two sessions may theoretically coexist but still conflict because they stress:

The same musculature
The same joints and connective tissues
The same energy systems
The same neurological resources
The athlete’s limited sleep, time, and nutrition

This is why modality, sequence, volume, and timing matter.

Sequence the training week intelligently

The highest-priority, highest-skill, and highest-velocity work should generally occur when the athlete is freshest.

A useful hierarchy is:

Technical and explosive work
Heavy strength work
Hypertrophy or accessory work
Conditioning
Supplemental mobility and tissue restoration

That order can change according to the sport, but it gives us a sound starting point.

How the application changes

CrossFit: developing breadth without creating chaos

CrossFit presents one of the hardest programming problems because nearly every physical quality matters.

Why does CrossFit usually present a problem for most coaches? We begin with the 10 general physical skills. They are cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy.

Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance – The ability of the body’s systems to gather, process, and deliver oxygen
Stamina – The ability of body systems to process, deliver, store, and utilize energy
Strength – The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply force
Flexibility – the ability to maximize the range of motion at a given joint
Power – The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply maximum force in minimum time
Speed – The ability to minimize the cycle time of a repeated movement
Coordination – The ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a singular distinct movement
Agility – The ability to minimize transition time from one movement pattern to another
Balance – The ability to control the placement of the body’s center of gravity in relation to its support base
Accuracy – The ability to control movement in any given direction or at a given intensity”

So, a competitive CrossFit athlete requires:

Maximal and relative strength
Olympic lifting proficiency
Gymnastics skill
Aerobic capacity
Anaerobic power
Muscular endurance
Movement efficiency
Fatigue resistance
Rapid recovery between efforts, et cetera

The danger is confusing variety with randomness.

A well-designed CrossFit program should not simply expose the athlete to more movements and more suffering. It should develop identifiable qualities in a logical sequence.

Primary considerations

Strength and skill must be developed and then protected.
Heavy lifting, technical precision/near perfection in the Olympic lifts, and advanced gymnastic skill should not routinely be performed after unnecessary fatigue.

Conditioning requires structure.
The athlete needs distinct exposures to:

Low-intensity aerobic development
Threshold or tempo work
Short glycolytic intervals
Sprint interval training
Mixed-modal competition pieces

Not every metcon should destroy the athlete.
Some sessions should develop pace, transitions, breathing control, or movement economy without producing maximal fatigue.

The interference effect is managed through planning.
Heavy squats should not be surrounded by repeated high-volume running, jumping, and cycling sessions unless that fatigue is intentional.

CrossFit programming should develop the unknown and unknowable by building deep, transferable capacities, not by making every day unknowable to the coach.

Hypertrophy: condition the athlete without stealing from growth

For hypertrophy, the principal objective is clear:

Accumulate sufficient high-quality resistance-training volume to stimulate muscle growth, then recover from it.

Cardiovascular training should improve health, work capacity, and recovery without degrading lifting performance.

Best applications

Zone 2 bike/row/ski, jogging if you can maintain zone 2, or other similar cardiac demand work
MAP training or what I call “CrossFit aerobics”
Short tempo intervals
Carefully dosed sprint work
Sleds, carries, or machines that reduce eccentric loading
Conditioning performed after lifting or in separate sessions

Primary constraints

The bodybuilder or hypertrophy-focused lifter must manage:

Total lower-body fatigue
Caloric expenditure
Joint stress
Session duration
Interference with progressive overload

The appropriate amount depends on the athlete’s training age, caloric intake, exercise selection, and recovery.

The practical rule is straightforward:

Conditioning should leave the athlete better prepared to train, not chronically less capable of producing force and volume.

Bodybuilding: hypertrophy with greater specialization

Bodybuilding and general hypertrophy training overlap, but bodybuilding adds several constraints:

Muscular symmetry
Proportional development
High local training volume
Fatigue management across many isolation exercises
Contest preparation and caloric restriction
Preservation of muscle during fat loss

Cardio becomes more prominent during contest preparation, but recovery resources simultaneously decline.

That makes modality selection especially important.

Low-impact cardio often becomes preferable because it increases energy expenditure without imposing excessive eccentric loading or soreness. As calories fall, the athlete must also avoid the common mistake of increasing cardio aggressively while maintaining all previous lifting volume.

Bodybuilding programming is therefore an exercise in resource preservation:

Retain muscular tension
Preserve strength where possible
Manage fatigue
Increase energy expenditure gradually
Avoid turning every session into a test of willpower

The same physiology applies. The context changes.

General Physical Preparedness: build the widest useful base

GPP is not preparation for nothing. It is preparation for many possible things.

The objective is broad physical competence:

Reasonable strength
Useful muscle mass
Aerobic fitness
Anaerobic capacity
Mobility
Coordination
Power
Durability

A GPP program should avoid the extremes of narrow specialization.

The athlete does not need:

Powerlifting-level maximal strength
Marathon-level endurance
Bodybuilding-level weekly muscle volume
Elite Olympic lifting technique

But the athlete benefits from meaningful development in all of them.

A balanced GPP week might include:

Two or three strength sessions
One power or sprint exposure
Two aerobic sessions
One higher-intensity conditioning session
Carries, sleds, jumps, throws, crawling, or climbing
Regular movement-quality work

This is where first principles matter most. GPP should create optionality: the ability to enter a more specialized phase without beginning from zero.

Tactical readiness. The real unknown and unknowable.

Tactical readiness resembles GPP but carries a different standard. Failure is not an option.

The tactical athlete may need to:

Sprint – short, medium, and long distance, under load, taking and returning fire
Climb – 15 – 30 ft. ropes for multiple reps
Fight – from striking, to grappling, to weapons defense and disarming skill, and all must work under possible extreme fatigue
Drag or carry another person, possibly multiple people
Move large loads, long distance, and quickly
Operate for hours
Recover quickly
Make innumerable decisions under fatigue
Repeat near perfect efforts without warning

The old saying is, the novice practices the movements so they don’t get them wrong. The professional has practiced them so often they can’t get them wrong.

That’s the minimum standard and it requires far more than “being strong” or being “in shape” ever can.

Programming priorities

Relative and absolute strength
Loaded movement capacity
Grip and trunk endurance
Aerobic base
Martial Proficiency
Repeated sprint ability
Anaerobic endurance
Power and rate of force development
Durability under imperfect, and often austere, conditions
Recovery between multiple, unpredictable efforts

The program must also preserve technical and occupational skills. Fitness should support marksmanship, defensive tactics, movement, communication, and decision-making rather than degrading them through constant exhaustion.

The “unknown and unknowable” should be addressed by building robust capacities and occasionally testing their integration.

It should not justify random training. Uncertainty in the mission does not require uncertainty in the program. That should be one of the article’s anchor lines.

Olympic weightlifting: develop strength, speed, power, technical skill, and force production

Greg and Amiee – the early days of Catalyst Athletics

Olympic weightlifting is a highly technical, speed-strength, and power output sport.

Its primary qualities are:

Technical proficiency
Explosive strength
Maximal strength
Speed-strength
Superior positional mobility
Well-developed neuromuscular adaptation

Conditioning is useful, but it must remain subordinate to performance in the snatch and the clean and jerk.

Productive conditioning

Low-intensity aerobic work
Short cyclical intervals
Sled work, carries, et cetera
Limited sprint exposures whether it’s running, rowing, bike erg assault bike, or ski erg
General body weight flow/movement and recovery work

Common programming error

A weightlifter can become so conditioned that the conditioning begins to impair the quality of technical practice, squatting, pulling, and recovery.

Conversely, poor aerobic fitness can reduce training density and the ability to recover between sets and sessions.

The goal is not maximal endurance.

It is sufficient conditioning to support greater quantities of high-quality weightlifting.

Healthy aging: train what age attempts to take away

Healthy aging may be the most important application because nearly every major physical quality declines without deliberate training.

The program should preserve:

Muscle mass
Maximal strength
Power
Bone density
Aerobic capacity
Balance
Coordination
Mobility
Confidence in movement

Power deserves particular emphasis because it often declines faster than maximal strength and is essential for preventing falls, climbing stairs, catching oneself, and moving quickly when necessary.

A complete healthy-aging program should therefore include:

Progressive resistance training
Safe explosive intent or power training
Zone 2 aerobic work
Some higher-intensity aerobic exposure
Balance and unilateral movement
Carries and gait work
Mobility sufficient for daily function
Practice getting down to and up from the floor

The objective is not merely extending lifespan.

It is preserving capability across the lifespan.

The 70-year-old and the competitive athlete are not performing identical workouts, but the underlying qualities remain the same. Load, velocity, complexity, volume, and risk are adjusted to the individual.

Again: different in degree, not in kind.

The comparative model

Population	Primary Emphasis	Supporting Conditioning	Main Interference Risk
CrossFit	Broad competitive capacity	Full spectrum	Excessive mixed fatigue and inadequate specialization
Hypertrophy	Muscle growth	Low-impact aerobic and concise intervals	Reduced lifting quality and recovery
Bodybuilding	Muscular size, symmetry, leanness	Progressive low-impact cardio	Energy deficit plus excessive total volume
GPP	Broad competence	Balanced aerobic and anaerobic work	Randomness without measurable progression
Tactical	Durable performance under uncertainty	Aerobic base, loaded work, repeated efforts	Fitness fatigue degrading occupational skill
Olympic weightlifting	Skill, power, maximal strength	Minimal effective conditioning dose	Loss of speed, freshness, and technical quality
Healthy aging	Capability and independence	Aerobic base plus selected intensity	Underloading, excessive caution, and lack of power work

The deeper lesson

This third article should not merely contain seven sample programs. It should teach the reader how to reason.

The reader should finish understanding that programming is a process of adjusting several variables:

Priority
Frequency
Intensity
Volume
Modality
Sequence
Recovery
Specificity

The exercises are not the program. The allocation of stress is the program.

That is how we prevent the article from becoming a collection of templates that readers blindly copy. We can include sample weekly structures, but each one should demonstrate the principle behind the arrangement.

The barbell, a bike, the rower, a sled, the track, or a pull-up bar are not competing philosophies. They are tools. Their value depends on the problem they are being used to solve.

A bodybuilder, Olympic weightlifter, tactical professional, CrossFit athlete, and older adult all require strength, endurance, power, movement competency, and resilience. The needs vary in application, not in kind.

Good programming does not ask which quality is universally best. It asks which quality matters most right now, how much of the others must be developed or preserved, and how they can coexist without obscuring the primary objective.

Programming is not the science of writing workouts. It is the art of organizing adaptation. As always, the principles remain constant. The application is the art and that’s what real coaching is all about

First Principles of Performance – Part II

The Interference Effect: Separating Physiology from Fitness Mythology

“Understanding what works is valuable. Understanding why it works changes the way you think forever.”

In the previous article, Cardio Doesn’t Kill Your Gains. Poor Programming Does, we challenged one of the most persistent myths in strength and conditioning.

The conclusion was straightforward.

Cardiovascular training does not inherently prevent muscle growth. Rather, poorly designed training, excessive volume, inadequate recovery, insufficient nutrition, and conflicting priorities, is what most often limits progress.

For the overwhelming majority of lifters, the question isn’t whether they should perform cardiovascular training. The question is how to integrate it intelligently into a well-designed program.

That practical advice is enough for most people.

But for coaches, athletes, and those who simply enjoy understanding why the body behaves the way it does, there is a much deeper story waiting beneath the surface.

That story begins inside a single muscle cell.

The Conversation Inside the Cell

Every training session asks your body a question.

Heavy squats ask:

“Can you produce more force?”

A sprint interval asks:

“Can you generate enormous amounts of energy very quickly?”

A thirty-minute Zone 2 session asks:

“Can you become more efficient?”

Your muscles answer each of these questions by activating different signaling pathways that regulate adaptation.

These pathways are often portrayed as opposing armies locked in constant battle. One builds muscle. The other builds endurance. One must win while the other loses. It’s an appealing narrative. It’s also an oversimplification because biology is rarely that binary.

Meet the Two Most Famous Molecules in Exercise Physiology

If you’ve spent any time reading about muscle growth or endurance training, you’ve almost certainly encountered two acronyms:

AMPK

and

mTOR.

They’re frequently described as rivals. While that’s directionally true, the relationship is considerably more nuanced than the internet often suggests.

AMPK functions as the cell’s energy sensor. Whenever energy availability begins to decline, as happens during prolonged or demanding exercise, AMPK becomes activated.

Its job is straightforward and that’s to restore energy balance.

It encourages the body to become more metabolically efficient, increase glucose uptake, enhance fat oxidation, and promote mitochondrial adaptations that improve endurance over time.

mTOR serves a different purpose.

Rather than conserving energy, mTOR responds to mechanical tension, amino acid availability, particularly leucine, and adequate cellular energy by promoting protein synthesis, tissue repair, and muscle growth.

One pathway asks,

“How do we survive this demand?”

The other asks,

“How do we become stronger for the next one?”

Both are essential an neither is the enemy.

Where the Myth Begins

Here’s where decades of misunderstanding started. Researchers discovered that AMPK can suppress certain components of the mTOR pathway.

That finding quickly evolved into a popular conclusion:

“Cardio turns on AMPK.

AMPK turns off mTOR.

Therefore cardio kills muscle growth.”

Simple but also wrong, or at least incomplete. Because physiology almost never operates like a light switch.

Biology Prefers Dimmers Over Switches

One of the most overlooked aspects of exercise physiology is time. AMPK responds rapidly to energetic stress. During demanding exercise, it rises quickly.

Then, once the exercise ends and energy balance begins to recover, AMPK activity declines just as rapidly, often within minutes to a few hours.

mTOR behaves differently.

Following resistance training, especially when combined with adequate protein intake, mTOR signaling can remain elevated for many hours and, in some cases, more than a day as muscle protein synthesis continues.

These aren’t two permanent states competing for dominance. They’re temporary responses to changing physiological demands. Your body constantly adjusts which pathway receives greater emphasis based on what it needs at that moment.

Location Matters

Another misconception is that these pathways somehow control the entire body equally at all times. They don’t. Many signaling responses are remarkably localized.

The muscle fibers performing repeated contractions experience different metabolic demands than surrounding tissues. The cardiovascular system responds differently than skeletal muscle. The liver behaves differently than adipose tissue.

Even within skeletal muscle, fiber type influences adaptation. The body isn’t issuing a single command. It’s conducting an orchestra. Different sections play different parts. Together they produce adaptation.

The Body Doesn’t Choose Between Building and Improving

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this entire discussion is that AMPK and mTOR are not always mutually exclusive. Under certain physiological conditions, aspects of both pathways can be active simultaneously. Cells routinely remove damaged proteins while synthesizing new ones.

Energy availability can improve while structural remodeling occurs. Recovery itself is an ongoing process of destruction and regeneration. Our physiology isn’t designed around choosing one adaptation. It’s designed around balancing competing demands with extraordinary precision.

What the Research Shows

This is where molecular biology meets coaching.

When researchers move beyond isolated signaling pathways and study actual athletes over weeks and months, the dramatic interference many people fear becomes surprisingly difficult to reproduce outside very high volumes of endurance training.

Concurrent training research consistently demonstrates that the magnitude of the interference effect depends on factors such as:

Total endurance volume
Exercise modality
Session timing
Recovery
Nutritional status
Training experience
Overall programming

In other words, the molecular biology doesn’t invalidate the conclusions from the previous article, it explains them.

Recent research confirms that the so-called “interference effect” is real, but its magnitude depends on how training is programmed. For example, a 2016 study by Jones et al. found that, while concurrent training can slightly reduce strength gains compared to strength training alone, the effect is modest and can be minimized with thoughtful sequencing and recovery (Jones et al., 2016).

Why Running Sometimes Differs from Cycling

One particularly interesting finding is that not all endurance training produces the same interference.

High-volume running often creates greater reductions in hypertrophy than cycling or rowing.

Why?

Part of the explanation likely lies in mechanical loading. Running introduces thousands of eccentric foot strikes that generate additional muscular damage and recovery demands.

Cycling and rowing produce far less eccentric stress while still developing robust cardiovascular adaptations. The heart doesn’t particularly care how you elevate its workload.

Your joints and muscles often do. For athletes prioritizing hypertrophy, choosing lower-impact conditioning modalities can preserve more recovery capacity for strength training.

The First Principle

Understanding physiology should never replace good coaching.

It should explain it. The interference effect is real. But it is conditional, contextual, and frequently exaggerated. Most athletes don’t need to fear cardiovascular training. They need to respect recovery.

They need to understand adaptation. And above all, they need to remember that physiology doesn’t reward extremes. It rewards appropriate stress followed by appropriate recovery. That’s how stronger muscles are built. That’s how better cardiovascular systems are developed.

And that’s how thoughtful programming transforms isolated workouts into long-term performance.

Closing Thoughts

Perhaps the greatest lesson from the interference effect has nothing to do with AMPK or mTOR. It is a reminder that biology rarely conforms to the tidy, binary explanations we often prefer.

Strength or endurance. Cardio or muscle. Building or recovering. These are useful categories for conversation, but they are poor descriptions of how the human body actually functions. Our physiology is not governed by absolutes. It is governed by balance, adaptation, and context.

The best coaches understand this instinctively. Science simply helps explain why.

Next time we’ll discuss what performance programs actually look like. They’re the same physical qualities, simply applied with different priorities.

As always, the principles remain the same. The art is in the application of that knowledge.

References
Jones, T. W., Howatson, G., Russell, M., French, D. N., & Thomas, K. (2016). Performance and physiological differences between concurrent training and strength training. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 116(3), 665-678.