Success in a tactical occupation or combat sport is rarely due to what you can do once, but what you are able to do repeatedly in less-than-optimal conditions. This is why we are dogmatic in our belief that for tactical athletes, elevating your baseline competency is significantly more important than peaking your fitness for a certain event.

Are there exceptions? Of course. If you’re aspiring to join a SWAT team or whatever specialized organization and there’s a formal tryout or selection process, or you’re competing in Best Ranger, then you clearly prep to be your best at that specific moment in time.

But in general, what we can repeatedly do on no notice is significantly more important than what we can do once.

Floor vs. Ceiling – What’s the Difference?

The ceiling is peak performance – this is your squat max, your best ever 2 mile run time, your max pull-ups. You prepare for it. You know exactly when you’ll need to perform.

The floor is what you are capable of doing any day…no notice or fancy warm-up. You may be fatigued already. Is your physical capability high enough to still get the job done?

This isn’t to say that measures of peak performance aren’t important. We plaster new PRs all the time all over our Instagram page. However, new strength maxes, better run times, etc…we test these and track these because they are indicators that our training program is effective. They are not necessarily the purpose of the program.

The overarching purpose of the training was clearly exemplified the other day when a police officer who trains with us emailed me and told me this story. What started out as routine questioning turned into a fleeing suspect and foot chase. No time to warm up or build to a max effort sprint, the officer immediately began a sprint (while wearing gear), eventually catching up to the individual and physically detaining the suspect.

Seeing concurrent improvement in both strength and repeat sprint ability on our program are great data points that we’re moving the needle in the right direction, but the goal has never been to hit a 500-pound squat PR (though not uncommon), it’s to build the lower body strength and power that holds up under fatigue. It’s to give you the physical qualities to ensure you’re capable of performance whenever and wherever.

The physical performance by our police officer athlete clearly demonstrates what we mean by “raising the floor.” It’s the on-demand performance that’s ready at any time – no warning.

Train for Your Worst Day

Our entire system for training athletes is built around the notion that you prepare for your worst day.

When stakes are high, conditions are terrible, and you have no choice but to perform and win.

No, this doesn’t mean that every training session is some brutal workout from hell that just leaves you laying in a pool of sweat on the floor. What it means is that we are getting your baseline capability to the highest sustainable state possible (i.e. raising the floor).

Because if you think about this in terms of disaster relief, the fireground, or a combat deployment, you don’t get to choose when to rise to the occasion. You need to be ready for it whenever it comes.

And when it comes, the conditions will likely be such that you need to perform when fatigued, when the weather sucks, and when there’s a high degree of stress.

The Training Plan

Training an athlete to do this requires a coach with an understanding of how to balance training stress and progress athletes in a sustainable way.

Anybody can put together workout that make you tired. It takes a bit more thought and expertise to do this the right way.

A few considerations we like to include in our plans:

Build Strength with Intent

As Louie Simmons loved to say, weak things break. Our belief is that strength is the foundation, and we need to get our athletes brutally strong. We do that through compound movements using a barbell and strength implements that require you to stabilize and lift a heavy external load.

We don’t actually want to accumulate a lot of fatigue here. We want to focus on getting strong, which means lifting heavy weight with adequate rest times so you can sustain near-maximal muscle contractions.

While there’s many ways to do this, one of my favorites is using low volume sets, such as the 3-5 range and including 5-8 sets per training session (like 8×3 or 5×5). I find this helps keep a focus on movement quality under heavier loads. Total training volume can be increased weekly.

Use Fatigue as a Tool

We don’t train under fatigue all the time, but we are constantly working to build resistance to it.

We do this through building mileage each week with a progressive conditioning plan. Currently, we have three dedicated conditioning days each week that provides an interval session, distance session, and tempo or fartlek session. Each challenges the athlete in different ways, but all with the purpose of developing a large aerobic base.

The Tier System strength training template we use in our programs also allows us to build power and explosiveness under fatigue. Without going too in depth about Tier in this article, what you need to know is that the exercise order is such that you train power when you’re fresh to build the peak, but also under fatigue to build the repeatability of it.

While I understand that it feels like an accomplishment to push through a WOD or a really high-volume session, keep in mind that performance is a long game.

We need to build strength, power, and conditioning, but we need to do it in a way that allows our athletes to stay consistent and progress their physicality over time.

Sustained Excellence

It would help many to reframe their thinking that performance is a measurement of something we only do once.

Performance in a tactical setting isn’t about what you did one time…it’s about what you can do all the time.

I will always take somebody who’s performance is reliable over somebody who is occasionally excellent. We seek to raise the floor so we can sustain excellence over a period of years…not just one time.

What you’ll find is that when you focus on being consistent, training with a long-term goal, and stop being focused so much on short term intensity, that your baseline will eventually surpass what most people can do on their best day.

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