I was working on a project, looking at business trends over time and it made me think about training. Early on there was a very large growth phase. Profitability will drive growth, but growth will decrease profitability. This is where the connection to training came in.
This project was looking at return on equity (ROE) and how profitability, efficiency, and leverage were driving it. As a company grows and profitability begins to decline, that is where there probably should be financial people paying attention to the financial health of the company. This analysis becomes more and more important as margins become tighter and tighter.
This is when coaching is probably needed in training. After the first few years, the growth levels off and then the margins become much smaller. A coach can help navigate training in a way to be sure that profitability is still positive. A quick caveat, most people will not train long enough to get to this point. This isn’t about training years, but hard consistent training years.
When we break ROE down further, we have a relationship between profitability and what is known as asset turnover, efficiency. This is how good a company is at turning its assets into revenue. Profitability measures how much of that revenue a company holds onto as earnings.
When we multiply the net margin (profitability) by the asset turnover ratio we get the return on invested capital (ROIC). A company like Walmart works with very thin margins, but an exceptionally high asset turnover ratio. This asset turnover ratio is what drives their earnings. It is not all about net margins.
A good way to think about this is with two restaurants: a fast-food place and a fine dining restaurant. The fast-food restaurant works on low margins and high turnover, while the fine dining restaurant works on high margins and low turnover. In the same industry, if both are successful, their ROIC will be similar.
Training works on small margins once you get past the first few years of beginner gains. It requires a high turnover rate. The need to do more is necessary. As people get older, time becomes a more expensive commodity. Also, knowing that more is necessary, staying healthy becomes important.
We can further break this down further. A higher lift volume is trying to work on higher asset turnover, while conjugate is higher net margins on the lifts, with volume coming from accessories. The best program for people will be the one they enjoy the most and the one that also takes time and staying healthy into consideration.
The higher volume lift programs are much more prevalent in the USAPL then they are elsewhere. The USAPL crowd is very young. Younger people tend to have more time and recover better. The average age of USAPL competitors stays young and might even be trending younger. Either lifters are leaving and competing elsewhere, or they come and go in a short period of time.
If they were changing federations in large numbers, we would see the training style more in those other federations. That means that most conclusions drawn about that training style are based upon young beginners in a large growth phase, where almost anything works.
That style of training is not new as the Russians utilized it. However, that type of high-volume training was reserved for the national level lifters after many years of a long-term athletic development plan. Think of this foundation as equity, the money that funds the business.
That equity helps with recovery and staying healthy. Too many people start with high volume lift programs without this base. Conjugate addresses this by focusing on accessories for the volume in the program. However, keep these simple. They don’t need to be crazy. Variations can use boxes, boards, blocks, bands, chains, and rotating bars. It doesn’t have to be more complex than that.
A squat is a squat at some point. Variability with changing velocities through bands and chains, and rotating bars, allows for a greater skill acquisition. Variability drives long-term skill development. The research is very clear here. Beginners should use these tools too. This doesn’t mean that the lifts themselves should be avoided, they should be included at times too.
The best plan is going to take all these factors into consideration. What the person enjoys, time constraints, background, etc.