"Where there's a will, there's a way!" they say.
But I say, sometimes it can be that a certain project is difficult to implement for a person. Or let me put it another way, because I am someone who says "anything is possible"!
To implement a project or achieve a goal, I need to know my personality. And no, I don't mean that you know what your name is and whether you like cake. Although these are valuable clues.
But what I mean is:
- What is your genetic disposition?
- How and by what is your character and behavior determined?
- What do you respond to, what do you dislike or in short "what makes you tick"?
- And most importantly, how do they get you to succeed?
Let's take training planning as an example:
There are countless damn good workout plans out there, such as HIT, Smolov, German Volume, Triphasic, etc. These plans have helped many many people succeed, but some athletes just abandon these great plans. They don't get into training despite motivation, they just don't feel like it. They don't feel like this plan and try something else.
The coach is amazed and thinks to himself "funny why does this happen to me with every 5th athlete?" The plan is really good! Scientifically and practically. So many of my athletes have had success with it.
Respect facts and preferences!
There are people who love:
- high volume / low intensity
- low volume / high intensity
- high volume / high intensity
- High variation in planning
- low variation in planning
- hard training like powerlifting, weightlifting or strongman
- Bodyweight training
- Team training
- Individual training
- long endurance training
- fun coordination training
- Functional fitness training
- Dancing, Yoga, Climbing, Slackline,...
- Etc. etc.
Some of us know exactly what we want, what we enjoy and what we are successful with.
But there are athletes for whom strength and conditioning training are not their daily bread and who go to a gym without specific knowledge. And that's the majority of people.
And there are people who have no idea what kind of training they prefer, or what suits them in the long term, for example because they lack experience.
Now the coach is faced with the task of getting to know his new protégé and finding out what suits him. This can take a while and may also need a few attempts...
The end of agony for coach and athlete
So, but for this problem there is actually a solution! And this solution comes from psychology. A clever man named Dr. Eric Braverman has developed a personality test.
With this one can understand relatively quickly what makes the person tick.
Is someone a "go it alone type" or a team player?
This can also be applied to the topic of training.
So what training methods best suit the person. Accordingly, there is the personality type with sporting inclinations!
For example:
Type strength athlete
Type bodybuilder
Type endurance
Type team athlete
Type Funsportler etc
I will go into the details of this test and its specific results or what it says about individual personalities in further posts.
But in this post I just want to give you the basics or better the idea.
What is determined in this test?
The Braverman test is just a questionnaire from which a profile is created.
Without a blood test or even a muscle biopsy, you can determine a person's fitness.
A personality profile is created through a variety of specific questions. We can find ourselves in four different personalities.
According to Braverman, these are:
- Dopamine type
- Acetylcholine type
- GABA type
- Serotonin type
As you can already see, these are named after neurotransmitters. So you can say that a neurotransmitter profile is created.
I gave the types new and easier to remember names, adapted to their characteristics:
- Powerman → Main property: Drive strength
- Sniper → Main trait: Aiming and concentration
- Team leader → main characteristic: integrates well in groups, stable and persevering
- Player → Main trait: Family, playful type.
Importantly, we are all to some extent a hybrid of these four personalities. There are balanced people, but also people with a strong dominance.
For example, very dopaminergic individuals.
Of course, this has advantages and disadvantages.
Advantage of this dominant powerman is that he invests all his energy, but he also gets bored relatively quickly. So you should only load him for a short time. But very high. He loves the border experience.
The dopaminergic Powerman loves intensive weight training. Few repetitions and high weight are ideal. You would scare off a Gaba guy with such a method.
In the profile balanced people can cope with almost everything. They can more easily use different methods or variable training plans. For example, mix strength and endurance. Since they do not have absolute dominance.
But for that, the same fire does not burn in them for "the one thing".
What are the sporting strengths of the different types?
- Powerman → Strength training in the low repetition range
- Example: Powerlifting, Weightlifting and Strongman
- Sniper → Strength training in the higher repetition range and martial arts with target orientation.
- Example: bodybuilding or boxing
- Team leader → Clearly team sports, but also endurance sports, or the combination of these
- Player → Varied fun sports, rather without goal orientation.
But. Not every powerman can do 500 kg deadlifts and not every sniper can become a good bodybuilder, it takes much more than the psychological basis and interest. Our body has to play along here. But at least we know that we can have fun with these sports purely theoretically.
Sports science fundamentals remain in place!
However, it is important to understand that sports science principles still hold true. If you want a muscle to grow and get bigger, then you have to do hypertrophy. If you want to improve your basic endurance, then you have to do endurance training. Even if you don't like it and it doesn't really suit your type.
Running every day is not going to create a big chest, even if it is a lot of fun for you as a GABA/team leader type.
And bench pressing doesn't really improve endurance significantly, which the powerman has to accept.
But this is where the art of coaching comes into play. How do I design endurance training for an athlete who hates classic endurance training?
Can the powerman sit on the ergometer for 60 min?
Theoretically yes, but probably intervals are smarter in his case. Here he comes to success with more joy.
The coach must create an individual plan with which the athlete achieves success but also enjoys the implementation.
I will go into more detail about each type in further posts!
Dopaminergic greetings 🙂
Richard Staudner
