4 Fundamental Truths of Tactical Training

As a strength and conditioning coach, one of the first things you’re taught when training athletes is that just about every stimulus you impose needs to be specific to the sport. This idea of “sport specificity” permeates the decision-making process to a fault. Many times, coaches hamstring their own lines of thinking as they search for the perfect carryover between the gym and the field. Myriad arguments are had over whether or not the back squat is necessary for speed, whether Olympic lifts should or shouldn’t be included in a program, whether we should overload the throwing motion with weighted implements, etc., etc.

In my experience with tactical human performance, this struggle seems to be even more prolific. My argument is that a lot of this indecision has to do with the fact that most coaches in the tactical setting are searching for a 1:1 translation of combat to sport. To expand, we are trying to put the “sport of combat” into the same types of boxes we put football, basketball, track, etc into as we create paradigms around how to train for each of them. For example, I can attach GPS monitors onto a center forward during a soccer game and get enough statistical information to help structure my training plan with a high degree of specificity. While the game itself may be chaotic, it exists within a specific subset of rules and boundaries that allow for some control over that chaos. Combat does not play by the same rules. In fact, I would make the case that combat plays by no rules whatsoever.

I’ll cut to the chase. My intent with this article is to lay out four fundamental truths that I think must be accounted for in every well-rounded tactical training plan. I’ll try to paint with broad brushstrokes here with the goal being to dive deeper into each concept in future articles. 

1. Training must be athlete-centric

In traditional strength and conditioning, The Program is law. Whatever the coach puts on paper must be adhered to, otherwise, failure and injury are imminent. Much of this thought process stems from the idea that athletes (and humans in general) are robots and thus, adaptation can be predicted and planned for by the coach. In a tactical setting, this logic falls apart. A program must be created around every other competing demand. If the coach does not account for scheduling conflicts, additional training requirements, psychological and psychosocial stressors, athlete buy-in, etc. then the program is ineffective.

2. Training must be auto-regulated

Along with the “athletes are robots” mindset comes the idea that we as coaches can predict output weeks or months down the road. We have all seen 2-, 6-, 12-, and even 36-month-long programs with sessions planned down to the reps, sets, and loading on any given day. But how are we to know that on a Tuesday, six months from now, Athlete A will be in the right training state to complete 3x5 @ 85% 1RM? The truth is we don’t. Instead of trying to get ahead of adaptation with rigorous planning, a tactical training plan needs to have constraints in place that allow for fluctuations and adjustments on a weekly or even daily basis. Using things like Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) is a popular strategy. 

3. Training must be concurrent

Early in my career, I thought of tactical athletes as inherently strength/power athletes. Much of my training focus was around maximizing absolute strength and size with occasional touches on aerobic work just to check the box. After several years, I did a 180 and started to operate under the assumption that tactical athletes were endurance athletes who needed occasional touches of strength work…just to check the box. The reality is that an effective tactical training plan needs to take more of a hybrid approach and include all things at all times. Instead of alternating periods of strength and endurance, training becomes more about adjusting volume knobs so that certain things are prioritized at certain times, but all things are included at all times. 

4. Training must be flexible

We’ll get into the “periodization versus planning” debate in future articles, but for the sake of laying out four principles, an effective tactical plan needs to allow for flexibility within training session selection. As a coach, it is my job to lay out a week of training in a way that makes the most sense from an optimization perspective. That being said, it is inevitable that the competing demands of my athlete’s time come into play as soon as we press ‘go.’ Accepting this truth allows for a situation where plans are structured such that Monday can become Thursday, Wednesday can become Friday, Friday can move to Tuesday, etc. without a massive loss in adaptation. Essentially, tactical training plans need to be robust enough to accommodate the realities of the real world. 

There. As promised, four fundamental truths for tactical training. As I mentioned at the outset, this initial article is intentionally broad. Each of these truths merits its own series of posts diving into innumerable rabbit holes to tease out practical tips and tricks for how to actually implement these training strategies. I should also add that thinking about the challenge of training for tactical athletes from a strategies perspective alleviates a lot of the unnecessary infighting around which methods work best. We’ll dive deeper into that concept later on as well.