Why My Training Plan Changes Every Year

My training has looked completely different every year for probably the last decade.

Currently, I’m training as a hybrid athlete while balancing my hockey national league season around that. I’m running, lifting heavy, and playing a lot of hockey.

Last year, my training was very hockey-specific with plyometrics (explosive work), sprints, and compound movements. The year before that, I was focused on building mobility and strength through a larger range of motion. And before that, I was doing a lot of hypertrophy (muscle-building) work.

My programming has never stayed stagnant for long.

But underneath this constant ebb and flow of my training, there’s an important layer. And I didn’t fully notice it until I started coaching others, and realized they were missing it.

For me, it’s:

• Protein at every meal

• Lots of steps every day

• Eating high quality foods

• Prioritizing high quality sleep

• Always doing some sort of resistance training

• Training of some sort each day, even if what counts as “training” changes completely depending on what I’m training for

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That’s the floor. The bare minimums I hit. And it’s simpler and more flexible than people think it can be. But the floor is never supposed to be complicated or impressive.

What I’ve noticed is that most people don’t fail because they’re following the wrong training program. They fail because they focus on the 20% and skip the crucial 80%. Then, when life gets hard, there’s nothing underneath them to fall back on.

The “optimal” training plan and diet are actually the last thing you should be looking to build, not the first.

The floor is boring. It doesn’t look like something that will bring any progress. But it’s the only part of this that survives every version of your life, whether that version is a world championship or a Tuesday where nothing goes to plan.

And when you can stay consistent, you will see results.

You don’t need everything dialed in. You need the floor to be realistic enough that you’ll actually stand on it, every single day, regardless of what season you’re in.

— Ashley

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