It’s not conditioning it’s training, and not even training, if we are not teaching.
Conditioning is Pavlovian. That is, every time I do this, they do that. That’s not training. It’s brain-washing, manipulating, mechanizing, automacizing. Is that what we are really after when we hold practice to prepare them for the upcoming contest?
Training is teaching. That is: when this happens, how will you respond? What is the best response? How can you employ your body to act in the best and most efficient way?
Training that teaches activates the brain to body connection, gradually re-writing their software into hardware. Hardware they can swap out with new training, new info, new feedback, under new conditions. Hardware they must swap out as their body grows and changes. That will take some time. We’d do well to give them that time to solder in the new circuitry.
The difference between conditioning and training is everything. But only if we are teaching.
