Lydia is ramping up for a half marathon early next year, and there’s a surety she feels. Knowing where you are and where you’re going is the most important part of any map of progression. With running, that map appears set.

RUNNING PERIODIZATION

As we talk, Lydia describes how programming depends on the event – its intensity, its duration and length, and what goals you’re shooting for. 12 weeks is a good training time for a half marathon from her base skill.

There are established modules where you can work on specific vectors of progress, like endurance or inclines – she’s now working on speed.

Her sense of security is stunning to me.

But as she continues, it starts making more sense. Running is relatively simple – it’s distance and time. It has tons of data because lots of people run and keep track of it. Furthermore, this abundance of tracking seems to have created a consensus in a way few training regiments have. There are established parameters for not only training up to peak performance, but also knowing how much time to take off so as not to overtrain. In fact, Lydia talks a lot about how easing off the throttle seems key to consistent forward progression.

LACK OF PERIODIZATION IS BAD FOR MEDITATION

The stillness of the meditation hall is an apt metaphor for the lack of dynamism found there. 

When I think of sessions I’ve put in at local temples or meditation groups, each practice is roughly the same as the last. Overtraining can happen a lot - the default is to cram as much practice as possible as you advance. And after my own “half marathon” equivalent – an intense meditation course – I find myself static as well, not knowing how or where to go on my own map of progress.

It has me asking - what would a periodized system of meditation consist of?

BEYOND CROSS-TRAINING MEDITATION

I benefited greatly from working on different angles of the mind like awareness, concentration, and compassion. The course I finished exposed me to over 30 techniques, many of which I had never tried or heard of. As in any discipline, different practices and training styles improve the speed at which we improve.

But I’ve been so caught up on cross training that I didn’t realize that there was a level even beyond that. Body builders talk about it in macrocycles and athletes have seasonal vs maintenance training - it’s a system that includes cross training but also builds upon it, including challenges and times off, extending strategically across years.

Meditation is more confusing simply because metrics are hard to come by. It’s not just duration and distance. It deals with nebulous concepts like equanimity and focus. And while there are metrics – crude old school ones measuring time to newer devices that track brain waves, heart rate variance, and galvanic skin response – it’s still difficult.

But even without precise quantification, this way of looking at practice seems far superior, especially in a field where people tend to languish for years or decades with very little forward movement. 

It seems as though the less clear data we get, the less pressure there is to move towards a periodized training system. However, I would argue that those disciplines are where it’s needed the most.

A ROBUST MEDITATION TRAINING SYSTEM

I envision a system that takes all the training concepts of running and overlays them on to mental training.

What if there were months where you worked on times - both long AND short -  or where the speed at which you got into states was what you focused on? What if some emphasized how long you could sustain those states? Or if some forced you to practice meditating in real world situations? How about training modules where you targeted focus or visualization depending on how good or bad you were at them.

Imagine training up to different events - whether that’s gunning for stream entry at a retreat or just a particularly stressful family vacation. Such a system should also provide guidance for not only ramping up practice, but how to ease back off of it.

I see a system that’s truly all encompassing - one where information guides cross training and time off in order to peak higher every year you train. That’s a paradigm that helps guarantees true, all around competence. Furthermore, it should ideally give you that same surety of practice runners seem to have, the ability to project where you’ll be in a year and how you’ll improve.

This is desperately needed in every good system that involves growth, and we should be talking about it for all learning, even creative tasks like art or writing. The product of this system is not only someone who has practiced for X number of years, but a well rounded master who has excelled on all fronts of training and knows it.

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I still don’t know where I’m heading on my next stage of meditation. But my hunch is that running will show me the way.