Most training plans are written for an athlete who doesn’t exist — someone with no deadlines, no kids, no bad nights of sleep, and nothing standing between them and the workout on the calendar.
James isn’t that athlete. Neither are you.
When strength and conditioning coach Briana Kelly started working with James ahead of the Arizona Monster 300, the first thing she accounted for wasn’t his mileage or his squat numbers. It was everything else: a demanding career, a family, and the ordinary weight of a full life. Before she wrote a single session, she built flexibility into the plan. Watch Bri discuss this HERE.
Training stress is only part of the equation
Here’s the piece most of us miss. Your body doesn’t distinguish between a hard interval session and a hard week at work. It registers total load — training, job pressure, poor sleep, family demands — and adapts based on what’s left over.
Which means a program that ignores life stress isn’t rigorous. It’s just inaccurate. You can execute a plan flawlessly on paper and still get weaker, because the recovery the plan assumed was never actually available.
Briana’s approach with James was to treat those stressors as real inputs rather than excuses. Build the fluidity in from the start, and the training can adapt to the week you actually had.
What fluidity looks like in practice
A flexible plan isn’t a vague one. It still has structure and intent — it just holds that structure loosely enough to take life stressors and recovery into account.
- Know the purpose of each session. If you understand why a workout exists, you can adjust the how. A session meant to improve power can move days without losing its value.
- Have a B version of hard days. When you show up under-recovered, the choice doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing. Sometimes reducing volume and/or intensity will do the trick.
- Protect the non-negotiables. Usually one or two key sessions a week carry most of the adaptation. Everything else can flex around them.
- Let the plan respond to the week. A big work stretch or a rough patch at home is information, not failure. Adjustments are part of the game and will help yield the best performances.
The long game
Consistency over months beats intensity over days — and consistency is exactly what rigid plans destroy. The athlete who adapts their week and keeps showing up arrives at the start line healthier than the one who chases a perfect plan, burns out in month two, and spends month three recovering.
James finished the Arizona Monster 300. The program that got him there was built to bend.
Watch the full interview. Briana goes deep on strength & conditioning for the Arizona Monster 300, in-race body work, breath work for lower back stability, and pacing an athlete through a multi-day event: https://youtu.be/VJhGyKEQLbs