While this is not a great approach from a doctors perspective, it is the best and most effective way to develop hardcore fitness and to cure injuries. It doesn’t mean the disregarding of specificity and doing every single type of training in one particular chaotic exercise routine.
It means that, when you are injured, you look at every single thing and work on it. When you have chronic tendonitis, multiple stress fractures, plantar fasciitis, ITB syndrome, while certain focus on the area is of course necessary, you should be dealing with the entire body and the full spectrum of movements.
Why ? You don’t know what you will discover ! You might never know what you can further develop and while you are healing your injury, you could be becoming a better athlete in the meantime. As a trail runner, I can for instance work on balance, on reflexes and reaction time, on eye sight, on hand eye coordination. Major movers, core stability, plyometrics, yeah, great. Everybody does that. What about the stuff, what makes you really different ? Look at the Oregon project. They use some light boxing, water exercises, kettlebells. Totally out of ordinary from a regular high school track project.
Paul Chek is painting artistically outdoors, but time to time he brakes up the creativity with club bell drills, then building a pyramid from odd shaped rocks. Switching between, art, coordination, strength, explosiveness, rhythm and dance, micro-movements and so.
There is a reason for fighters including short periods of pc gaming or doctors using virtual reality to cure fear of heights, animals or enclosed spaces. It works on your mind. The brain is the most effective tool for becoming better than the you inn the rightnow.
Examples
What would I do for instance if moving is my job, but have a broken leg ? Runners, race car drivers, NBA players. I would work on my nutrition for sure and would do a lot of fasting. Not to keep my body weight low, but to heal faster, develop fat burning and probably heal other parts of the body too. I would use CBD, magnesium and infrared therapy and would sleep a lot.
Breathing, eyesight, dental health. Becoming ambidextrous in writing and juggling will light up your brain. Write 5 lines each hour with both hands. Try drawing the same thing with left and right. Try doing it in the same time.
Develop fast reading skills, so you can finish a book a day. Maybe two ?
Develop your voice. Singing, talking, expressing. Try using word games, puzzles, mathematic equations.
Call your loved ones and practice honesty and manhood !
All of this and more, done all the time, what will make you a better athlete ! Soldiers, football and basketball clubs, cross country ski teams and fighter have already been doing it. Get your mind growing, get your soul into peace mode, put your body into beast-mode. Focus, concentrate, flow anytime, anywhere.
This could be a lengthy article about examples and periodisation and workout structuring. I mean really, a book probably. It is just a reminder for me actually, to not to let go stuff I find beneficial. That I train, I run and train again, but I do my dietary experiments, I practice complete honesty with my wife, I develop skills of writing and reading, I practice French, English, Hungarian, and do basic mathematics and physics and so. I try my best, to be able to perform to the max, when specificity comes into the picture ! Why ? Believe it or not ! Specificity is not that specific !
All races, all situations all conditions are different. The more you merit from the different training stimuluses, the more you can apply those to certain conditions. Learning about the weather and observing it is a skill. Not only for ultra runners, but marathon or even track athletes. What kind of clothes to wear in what temperatures and how the actual running surface functions in what kind of footwear or how your body reacts and what to eat or not to in the days leading up to the race ! So many little tricks to learn and apply for the real type of peaking !
I finish before I start writing down more examples and describing another situation. You want longevity ? You want constant performance gains not just a 3 – 5 – 10 year shooting start career ? You want love your sport and your life every single day till the end of your life ? Practice and learn ! Grow stronger ! Grow that inner human !
Boundless Runner 
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