Personality and training

I've been reading a lot about this lately, and have you ever thought about the correlation of personality types and training results? It's a really interesting topic. 

In particular the Myers-Briggs test. 

"The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is an introspective self-report questionnaire designed to indicate psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions." - as per their website 

I thought it might be interesting, to see if certain personalities are able to adhere to goals better, judge stress differently, report fatigue differently etc.

I've never seen it tested in a controlled way, but from what I've witnessed so far in my career, yes, it does matter.  

Some personality types just seem to be able to handle training monotony better.  

Others crave variety in their training. 

 Now of course, this is from a psychological standpoint, so it's not totally clear that the results would differ all that much.  But if we look at it from the practical perspective of long-term-compliance, then yes, enjoyment of your training is huge and must be taken into account.

Similarly, someone who is overly aggressive or timid won't rate stress as accurately as a more level-headed person. 

So all this begs the question... what do you do about it? 

 I personally think a good coach can account for personality subconsciously, just by feeling the person out, without coddling it.  Let me give you an example...

A while ago I asked some other coaches/friends if they gave their clients and athletes stuff to do in the gym purely for "fun".  

Say an athlete really wants to do some curls.  Do you add it in or not?  

Some of them responded, "No.  PR's are fun. Train to set PR's."  

And at first, I agreed. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought this was an error. 

 If a lifter wants to get strong, but is so bored by the training that they can't make themselves do it, then that training isn't going to be terribly effective. Bottom line.

Similarly with stress. if they just don't have it within to rate stress accurately, then forcing it down their throats is going to be counter productive. 

Conversely, if their hopes and desires are so far off the mark that their training is going to be quite bad, maybe it's time to sit them down and have a discussion on goals.

If you have a powerlifter who absolutely needs his "arm day", then go along with it. 

 But that's about as far as I'm going to go before we have the goals talk.  

Fortunately, it's rarely that bad.  

Usually it's that the lifter wants some variety in the assistance movements or something similar. And that's okay. With a little skill and imagination, you can keep the training very effective even if you are including a lot of variety that you otherwise wouldn't.

So what does the rare person do who can't use stress as an indicator? In this case, I'd say relying on an experienced 3rd party is best (using video, a friend, etc ).  That would be the best way to auto-regulate intensity at that point.

I think there's a lot more that personality can tell us with training too.  

Id love to hear your thoughts on this, since all of you are the "personality" at question here. 

Patrick Ciera