Patience vs Variation

A student sent me this article on when we should be patient or stick the course on a current training piece and when to add variation or complexity. The article has a bit of kinesiology lingo but I think it does a good job of describing the basic programming concepts that I think any athlete or person who trains for a specific goal would appreciate. These concepts include:

1.) The Stress and Stress/Adaptation Cycle (How are body handles stress in order to adapt to a new stimulus)
2.) Plateaus (Reaching that point where there is less return or gains with given work)
3.) Overreaching and Overtraining (Are we getting worse with more training, or did we just reach too high and were impatient?)
4.) Variation versus Patience (Are there situations when we should vary intensity or stick the current course for longer?)

Read article here.

While CrossFit is mostly about variance and being good at most things, each one of us has specific areas in our training that require more patience and variance in training than others to avoid plateaus. Some of us need a ton of consistency with simple things, especially when starting out, while other times, as we become more adapted to a specific skill or stimulus, varying the intensity or complexity is that next step to getting over the hump.