Every so often you'll come across a program that proudly advertises how few people finish it. The message is that a low finish rate must mean the plan is serious, and that the people who complete it are a rare breed. I understand the appeal, and I have real respect for anyone who takes on something demanding. After more than a decade of coaching endurance athletes, though, I look at those numbers a little differently, because a dropout rate tells you about the plan, not about the people in it.

The short answer: A program's dropout rate isn't evidence that it works. If most athletes can't sustain a plan, or have to choose between following it and responding to pain, recovery, or real life, the plan is likely measuring compliance more than developing performance. That tells me the plan is building spin for itself, not support for the athletes.

What finishers can and can't tell you

Finishers can be convincing. They post their results, they credit the plan, and they often mean every word. It's worth paying attention, though, to who tends to be in that group. Typically, these are athletes with the most recovery capacity going in - things like like open schedules, good sleep, resilient joints, and no nagging injuries. Many of them would have improved on a wide range of reasonable plans.

The athletes who left along the way typically don't write about it, so their experience stays out of the storyline. That's a big part of why a completion number, by itself, can't tell you whether a program builds people or breaks them.

What hard training is for

I'm obviously a big believer in hard training. A tough ruck or a heavy workout day shows you where you stand in your training. It gives your body a reason to adapt. Choosing the harder thing is part of our community's core personality.

What makes the difference is how the plan works around those hard days. Your tendons and connective tissue adapt more slowly than your lungs and legs, so an athlete can feel ready long before their body is. An athlete's capacity also gets built in a sequence, with recovery in-between. When a training plan leaves that gap unaddressed, athletes can get hurt or burned out. It's easy to mistake that for a lack of toughness when it's really a matter of poor design.

People are quick to put the blame on their own shoulders, when they should be questioning what the training plan is asking of them to begin with, and if it fits with their reality, or, whether they've fallen for marketing.

A quick look at how all-or-nothing rules work

Some programs use a rule where missing a single requirement sends you back to day one. Imagine an athlete who's consistent and reliable, and they complete every requirement on 98% of days. To get a perfect 60 days, the athlete has to succeed on day 1 and day 2 and day 3, all the way through day 60. When you need every one of several things to happen, you multiply the individual chances together. It's a compounding probability.

98% sounds nearly perfect, and it feels like it should produce a nearly perfect 60 days. But 98% means missing about one day in 50.

Real life doesn't give many people 60 perfectly-trained days in a row. Unexpected things like a work trip, a sick kid, or a bad night of sleep can end the attempt, no matter how well the training was going. So rules like that end up awarding easy calendars at least as much as for fitness.

The two-choice test

Here's a simple way to tell whether a plan is measuring compliance. Ask whether the athlete has to choose between two things:

1. Following the plan exactly as written.
2. Responding intelligently to what's happening in their body and their life.

When those two conflict, the plan has a clear design problem. Normal things like a sore shoulder, a rough week at work, or a virus going around the house are all normal. A good training program has space for their athletes to adjust for those unexpected events. Athletes who train for years learn to see and adjust to demands in their lives. A plan that penalizes them teaches them to shrink away from the work - not grow towards it.

Questions to ask any program

You can hold any plan up to these, ours included.

• Does it progress by what the body can absorb? We train by miles, which respects your needs in a way a fixed target can't. We don't require a day-by-day approach. You're an adult - you don't need your hand held, or someone yelling in your ear. If it's important enough to you, you'll learn the habits and behaviors with space built in for flexibility. No space and a rigid approach is a recipe for failure.
• Does recovery have a designated place in the week? Rest built into the structure is intentional programming, and rest taken out of guilt is a debt. It can't be simpler than that. Rest is as necessary to a training plan as the workouts are.
• Can you adjust without falling off the plan? That's why we use a basket model, where athletes choose their Challenges, Miles, and Workouts inside a structure that still holds together.
• Should good training ever be hard?
  Yes! Hard efforts test your capacity, and the plan around them should build that capacity gradually with recovery built in. We encourage our athletes to take at least one to two rest days per week depending on where their current fitness is as well as their goals.
• Does it account for pain? BUILD, our strength program, has injury flags that automatically remove contraindicated exercises and substitute remedial ones, so an athlete with a cranky knee keeps training.
• What happens to the people who don't finish? Ask for the number of people who started, and then ask why they left.

The number we care about

The athletes who last are the ones who are still showing up in month twelve, and year three, and year eleven. That's the finish rate we're after, because a body built with adaptability is available for what they need or want out of good health: the long hike, lugging through the airport with two heavy bags, or the grandkid who wants to be picked up and carried.

So when a program tells you most people won't finish, it's useful information. Then put it in the "questions to ask yourself" column, where it belongs. Is setting yourself up to fail worth it?