What's the difference? Really it comes down to having long term goals, knowing what you need to improve on, and taking steps to actually get better at what you do. Does this mean getting as tired and sore as you can in a workout? Sometimes. But it shouldn't be the only goal of your program. You will burnout quick, and you may not even necessarily be getting any closer to your goals (depending on what they are).
I deal with a lot of athletes, who all have fairly similar goals (with some variation). They want to get better at their sport by getting (some combination of) faster, stronger, quicker, bigger, smaller, etc.
Piggy-backing with my last post regarding crossfit, where I pointed out the need for quality movement versus high training volume, there are ways to get closer to these goals without running the athletes into the ground.
Here's an example of a recent workout I did with some high school athletes:
I work with a small-school, varsity level high school team. This particular day, the seniors were missing for college visits and I was only left with 2 girls; both sophomores of really slender build and a general lack of strength. This is in contrast with a lot of the other girls that normally come (who I had originally planned that class around). I immediately shifted the focus of the day by asking them individually what their goals were. I knew what I was going to do with them, but I wanted them to know as well. (Good coaching tip: if the athletes feel involved in the process, their commitment level is much higher).
They both gave me great goals. Specifically, they wanted to get better at multi-directional speed. So after a good dynamic warm-up, I had a couple of options. Sure, I could've thrown some cones out there and ran them through countless repetitions of cutting drills. They would've gotten their change of direction reps in, been tired, and been nice and sore the next day from all the decelerating. But would that have made them better? Not necessarily.
With their willingness to learn, I thought it would be effective to take the time to actually break down the mechanics of a cut, have them practice it piece-by-piece until they were working at full speed. We started by learning the correct angle to place the feet when cutting, working in rehearsed patterns (where they knew where to cut), and finally to reactive full speed games (like mirror drills).
They barely got tired and would not get sore, but they both felt they got better, and that's all we can do as coaches.
After we finished this, they completed a great strength workout where they worked on improving movement patterns that we all need; lunging, pushing, pulling, and core stability.
So I hope you take the time (for yourself if not for athletes) to set goals with your training, and life for that matter, to make it easier to attack the goals aggressively but not always with misdirected wreckless abandon, as we've seen with a lot of group exercise/training classes. But if you need more visual reinforcement, here's a link that Brian "Sticks" Matthews shared with me. It contains videos that certain trainers are proud of. Hope you know enough to judge for yourself...
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fvimeo.com%2F1869376&h=1ec9c17d4d3711a56205b3f3db9139ad
Jon
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