A Simple Idea To Hit Your Goals
Opinion
Ultimately we are in the behaviour change game. Whatever it was that you did to get your last best result is not the thing that will take you further. Why?
There must be change because we seek bigger goals. Ask yourself this question. And be honest. If you have set yourself a bigger goal. Is their a desire to change (or get better)? Is it stronger or weaker than the effort it’s going to take to get better?
The thing is you’ve got to really want it because no other person can motivate you to change. You’ve got to want it yourself. If you want to get faster, are you willing to put in the effort, make the time, do the 1% stuff to get the result you want?
Significant change requires some kind of trauma or pain (like an injury, a DNF or worse bad health news). Something has to happen. I’ve had many discussions about this idea with a lot of clients over the years, who have achieved success in work. The conversation almost always comes back to one word. Discipline.
Which is interesting because a question I would and still do ask myself is “why is it that some people do the thing and most don’t". There’s a big difference between understanding and doing. Just because people understand what to do doesn’t ensure they will actually do it. You may think it doesn’t apply to you. This is a belief worth questioning.
Have you ever said this "I have the willpower and won’t let anything get in the way?" There’s an analogy about this. "People who achieve through remarkable willpower are ’strong’ and ‘heroic’. People who need help or structure are ‘weak’”.
This is a crazy idea. Hardly anyone can gauge or predict willpower. Most overestimate it and chronically underestimate the power of distractions in our environment that lead us astray. As a result the willpower we assume when we set a goal rarely measures up to the willpower we display in achieving the goal. Something always comes up to sink our boat. This belief causes overconfidence.
Or perhaps "I won’t get tired and my enthusiasm will not fade"
When we set our goals we do it with the belief our energy will not flag and will we never lose our enthusiasm for the process of improvement. The problem is we seldom recognise self-control is a limited resource. As we become tired our self-control begins to ebb and even disappear. The sheer effort leads to exhaustion and depletion.
Or even "I won’t get distracted and nothing unexpected will occur". When we make plans for the future, we seldom plan on distractions. We plan as if we live in the perfect world and will be left alone to focus on our training. Even though this state of being left alone has never happened, we plan as if this distraction free world will exist someday. Hmmm.
After all, who plans on getting an injury or sick or having work commitments suddenly override training time? And yet the odds of at least one of these occurring are high. We all experience unexpected bumps in the road like an injury, getting a cold or having to travel for work. Beware this belief builds unrealistic expectations.
The Boxer Philosophy
Mike Tyson said “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”. As we wander through life, what punches us in the face is our environment.
People don’t get better without accountability. We don’t just need specific targets; we need to see ourselves getting closer to the target not further away. If we’re not progressing we lose motivation and become frustrated. How many times have you set a goal and instead of getting better, you got worse or it didn’t happen?
How engaged in the process were you? Progress makes us feel a sense of accomplishment and gives meaning to the outcome we strive for.
Viktor Frankl in his classic Man’s Search For Meaning said “When we are no longer able to change the environment, we are challenged to change ourselves”. The struggle, not the result is what protects us in even the most unimaginable environments. Given people’s resistance to change I have found a simple formula for helping people stay on track, in fact I first started using it with myself years before. It’s a process of asking ‘proactive questions’ that begin “Did I do my best to…”
Rather than focusing on how well you performed, the questions shifts focus to how much I tried. Adding "trying" into the equation injects personal ownership and responsibility. It creates a different level of engagement. You can grade yourself on a 1-10 scale, with 10 being the best. If you grab a journal or create a spreadsheet make up a list of 5-10 questions starting “Did I do my best to…” and score yourself each week. We may not hit our goals every time, but now there’s no excuse for trying. Anyone can try.
HERE ARE A FEW THINGS WORTH KNOWING THIS WEEK….
Movement
What’s the hardest part about running? If you said something like getting to the finish line or intervals, I’m going to tell you to think different. I’d tell you the hardest part is getting to the start line healthy. Most runners I meet are too focused on the ’training plan’ and not on building the mechanics.
Mechanics starts with your ability to stabilise your stance. I challenge you right now to stand up, take your shoes and socks off, pull up one knee to hip height with your arms across your chest, can you stay perfectly still for at least 30 secs? No? Then you have a stability problem and you need to fix it.
As the only contact point between the body and the ground, our feet play a critical role in the way in which our body controls and reacts to every upright movement. With 26 bones, 33 joints, 19 muscles and 107 ligaments the human foot is a fascinating and complex biomechanics structure. However the functional importance of the foot does not stop at pronation and supination.
With thousands of plantar receptors, the foot is also proprioceptive-rich structure, containing thousands of small nerves which are sensitive to every subtle movement we make. Our ability to walk, run or jump is all initiated through stimulation of these nerves on the bottom of the foot. The problem I see all too often is athletes don’t train their feet like the rest of their body, lucky for you there’s a very good piece of equipment you can get called the Mobo Board, it’s worth considering.
Nutrition
Here’s a study worth skimming over if you’ve time. If not, I’ve outlined the 6 key points you should know. The study finds Plant-based diets play a key role in cardiovascular health, which is critical for endurance athletes.
Specifically, these diets improve plasma lipid concentrations, blood pressure, body weight, and blood glucose control, and, as part of a healthful lifestyle, have been shown to reverse atherosclerosis. The possibility that such diets may also contribute to improved performance and accelerated recovery in endurance sport.
Personally, I follow a "predominately" plant based approach meaning approximately 80% of the time I consume whole food plant based meals then the rest of the time I’ll have well sourced fish, chicken or meat. I believe we are all our own N=1 experiment so you must find what works well for you. As Michael Pollen said “Eat whole foods, not too much, mostly plants” (Obviously you’re consumption will change if you are in a training cycle)
Six reasons you should be considering becoming a predominantly plant based endurance athlete;
Even athletes are at risk for heart disease. In one study, 44 percent of endurance cyclists and runners had coronary plaques. A plant-based diet keeps athletes hearts strong by reversing plaque, bringing down blood pressure and cholesterol and reducing weight.
Meat consumption and high cholesterol levels exacerbate inflammation, which can result in pain and impair athletic performance and recovery. Some studies show a plant-based approach may have anti-inflammatory effects.
A plant based diet, which is low in saturated fat and free of cholesterol, helps improve blood thickness. This helps more oxygen reach the muscles, which means better athletic performance.
Plant based diets improve arterial flexibility and diameter, leading to better blood flow.
Compared with meat eaters, people eating a plant based diet get more anti-oxidants, which helps neutralise free radicals. These lead to muscle fatigue, reduced performance and slower recovery.
Plant based diets are typically low in fat and high in fibre which leads to reduced body fat. Less body fat is associated with increased aerobic capacity - studies show athletes on a plant based diet increase their Vo2 max this leads to better endurance.
Mindset
More Viktor Frankl. I recently re-read his classic Man’s Search For Meaning. I have to say the second reading was much more impactful. I not sure why. Maybe because I’m older and wiser. Ha! Nonetheless, I found a interesting article here. It’s about a release of a book called Yes To Life.
An interesting and compelling review of Viktor Frankl’s lost lectures on moving beyond optimism and pessimism to find the deepest meaning. Everything depends on the individual human being through their actions and not just words. Notable paragraphs from the article below, which I feel are worth reflecting on in this changing and challenging times.
“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus wrote in his classic 119-page essay The Myth of Sisyphus in 1942. “Everything else… is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.” A mere eleven months after surviving the unsurvivable, Viktor Frankl took up the elemental question at the heart of Camus’s philosophical parable in a set of lectures, which he himself edited into a slim, potent book published in Germany in 1946, just as he was completing Man’s Search for Meaning.
Frankl begins by considering the question of whether life is worth living through the central fact of human dignity. Noting how gravely the Holocaust disillusioned humanity with itself, he cautions against the defeatist “end-of-the-world” mindset with which many responded to this disillusionment
Frankl writes: The fact, and only the fact, that we are mortal, that our lives are finite, that our time is restricted and our possibilities are limited, this fact is what makes it meaningful to do something, to exploit a possibility and make it become a reality, to fulfill it, to use our time and occupy it. Death gives us a compulsion to do so. Therefore, death forms the background against which our act of being becomes a responsibility.
Recovery
During the last two marathons I trained for and indeed included in the training of my last preparation pre-COVID I use heat therapy as a additional way to promote further endurance gains, help me regulate body temperature and promote faster recovery. I became aware of studies speaking to its benefits a couple of years ago and was of the conclusion this would be a smart training strategy. I think it’s something worth considering and here is an article about Sauna use for long term health gains and athletic performance with plenty of references to studies done on its benefits. I’ve listed the main benefits below for a quick summary.
Cardiovascular Health : Heat exposure induces protective responses against the deleterious biological processes which drive cardiovascular disease and related disability.
Cardiovascular Disease : a large prospective studies conducted in eastern Finland have shown compared to men who never use the sauna, moderate sauna users (two to three times per week) are 27 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular-related causes, and frequent users (four to seven times per week) are 50 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular-related causes.
Hypertension : men who used the sauna two to three sessions every week were found to have a 24 percent lower risk of developing hypertension, and men who used the sauna four to seven times per week had a 46 percent lower risk for hypertension, compared to men who used the sauna only once per week. Just a single sauna session has been shown to lower blood pressure and improve arterial compliance. As such, sauna use may serve as a non-pharmacological means to address, or even prevent, hypertension.
Athletic Performance; findings show one 30-minute sauna session twice a week for three weeks post-workout increased the time that it took for the study participants to run until exhaustion by 32 percent compared to their baseline. These performance improvements were accompanied by a 7.1 percent increase in plasma volume and a 3.5 percent increase in red blood cells (RBCs).
Conclusion : Sauna bathing is associated with many health benefits, from cardiovascular and mental health to fertility and athletic endurance.
Culture
Yassine Diboun wrote a very good article here about how trail running isn’t as diverse as it could be. He speaks to his experiences growing up, having a conversation with his mother when he was 8 years old about the lyrics of song and what they meant. 33 years later he was having the same conversation with his daughter. We must do better. Together.
Also worth watching if you’ve got 15mins. A great short film about a fantastic cause in Africa helping young girls through running achieve more.
Sharing
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