Optimal Training

Optimal Training Lessons from the Trials

I watched pretty much every minute of the coverage of these Olympic Trials, and throughout I kept noticing a number of trends, occurrences, and themes that warranted discussion.  So here are the big Optimal Training Lessons that I took away from these Trials.

It's not about being the best; it's about being the best at the right time -- Alan Webb is one of the top two milers in the US right now, when his entire career is taken into consideration.  He may already be one of the best two ever.  But he was certainly not one of the best at the Trials.  Same thing for Khadevis Robinson.  KD has been America's best for a long time, just not last week.

The toughest thing about the Olympics isn't qualifying, it's preparing for qualifying.  You only get the chance every four years.  And in the US, the competition is too good to miss it (or fake it) and get in.  Even in the distances.  Many top US athletes aren't going to Beijing.  From a "potential medals" standpoint, the team is probably weaker for them not being there.  But from a process standpoint, I can't think of a race where I would argue the best three at the Trials aren't going, except maybe the 800m (but Bennett should have gone for the time, and KD...well, after his 6th in the prelim, he obviously wasn't in top form).

"Fortune favors the bold" -- Shalane Flanagan said this after her 10,000 meter victory and it was never more true than at these Trials.  In both of the 10k races, the top three created separation early and ran away to victory.  Same in the women's 5k.  The men's 5k saw five guys go, which led to a gut-wrenching last 1000 meters that saw Solinsky and Asmerom just miss it.  Which goes to show that the favors of fortune are never guaranteed, no matter how bold.  But would they have had a shot if they'd let the top three get away from them?

There is a difference between bold and reckless, too.  But you don't always get to know where that line is until after the race.  Given the strength of the 800m field, we now know that KD's leading was reckless and Symmonds' trusting his kick was bold.  We know that Jennings' leading the 1500m was reckless--albeit necessary--while Lomong and Manzano's tenacity at staying with Lagat was bold.  And we know that very few runners without "A" standards were bold or reckless--Jennings notably excluded--when they had nothing to lose by being either.

The best prepared usually win, but the best 3 don't always finish there -- When you look at the winners for each race, you see a striking commonality.  They were all the best in their fields.  Clark and Symmonds in the 800m.  Rowbury and Lagat at 1500m.  Willard and Famiglietti in the steeple.  Goucher and Lagat at 5000m.  And Flanagan and Abdirahman at 10,000m.  Across the board, we knew that these were the favorites--or at least top 2--in their events.  And these athletes were obviously the most fit, most race-ready, most prepared athletes on the track when the gun went off.

But that doesn't hold when you look at 2nd and 3rd.  Especially 3rd.  Bennett and Smith in the 800m.  Wurth and Lomong in the 1500m.  Barringer and McAdams in the steeple.  Flanagan and Dobson in the 5000m.  And Begley and Torres in the 10,000m.  When I look at these fields, I see a number of people I wouldn't bet on in head-to-head races with the people they beat.  That's what makes the Trials great, though.  Your resume no longer matters.  I wrote more about this in this post, but glory is to be had by those runners who are prepared to "race the people on the track, and not their legend".

Momentum and "alpha" energy matter -- I loved the interview Ian Dobson gave to Flotrack (I posted about it here).  In the interview he talked about how much "momentum" matters in running, and how when you lose it, it can be very hard to get back.  In the same breath he talked about Matt Tegenkamp's "alpha energy": Matt is the lead wolf.  He knows he's the best, so he runs like it.  And other runners defer to him to some extent because they, too, feel his "alpha energy". 

Neither of these are physical qualities.  They are purely mental, but they make a huge difference in how a runner performs in championship meets.  Success tends to breed success, and frustration tends to breed frustration.  That has everything to do with the expectations a runner puts on herself, the self-efficacy they step on the line with, and what they visualize themselves achieving before they race.  When you've been experiencing nothing but frustration, the natural response is to prepare yourself for more of the same.  Ditto for success. 

The runners who were able to overcome that frustration did it by generating confidence through their training, relying on past successes to re-orient themselves, and training with others who had momentum or "alpha energy".  If you are currently struggling with "momentum" issues, the above is the best way I know to get out of them.

Training partners make a difference - As mentioned above, I noticed that a lot of the people running really well at these Trials train in groups.  Amy Begley trains with Kara Goucher: both qualified in the 10k.  Christian Smith trains with Nick Symmonds: both qualified in the 800m.  Rowbury and Donahue (and even Flanagan) train in the same group: both qualified in the 1500m.  Lagat and Abdi train together in Arizona: both qualified in their respective events.  There are probably more examples as well.

This isn't to criticize anyone who trains alone.  I know my friend Jon Rankin does, and he's made that decision for good reasons.  But the benefits of having training partners should not be ignored.  When your partner is better than you, you benefit from having them there to key off of, to learn from, to mimic.  You learn to adopt their strengths when it suits you.  And when your partners are not as fit as you, there are still numerous benefits to be had.  On your off days, they will challenge you.  They force you to be an example everyday.  When they make mistakes, as young runners are especially prone to do, you learn from those vicariously.

More than anything, though, training can be a lonely, tiring, soul-grinding experience.  Especially when things aren't going well.  So having someone there to lighten the mood, to talk with during cool-downs, or simply to look at and say, "He did it, and I know how he did it, so there's nothing stopping me from doing it," can be a huge advantage when preparing for an event like the Trials.  I think this goes a long way to explaining why Christian Smith, Amy Begley and Erin Donahue qualified.  They really weren't among the top 3 in their events, but they trained with the best and were able to use that knowledge to their advantage come race day.

Champions have overcome adversity -- This stood out to me more than any others right from the beginning.  And when I say "champions", I'm not only referring to the winners.  When you look at every qualifier, you find a background story that includes a major injury, a life of poverty, a difficult transition period, etc.  They had entire years where they either couldn't run or struggled to the point that they wondered if they'd ever get to where they wanted to be.  And some, like Lomong, have life stories that are so filled with adversity you have to imagine the pressure of a track race is nothing at this point.

Persisting in the face of adversity is one of the defining characteristics of successful people.  This doesn't mean they do the same thing over and over until they are successful.  That's called being stubborn.  Stubborn can be good, but not when what you're doing just creates more adversity for you (injuries, illness, weight gain, etc.). What successful people do is always keep the goal in sight, despite the detours on the way to achieving it.

"He who has a why can bear almost any how."  Nietsche said that way back whenever Nietsche lived.  And he's absolutely right.  I would add to that, however, that if your "why" is strong enough, you will find your "how".  When you run into those tough times in your training or life, when you suffer that injury or illness or loss of a loved one, remember that it's something that can and will be overcome.  If your "why" is strong enough.

Training starts with Taking Responsibility

Optimal Training Principle: Each athlete is responsible for his or her own training.

What's the point in having a coach?  No seriously.  Why bother?  I mean, sure they may smell nice, but they also have big egos, tell dumb jokes, and repeat the same stories year after year.  They are focused more on the team's success than your own, they enjoy watching you throw up after practice, and to top it off they spend most of their time paying attention to athletes who aren't you.

Why not just go it alone?

If you haven't given this question serious thought, then chances are you haven't given enough thought to your training.  If you've always had a coach and never thought twice about it, you will also likely recognize your own training in the graph below:

Most athletes (myself included) have experienced this type of division of responsibility between themselves and their coach. 

Under this model, the coach plans the workout (or the schedule) and you do what you are told.  Your responsibility is to execute to your coach's specifications.  After the workout (or race, or season) the coach evaluates your progress, and refines the next training program, which you then dutifully attempt to execute. 

I'm not saying this is always the case, or that there is no feedback happening in the process, or even that you never have a say in the evaluation or the planning.  What I'm saying is that in this situation, the athlete only takes responsibility for one thing: executing the workout.

That's not optimal.  It may be easy.  It may be normal.  It may be expected of you.  Heck, it may even be effective and efficient, to a degree.  But it is not optimal. 

For you to realize your potential, you must take responsibility for all aspects of your training.  You do not just have a coach, you choose to have a coach.  You do not give up responsibility for planning and execution, but rather you delegate responsibility to your coach.  You do not run for the coach, but rather the coach coaches for you. 

The optimal division of responsibility might look something like this:

I know, all I did was move the green line!  (But what a move it was.)

Responsibility for Planning:  You and your coach will share this responsibility.  But it starts and ends with you.  You can delegate the main planning activities to your coach.  In most cases, this is the smart thing to do.  They are experts, after all.  But when it comes time to "sign off" on the workouts, you have to give your input, express your reservations if you have any, and ensure that you are in agreement with the plan.  Don't get stuck trying to execute a plan you don't believe in.  It rarely works.

Responsibility for Execution:  This is all you.  To execute a workout or race effectively, you need to know what you are doing and why you are doing it.  You also need to know the details, like how fast you should run or how much effort you should use.  And then, you have to have the discipline to stick to that plan.  That means recovery runs are not run at road run pace and pace runs are not run all-out.  Yes, you can fail to execute a workout by running too hard, too.

Responsibility for Evaluation:  Finally, when you are evaluating your performance, you cannot settle for being told how you are performing.  Your input matters, too.  That doesn't mean you should ignore your coach's opinions, or even that yours are more valid.  (In fact, they probably aren't...too much bias.)  But it does mean that you should take ownership of the evaluation process and initiate it when you feel it is necessary.  You are responsible for not hiding things from your coach, for tracking your progress thoroughly (in a training log), and for not shying away from constructive criticism...because a good coach will give it to you!

If you can't take responsibility for these three roles, you are not ready to be a champion.  And having the best coach in the world probably isn't going to change that.

But, wait, I like my coach...

I am not saying you should not have a coach.  Let's make that clear.  What I am saying is that you may need to rethink the relationship you have with your coach.  It can be helpful to actually think about what a coach is, and why you have one at all.

First off, here is a list of qualities most people use when choosing a coach:

• Experience and/or Deep Knowledge of the sport
• Passion for the sport
• Expertise in creating training programs
• Strategic/Tactical skills (developing race plans, etc.)
• Motivational skills
• Administrative skills (i.e. organizing a trip to a track meet)
• Recruiting skills (if college or private high school)
• Stopwatch management skills (3 at a time = bonus)
• Smells nice (never underestimate how important this is...)

Now the million dollar question:  For how many of these do you need a coach?  Only the first five relate to you, as an individual.  Why not just read some books, check out the web, talk to your friends and competitors, and then just do it all yourself?

Josh McDougal did it.  He was home-schooled and decided he wanted to be a runner.  So he started running and studying.  He read books, checked out the web, talked to friends and competitors, and basically self-coached himself into one of the top high school runners in the country.  Recently he was the NCAA Cross Country Champion in his senior year at Liberty University.  (I wrote about his attitude toward failure here.)

In many ways, Josh McDougal is exceptional.  Mentally, many young runners simply aren't ready to take on that kind of responsibility for their training.  I certainly wasn't.  But that doesn't mean I couldn't have.  Responsibility is something that can (and should) be nurtured and developed.  It's not an all-or-nothing thing.

Here are some tips for ways to increase the level of responsibility you are taking for your training:

• Ask a lot of questions; don't settle for a vague understanding of what you are supposed to be doing--demand clarity
• Draft your own training program and compare it with your coach's; even if you go with your coach's training program, the activity will make you a more engaged runner and you will understand your training more completely
• Maintain a detailed training log, whether your coach requires it or not; if you see something interesting in it, tell your coach about it
• Read books about running, and specifically training; get some perspective around what others have done that you can use in your training
• Manage your other responsibilities proactively; i.e. don't let homework keep you up all night when you need your rest for training--get it done early
• Choose your coach carefully; if you are going to college, don't just choose a successful program--choose a coach who you feel you can trust
• Look to yourself first when things don't go right; you will fail, someday, and when you do, evaluate your role in that failure before looking to blame others

Responsibility for the Results

This last point is where I want to end.  After you've taken responsibility for your planning, execution, and evaluation, there's still one final step.  That's taking responsibility for the results.  I'll give you a personal example of what I mean.

When I was a senior in college, my coach decided to switch my weekly tempo run--seven miles at 5:00 pace or so--to a fartlek run.  I talked about it with him in planning sessions, I did my best to execute it (I often did quite well, actually, and enjoyed it on those times), and I often evaluated my progress with him.  But I wasn't racing well, and I felt it had to do with my not running tempo runs anymore.

I don't even know if I was right, but I had convinced myself that was the reason.  I brought it up with my coach and after talking it over he explained why the fartlek runs were a step up for me from a physiological standpoint.  I understood that, but I believed my problem was mental.  Mentally, the tempo runs make you tough, disciplined.  That's what I felt I was missing.  Yet I accepted the fartlek runs and continued to do them, and my racing continued to be inconsistent and frustrating.

Throughout that whole period, though, I was blaming my coach for not having me run tempo runs!  I was certain that was the problem.  And with every poor performance, I was looking at "his" training program as the problem, not my execution in races or my inability to convince him that--perhaps from a mental standpoint only--I needed to incorporate the tempo runs back into my training.

In the end, I struggled and had a frustrating senior year.  And quite honestly, I can say now that it is because I never fully took responsibility for my own training and my own results.  I got most of the way there, but not all the way.  Ultimately, the failure was mine.  Not because the results were poor, but because I didn't heed Steve Prefontaine's advice: "A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else."

As you continue to pursue your goals in running, also continue to take responsibility for your planning, execution, evaluation, and results.  And if you aren't now, start to.  It's never too late, and it's a necessary step toward being your best.

Certain behaviors ensure Optimal Training

Optimal Training Principle: Certain behaviors, if practiced with consistent quality, ensure Optimal Training.

Skipping a run
Pulling an all-nighter
Not stretching
Self-inducing a food coma on holidays
Eating the world's largest ice cream sundae
Skipping a meal altogether
Drinking a few beers
Skipping a warm-up or cool-down
Washing down that ice cream sundae with a root beer float

What do the above have in common?

There are really two possible answers to this question (both related).  First answer: "Sometimes, I just have to do it."  Second answer: "Doing it just this once won't hurt me."

I recently read a couple articles--one an article at Runner's World about Meb, the other a post on Seth Godin's blog--that inspired me to write on the behaviors that actually lead to Optimal Training.  But I don't want to go too in depth about each specific behavior.  Forgive me if I don't outline every muscle you need to stretch.  There are many good books for that.  Like this one.

This blog is really about how we think about training.  So after we briefly outline the core behaviors that are required, I want to discuss how to think about those behaviors in order to get the most out of them.

Greatness is Elemental

It's no fun to just make a list of things we need to do.  The fact is, some things are more important than others.  It might be nice if everyone ate their Wheaties every morning (especially for General Mills), but if you want to be great and you only have time to eat a bowl of semi-tasty wheat flakes or go for a run, you'd better choose the run.  (And this goes double if you prefer to eat Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. (Copyright Universal Press Syndicate))

Anyway, here are the five categories of activities that make for a great runner.  These levels are based on the building blocks of life, and the activities therein correspond roughly to how relevant they are to achieving success in distance running.

Oxygen

This category includes only one activity: running.  Running is to being a great runner what oxygen is to being alive.  And if that is too "SAT Testy" for you, here's the simple logic:  Runners run.  If you don't run, you can't be a great runner.

Water

Water is the next most important element of life, so it's not surprising to note that hydration is one of the next most important components of training.  It's crucial.  And just as your life won't last long without water, your running career won't go far if you don't stretch, eat enough, properly warm-up and cool-down, get enough sleep, and employ some sophistication to your running (intervals, fartleks, etc.).

In my experience, this is what most athletes get out of their training programs, minus the sufficient sleep.  Most runners don't invest enough time in their sleep.  That said, most dedicated runners can reach the Water stage.

Food

Many runners start to falter at the Food level.  Why?  Because of food, actually.  First and foremost, this level includes eating a healthy diet.  Most distance runners I know fall back on an "it's all fuel in the furnace" mentality about food.  That's simply junk food justification and there's no place for it if you want to be great.  Other activities in this category include weight training/exercises/plyometrics, form drills, studying and reading (about running), keeping a training log, and getting massages and icing pre- and post-workout, respectively.

Animals can go without eating for quite a long time.  But in the end, it catches up to them.  Same for runners.  These activities are what separate the very successful from the guys who tell their kids how they coulda woulda shoulda. 

Shelter

In nature, shelter helps to keep you alive long enough to get more oxygen, water, and food.  In that vein, these activities aren't so much extensions of the previous categories, but complementary to them.  Like shiny rims on your car, you can get from point A to point B without them, but it just doesn't feel as good.  This category includes wearing appropriate gear, developing tactical race strategies, following a pre-race routine, utilizing visualization techniques, and relaxing/meditating before a race.

Some people try to skip Oxygen, Water, and Food activities and go straight to Shelter activities.  This is the runners equivalent to a Meatball Sundae.

(In other sports, having a cool nickname would belong here, too.  Never underestimate the power of a good nickname.  Can anyone tell me why this is not more popular in running?  Is "Pre" really the best we can do?  I mean seriously.)

Discipline

Wait.  Don't scoff.  Think about it.  Discipline is absolutely an essential element of life.  Zebra strays from the herd: lion lunch.  Young male walrus tries to take on the patriarch despite being too young: beat down.  Early bird sleeps in: no worm.  Examples abound. 

Discipline is about choice and consistency.  In the case of Optimal Training, that means consistently choosing to be extraordinary, to push your limits, and often, to sacrifice.  Choices can be positive.  Like choosing to get your work done in a timely manner so you don't lose out on sleep.  Or choosing to live near where you work so you don't spend all your time commuting rather than training.  Or choosing to live with people who will be supportive rather than distracting. 

But choices can also be "not negative".  Like choosing not to do any of the things at the top of this post, not even once, even though "You just have to do it" and "Doing it just this once won't hurt me." 

Certain behaviors, if practiced with consistent quality, ensure Optimal Training.  This list is by no means exhaustive.  And that's because the list itself is just that: a list of things to do.  It's how you do them that makes difference.

Making Elemental Exponential

 

It's important to recognize what the Quality-Consistency Curve means. The green or red line is your ability.  The first part of the line is exponential, going off to the right and getting steeper and steeper as it goes.  For each additional step, improvements are greater and greater.  The second half shows the line flattening out again, a concept known as diminishing marginal returns.  That is, no matter how hard you work, improvement comes slower and slower once you reach a high level of ability.  Example: you stop getting 5 second PRs when you're running 3:44 for the mile.

What this shows is that doing everything listed above will not be sufficient to make you extraordinary.  It will make you improve, but that's it.  Without a focus on the quality of your effort--the way you perform--you won't get the most out of them.  In short: Nike is wrong.  You can't just do it.  You have to do it right.  Always.

If you do only a few activities on the above list (Oxygen and Water activities, let's say) but you do them with a high Quality of Effort, you may be pretty good, especially if you're very talented (this curve is talent neutral).  More importantly, you will probably be better off than if you do all the activities, but only "go through the motions."

That's why I always argue that the key to Optimal Training is not what you do.  To be quite honest, I could care less what workouts most people choose to do.  At the highest level, that starts to matter.  But for the most part, you can be equally successful working on the roads every day or working on the track every day.  What I'm much more interested in is how you approach whatever it is that you're doing.

Do you understand completely what the purpose of the workout is?  Do you know what tomorrow's workout is, and where this workout relates to that one in terms of priority?  Are you distracted with other things or are you focused entirely on the workout/race at hand?  Are you enjoying your training or are you dragging right now?  Are you trying to do too much, and thus lowering the quality of your effort in each activity?

Great runners, runners who consistently train Optimally, not only apply a high Quality of Effort to their Oxygen, Water, Air and Shelter level activities (and have great nicknames).  They also apply consistent Discipline in the choices they make.  They make a lot of sacrifices. 

But here's the paradox.  The more disciplined you are, the easier it becomes to apply a high Quality of Effort to your training.  It is a self-perpetuating cycle.  Once you get in that groove, when everything starts going right, it actually gets easier to say no to all the negative behaviors at the top of this post.  Heck, you may actually find it hard to stop being disciplined. 

And when that happens, your competitors will find it hard to stop you.

Attitude, Effort and Training Methods: Tips

It was pointed out to me that in my previous posts (Part 1 and Part 2) on Attitude, Effort and Training Methods I did not include much in the way of practical recommendations.  That is absolutely correct, so here are some recommendations for ways you can improve your training based on the ideas in the above posts.  If you have any other useful tips, please post them in the comments below!

Tips for Improving Attitude

• If you don't like what you're doing, stop doing it.  You'll never put in optimal effort if you hate what you're doing.  Stop punishing yourself.  Find something you can be passionate about and try to be the best at that.
• Run for yourself.  This is related to above, but it's even bigger.  Don't get caught up in the need to win at all costs.  Don't be pressured to do the wrong thing "for the team".  Winning and excellence are different.  Define excellence for yourself, and pursue achieving it honorably.
• Write your goals down and post them where you can see them.  Remind yourself of your purpose.  Constantly.  Motivation must be maintained.
• Talk about your goals.  This not only internalizes them, but it commits you to them.  Just be sure you're not ONLY talking about your goals.  That gets boring.
• Make some of your goals easily achievable.  Sure, these are just benchmarks to your ultimate goal, but success breeds motivation.
• Relive past successes.  Remind yourself of how it felt.  Re-experience the feeling of accomplishment.  Then think about what it will take for you to experience the same in your next endeavor.
• Do just a bit more of something (non-running) every day.  Maybe it's an extra set of push-ups.  Maybe it's more stretching.  Maybe it's getting more sleep.  Maybe it's saying no to that second helping of ice cream.  That one extra push-up can make you feel like a champion.
• Find someone to beat.  You don't even have to tell them.  When I was in high school I trained with a guy named Ross Wood in mind.  Why?  'Cause he beat me at a road race when I was a sophomore.  Did he ever know he was my imaginary nemesis?  No.  But the idea of "beating Ross" helped me through some tough workouts.
• Emulate those better than you.  Don't try to copy workouts or training programs.  Rather, focus on approaching the sport the way they do.  Choose someone who isn't super-talented.  Choose someone who's really had to earn it.
• Attribute success to effort.  When you talk about success (yours or others), tell the story in terms of effort.  It is a story that can ALWAYS be told.

Tips for Improving Effort

• Focus on the process, not the outcome.  You have to trust that by doing things the right way, you'll get the results you want.
• Eliminate distractions.  Don't get caught up in how good or bad other people's workouts are.  Get your other work done before practice starts, so it's not on your mind.  Focus on getting done what you have to get done.  (And I would add, a healthy relationship does not require all of your time and energy.)
• Ask questions.  The workout fits into a long-term plan.  Find out why and how.  Then execute the workout based on what you most want to achieve from it.
• Focus on the easy stuff.  It's natural to focus when running fast, but difficult to focus when running slow.  In between reps, during warm-ups/cool-downs, and on recovery days, take a moment to determine whether you're running as fast/slow as you should be.
• Don't rush.  This applies to both workouts and training programs.  If you are working hard, time is on your side.  Rushing increases the likelihood of injury.  The short-term benefits are usually much smaller than the drawbacks.
• Eat well.  Your output is only as good as your inputs.  And if your inputs suck, well...
• Drink a lot of water.  The harder your workouts get, the more necessary this is.  Aim for going to the bathroom about 12 times per day.  I'm serious.
• Have a contingency plan.  We all want every workout and race to go perfectly, but that doesn't always happen.  Before you start, decide what you'll do if it isn't going as planned.  You need something to focus on that can keep you from wallowing in negativity when all seems lost.

Tips for Improving Training Methods

• Read.  A lot.  Buy some books or go to the library.  Borrow them from your coaches.  Get on the Internet.  (Read a blog!)  Get as many opinions as you can about what makes for effective training.
• If you really like something, do it.  Consult with your coach before you change workouts, but if you love 400 meter repeats or 5-mile tempo runs (my fav), build those into your training.  The flip side to this is also true.  There is no one workout that you absolutely MUST DO to be successful.  So you hate mile repeats?  Be creative and figure out a way to get the benefits without the mental anguish.
• Listen to your body.  Pain is telling you something.  Postponing a hard workout for a day is much better than pushing through and losing weeks to injury.
• Talk to your coach.  Your coach's job is to optimize your training methods.  He can't do that if you don't tell him how you feel.  You are responsible for this aspect of the athlete-coach relationship.
• Mix it up.  If you always run with a team, go for a run by yourself occasionally.  If you always do road runs, go on the track one day.  If you never run hills, find one and do some repeats.  If you always eat Italian before a race, try Thai.  On second thought, be careful with Thai.  In all other cases, however, complacency is to be feared.  Don't get complacent.
• Don't always wear a watch.  Maybe this belongs one up, but if you're supposed to be doing a recovery run or even a road run at a "solid" pace, go by how you feel and not what your watch tells you you should feel. 
• Keep a training log.  It's not enough to just write down what you did, though.  You have to be specific, and you have to actually look at it again.  You can't learn what does or doesn't work for you unless you put some time and energy into it.

Those are the big, universal ones that I can think of off the top of my head.  I'm sure I'll come up with some more as soon as I publish this, but I'd love to hear what you all think.  How do you go about improving your Attitude, Effort, or Training Methods?

Attitude, Effort and Training Methods: Part 2

Optimal Training Principle: Optimal performance is the result of one's attitude, one's effort, and one's training methods.

Last week, I wrote a post on attitude.  I argued that attitude is the foundation that supports all of the effort and training methods you put into your performance goals.  I further argued that there are four key attitudes that an athlete must possess if they are to be their best: belief in effort, engagement, discipline, and pride. 

In this post I'd like to delve a little deeper into Effort and Training Methods.  In doing so, please keep in mind what Optimal Training means: getting the most out of your training given the time and energy you have to put into it.  Your time and your energy are the two major constraints on your effort and training methods.

Effort

The simplest way to analyze effort is to break it down into its three main components: quality, quantity, and time.  These are the three limiting factors on any person's ability to improve.  You can do something better, do more of it, or do it longer. 

Quality is the most important aspect of one's effort to focus on.  The word "quality" tends to refer to two different things: efficiency (how well you do something) and effectiveness (how appropriate an activity is).  When we discuss effort, we are referring to quality in terms of efficiency.  (We'll talk about effectiveness when we get to Training Methods below.)

If you can get the same results using less time and energy, then that's what you should be doing.  An ideal workout, for example, would have no wasted time or energy at all.  You would arrive, warm up, kick butt, cool down, and go home expending the least amount of effort necessary to get what you want out of your workout.

The chart to the right shows what I call the Attitude-Effort Curve.  As your attitude improves, so does the quality of your effort.  As your attitude becomes consistently great, the quality of your workouts will increase to a point where it actually becomes difficult to get more efficient.  Champions live in this range. Having eliminated bad performances, they are constantly looking for ways to marginally improve upon their good/great performances.

Before athletes attempt to increase the quantity of their effort (mileage, # of push-ups, etc.), they should give serious consideration to the quality of their work.  If there is room for obvious improvement, that is where improvement must be made first.  It becomes harder and harder to maintain quality as quantity increases, so learning how to do it at a low quantity will make achieving quality with high quantity much easier.

Once you have developed the ability to consistently perform with high quality effort, a decision must be made.  What do you change next?

The most common and immediate answer is to increase quantity.  That's how you get better, right?  You run more.  Well, yes, but...  But sometimes running more isn't the right choice.

Here's why: Increasing quantity is a necessary part of training, but it is significantly riskier than making other changes to your effort.  When you are running high quality workouts, increasing quantity puts you at higher risk of injury.  So while you can (and should) increase mileage systematically, you should not be doing so in an effort to get any short-term improvement.  Decisions about quantity must be made in a long-term context, and should be weighed against the benefits of time.

Everyone forgets about time.  Maybe we're all impatient, but I don't think so.  I think it's because time is always just...there.  If you're training everyday, time is on your side.  If you stop training for an extended period, time will turn on you like a nice guy in a spy movie. 

Imagine a runner who does 6 miles at 6 minute pace every day for one year (that is, quality, quantity, and training methods remain constant).  His progress would actually look something like the graph to the right.  Over the course of a year, he would improve, but that improvement would decrease over time and he'd never reach his highest potential level of ability.

This happens because time compounds effort...to a point.  Consistent quality effort will build upon itself so that it isn't always necessary to run more to see increased benefits. 

You see this with elite runners.  Elite runners don't continue to increase their mileage every year.  They build their mileage to a certain point over a number of years, and then they stop trying to run more.  They rather focus on refining the quality of the workouts (and the workouts themselves, of course) over many years.  And they still improve.  Runners without an Optimal Training mindset often equate improvement with "doing more".  And they overtrain, put themselves at risk of injury, or simply waste a lot of time and energy.

This isn't to say you shouldn't increase the quantity of your effort.  You should, until you've reached a level that will realistically put you in a position to achieve your goals...over time.  For some runners, that's 50 miles a week.  For others it's 90.  For some it's 130+.  You need to consult with your coach, your friends, and/or other resources to determine what is right for you.

Training Methods

I use the words "training methods" to mean anything you are doing in an attempt to improve or change your ability.  In running, these include your workouts, weight training, stretching, icing, eating, hydrating, sleeping, keeping a training log, visualizing, etc.  Each of these activities contributes to your overall performance, to a greater or lesser degree.

Weight training, for example, will never have as much impact on a runner's performance as the running workouts they do, but each can be viewed independently on an "effectiveness scale", ranging from totally inappropriate to optimal.  If you're going to lift weights, you need to lift the right weights the right way.

This is the other dimension of quality that has to be discussed: how appropriate is the activity given your time, your energy, and your goals?  Or, how effective is what you are doing?

At the highest level, this becomes more and more important.  But for most of us, the specifics are not nearly as important as we sometimes think.  Of course, if your training methods are counter-productive, there's a problem.  You can't be your best off of a thirty minute jog each morning, three hours of sleep, and a diet of Snickers bars and Vault energy drinks (despite what the commercials tell us). 

Anyway, specifically in terms of workouts, most coached runners have decent guidance.  And those who aren't coached can often go to a local book store and get good advice on the types of workouts or training programs that can get them to where they want to be.  What most people don't have, however, is the attitude necessary to execute those workouts optimally and to make all the required sacrifices in other areas of their lives.

In the end, the main point to be made about training methods is that the differences between specific workouts is often marginal.  It's been my experience that if you take a 70% effective workout and execute it 100% efficiently, you will get more out of it than if you take a 100% effective workout and execute it 70% efficiently.  Why?  Because high quality work creates positive externalities.

High quality work leaves runners feeling more confident, more prepared, and more focused than low quality work.  The more engaged you are, the easier it is to stay engaged.  The more disciplined you are, the easier it is to maintain that discipline.  The more pride you take in your performances, the more likely you are to approach future performances correctly.  And runners who are putting 100% quality effort into their training will also be the most likely to realize when it is the training methods that need to change and not their attitude or effort.

Training methods are obviously an important aspect of a training program.  But they are like the interior design in a house.  It doesn't matter how sexy the house will be when it's done if it isn't built on a solid foundation with quality materials.  It will just be the illusion of a good house.  Similarly, an athlete doing optimally effective workouts with a bad attitude and low quality effort won't be more than the illusion of a well-trained athlete.

Attitude, Effort, and Training Methods (Part 1)

 

Optimal Training Principle: One's performance is the result of one's attitude, one's effort, and one's training methods.

The thing about training that is hard for some people to realize is that it isn't as complicated as it seems.  Every Optimal Training Principle is inherently simple, too.  Most of us already know them to be true.  Yet they are still effective, provided we think about them and act on them.

The Optimal Training Pyramid above consists of three parts: attitude, effort and training methods.  Attitude forms the foundation of an individual's success.  Our effort derives from our attitude, and our training methods polish that effort into its final product.  Simple?  Yes.  Profound?  Maybe not, but this pyramid applies to any area in which we perform, especially running.

I'm only going to look at Attitude today.  We'll look at Effort and Training Methods next week.

Optimal Training Attitudes

Belief in Effort

Attitude is the foundation of Optimal Training.  As we looked at in Part 1 and Part 2 of Ability is a Variable, Not a Constant, whether we have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset directly affects how we perceive effort in the first place.  You simply must believe that it is possible to change through effort.  I provide some tips in the linked posts, and I again recommend you to read Carol Dweck's book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

Those who are the best in the world believe in the power of hard work.  They get there by working smarter, harder, and longer than everyone else.  But that's taking us into next week...

We all think differently to some extent, but there are a few attitudes all excellent performers share, with a belief in effort perhaps being the most important.  Optimal Trainers are also fully engaged in the training process, highly disciplined in their approach, and incredibly proud of their performances.

Engagement

Motivation and passion are similar.  But whereas motivation is closely tied to the goals we set, passion tends to be something more general, something that makes us feel what we are doing is right for us.  Passion is why you find yourself reading books and blogs all night and eating up all the information you can get on whatever it is you're doing.  For example:

• You can be motivated to get a grade, but passion is what makes you excited to talk about what you're learning. 
• You can get motivated to write a paper, but passion is what keeps you up at night writing on a blog. 
• And, in my case, I know I could get motivated enough to complete a triathlon, but I'm only really passionate about running.

Optimal Training requires that you be both motivated and passionate.  When you put both together you get engagement.  Engagement is what keeps us experimenting, asking questions, challenging our assumptions and ultimately, learning.  The level of our engagement will affect the quality and quantity of our effort. 

This is crucial.  Our effort is the only aspect of our success that we have control over.

Discipline

The ability to focus on what is important, and sacrifice what isn't, is another attitude that is shared by the best of the best.  Note the word sacrifice.  To paraphrase the bumper sticker, "Sacrifice Happens".  And patience is not only a virtue, but a necessity.  Worthwhile goals are rarely achieved in a day, and the ability to delay gratification to a later date, to exercise patience as you slowly get to where you want to be, is also necessary.

Discipline is the end product of focus and patience.  To train optimally, you must exercise discipline, by which I mean the ability to focus on doing what you need to do right now to be your best at some time in the future.  It requires that you push yourself to do as much as you should, and restrain yourself from doing too much.  This applies equally to executing a race plan as it does to executing your yearly training program. 

How do you know where that line is?  You have to be engaged enough in your training to figure it out. 

Pride

Last but not least, the drive to be the best requires people to want to be better than...something.  This "something" is usually everyone else (or at least someone else).  But it can also be your times last year, or your uncle's times from 25 years ago.  If you don't have a competitive drive, it will eventually affect how much effort you put into your performances. 

But if you don't have integrity, any success you do achieve will be hollow.  Integrity is what separates those willing to cheat to win from those who pursue success honestly.  True champions don't let winning become the only measure of their success.  Their focus is as much on their execution and development as it is their outcome relative to the competition. 

The product of competitiveness and integrity is pride.  Pride sometimes has a negative connotation, but it is absolutely essential to excellence.  You simply must take pride in your performance.  That means you want to do it to the best of your ability, better than you have before and/or better than anyone else could do it.

Pride shouldn't come from winning (though I admit winning can help).  It should come from how you prepare and perform.  Even when the final result isn't what you wanted, you can still be proud of your performance.

Final Thoughts

I generally write about running.  This is a running blog, after all.  But I try to stress that many of the topics I'm covering are universal to success in any field.  Well, attitude is the foundation of success in any field.  I personally apply the above attitudes in the following areas:

• Running (of course)
• Grad school classes
• Studying Japanese
• Completing a consulting project
• Writing this blog
• Managing my personal finances
• Being a good husband
• Playing fantasy baseball

I'm not a big video gamer, nor am I a musician or an artist, but I have friends who apply the above attitudes in those areas as well. 

Whether your goal is to be a World Champion runner, to get an A in a class, or to be the best you possible, your attitude will make or break that process. 

Ability is a Variable, Not a Constant (part 2)

Optimal Training Principle: Ability is a Variable, Not a Constant.  The harder a person works, the more able he or she becomes over time.

This is part 2 in my discussion of the above Optimal Training Principle.  To read part 1, please see here.

Understanding Ability Matters

I first heard about Carol Dweck from a post on Guy Kawasaki's blog referencing an article about her work called "The Effort Effect".  I highly recommend the article, and for those of you interested in entrepreneurship, Guy's blog is great. 

Professor Dweck studies what she calls "mindsets".  Mindsets refer to how people view ability.  Some people view ability as something that can be developed (the "growth" mindset), while others view it as something inherent that needs to be demonstrated (the "fixed" mindset).

Dweck argues that these two different mindsets determine whether a person is able to undertake challenges rather than shy away from them, focus on improvement rather than looking good, and take responsibility for poor performance rather than blame others.  Most importantly, she makes a convincing argument that these different mindsets are often the product of our environment, and that we can change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. 

In Part 1 on this Optimal Training Principle I explained why it isn't true that ability is fixed.  Here's why it matters.  Not only does it eliminate any incentive to work hard at the task at hand, it also creates a perverse incentive to try and look smart (or fast, strong, etc.), and to protect yourself by making excuses and blaming others when it doesn't work out for you.  An example:

I had a teammate in high school who had always been the star on his teams, and he'd long been told how gifted he was.  On our team he barely cracked the top seven, though.  After a while he slacked in practice or sometimes didn't come, and he always had an excuse for why he wasn't performing well.  He eventually quit.

Looking back, I no longer believe he was just lazy.  He had a fixed mindset about running and saw himself as being "less" of a runner than the few guys faster than him.  He believed success would come naturally for him if he had real "ability" (see also: talent).  It made him look bad to not be the star, so he built excuses into his training for a while, lost enthusiasm and then eventually quit (#5 on the list of "Seven Reasons" I wrote about the other day). 

Dweck's research gives an explanation for why this happens:  When you have a fixed mindset, you believe that talent determines ability and your focus is on looking good (because performance reflects upon you as a person) rather than on working hard (because if you're truly talented you shouldn't need to work hard). 

Adopting a Growth Mindset

Running changed my mindset.  I worked semi-hard in high school, but I was chewed up and spit out my freshman year in college.  I showed up out of shape, injured myself twice, and did a lot of soul-searching during that year.  I don't know that I had a fixed mindset, but I certainly had fixed mindset tendencies.  Four things made me start to believe in the power of hard work:

• First, my high school coach told me he thought I could be good.  At the time, this gave me an amazing amount of confidence.
• My first year in college I had a great model in Meb Keflezighi.  He was a four-time national champ and the hardest worker I'd ever met.
• At the same time, I had difficulty reconciling teammates and competitors beating me who I just knew weren't as talented as I was.
• Finally, I began to improve.  This validated the work and motivated me to keep going.

Self-efficacy is the belief that one can achieve a goal based on one's efforts.  The theory says there are four ways one can improve one's self-efficacy.  The first is to see improvement as a result of your efforts (Experience).  The second is to see someone else whom you identify with do something you aren't currently able to do (Vicarious Experience).  The third is to be told you can or can't do something by someone else (Social Persuasions).  Finally, how you respond to your body's natural reactions is the fourth (Physiological Factors).  I think these also apply to developing a growth mindset.

1.  Experience: Seeing actual improvement or success 

This is the way in which we are most likely to finally and completely believe that our ability is not fixed.  But two other things have to happen before this can have a positive impact.  First, we have to put in the effort in the first place.  But this is the very problem! When we have a fixed mindset we avoid effort altogether.

Second, we have to see our improvement as being the result of our hard work, not luck or the challenge being easy.  If a runner wins a race, for example, but honestly thinks it was just luck, well, that performance likely won't be a stepping stone to more personal records.

Think of Tommy Boy making that first sale.  After he'd done it once, it was no problem.

2.  Vicarious Experience: Seeing someone else achieve something 

There are two different types of people you can study to change your mindset: people similar to you, and people far better than you.

There is great value in studying people who have achieved excellence.  But how you study them is important; you will find what you look for.  If you look for talent, you'll find it.  And you'll come away saying things like, "Of course Meb is great.  He's African!"  Or, "Of course Alan Webb is so dominant.  He's a freak of nature!"  But if you look at an excellent individual through the lens of their efforts, that is exactly what you'll see.  You'll see that Meb and Webb have been working incredibly hard for an incredibly long time.

As for studying people similar to you, this is an incredibly useful way to motivate ourselves to work harder.  Especially when we see someone like us make a big leap.  When I was in college a runner at Berkeley named Peter Gilmore (now a 2:12 marathon runner) made a big leap in the Pac-10.  My teammate and I made a rallying cry for our training: "If Peter can do it, we can, too!"

Are we as talented as Peter Gilmore?  Doesn't matter.  We believed we were.  And that got me to increase my effort, after which my improvement led to even more effort and so on.

3.  Social Persuasion: Being told you can (or can't) do something 

This is always present on a running team.  Coaches and teammates always encourage runners to practice hard.  But some are more quick than others to judge performance as the result of talent.

What your coaches and teammates say explicitly doesn't matter, though.  It comes up when you talk about goals, expectations, competition, race strategy, past performances, personal records, and planning workouts.  We often infer that something can't be done simply by the goals we don't set, the practices we don't do, the competition we don't face. 

Being held back isn't always a bad thing.  But it's important to have someone reminding us that it's only because we're not ready right now.  With hard work, we can be ready in the future.

4. Physiological Factors: How you respond to your body's natural reactions 

Basically, your body will have a natural reaction to stress (getting butterflies before a race, for example) and how you respond to that feeling can either increase or decrease your self-efficacy.  The important thing here is that you understand it is normal to get nervous before a race.  Everyone does.  It alone does not make you a worse runner, nor will it hurt your ability to perform well.

This factor has the least impact on an individual's self-efficacy, but it is worth mentioning because young runners may be prone to misinterpreting their body and thus altering their goals or expectations.

The Takeaway

Understanding what ability is and how it can be improved is fundamental to continued, consistent success.  Which makes it fundamental to Optimal Training.  If you don't understand ability--don't cultivate a growth mindset--you may be successful, but you'll have difficulty sustaining that success. 

It's never too late to change your mindset.  Try hard to remember the effort you've put into your previous achievements.  See that hard work for what it is.  Find someone you can model your behavior after.  Surround yourself with encouraging people as much as possible.  And finally, don't read too much into how you feel right before your races, workouts, etc. 

Ability is a Variable, Not a Constant (Part 1)

 

Optimal Training Principle: Ability is a variable, not a constant.  The harder a person works, the more able he or she becomes over time.

Ability is not Talent.  And Talent isn't Greatness.

We have a tendency to admire talent.  Or, more accurately, we have a tendency to admire greatness, and to confuse greatness with great talent.  We see what people are able to do and we think to ourselves, "Wow, that guy is special."  And while they no doubt are special, we tend to attribute that special quality to something they have that we don't, something fixed and unchangeable within ourselves. 

Perhaps this is true.  The bookshelves are littered with biographies of geniuses, savants, phenoms, champions and "born leaders": Michael Jordan.  Tiger Woods.  Mozart.  Picasso.  Yeats.  Alexander the Great.  And since this is a running blog, let's not forget about runners: Herb Elliot.  Jim Ryun.  Haile Gebrselassie.  Hichem el Guerrouj.  Alan Webb.  Mebrahtom Keflezighi.  Maybe they do have something we don't.  But I would argue that we don't know whether or not this is true simply by looking at their performances.  Performance shows us a person's ability at a specific point in time.  And ability is not talent.  Ability is talent molded by effort over time.

Mebrahtom Keflezighi (Meb) was a teammate of mine at UCLA.  The man is certainly talented.  But I don't know that he's the most talented person I've ever met.  He is, however, the hardest working, most disciplined runner I've ever seen.  Bar none.  At UCLA, he ran twice a day, did insane numbers of sit-ups and push-ups, stretched religiously, underwent pre- and post-workout treatment regularly, ate healthy food, slept enough, and to top it off, he studied hard in all of his classes, often having to read the text twice because as a non-native English speaker he didn't learn everything in one reading.  Though he was a four-time national champion when I first met him, everything I heard from teammates was that Meb entered school with this work ethic and discipline.  And he's still doing it today, almost a decade after he graduated.

When we talk about an athlete like Meb in terms of his talent, we discredit the real difference between Meb and us: Meb has worked smarter and harder than us over a long period of time.  Meb's success wasn't preordained by the gods like a Greek hero.  He has taken his talents and painstakingly developed them to the point that he won a silver medal in the Athens marathon and set the American record in the 10k.  If anything, the talent that separates Meb from 90% of his competition is not physical.  It is his passion, motivation, discipline, compulsion, whatever-you-want-to-call-it to do what is necessary, day in and day out.  The same applies for the other people I mentioned above. 

Did you know Michael Jordan was cut from his high school varsity basketball team?  It's true.  He credits it with making him truly apply himself on the court for the first time.  Mozart and Tiger were coached early and often by their fathers.  Were they so good so young simply because they were prodigies, or because they had worked significantly harder than anyone else at their crafts?  One thing is certain.  Prodigy or not, their performances improved over years of constant hard work.  The same goes for anyone at the top of their field.

You probably know this already.  But we all need to be reminded of these things.  When the going gets tough, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking it'll never get better.  When your outlook on ability is like that of the lower arrow, the only real incentive is to not work hard and/or quit.  But when you maintain your focus on effort and you are able to sustain your discipline over the long term, you have an opportunity to reach your potential.  It isn't always a smooth ride, but without understanding that talent is just one (likely minor) part of the ability equation, you have no chance of reaching your potential.

Later this week, in part 2, I'll look at some new research in cognitive science to explore in more detail why this Optimal Training Principle is so important and how we can better develop a mindset in which ability can grow.

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This is part 1 of the first of many posts I plan to write on my Optimal Training Principles.  The Principles are developed during my study of learning theory at UCLA, and borrow heavily (in some cases, entirely) from the work of Winston Doby and Edward "Chip" Anderson.  I have modified the Principles to better suit athletic training.  All the same, I wish to give credit where credit is due.