After receiving some negative feedbacks from athletes and their famil(ies)y, I decided to write up this post. Well, maybe not exactly negative but some misunderstanding and miscommunication has occurred, to add on, I also see this minor fault of only seeing our flaws.
Humans are sometimes such comparison-based creature because we tend to just look at what we couldn’t do (yet) or just compare our own performance to somebody else who clearly is just better than us at the very moment failures occurs and say “I’m so lousy.”.
Coming from a non sporty family background and an obese teenage years, I have came a long way myself to tell myself to quit and/or look down at myself just because I have one bad day/performance or have flaws and weakness to work on. If you’re optimistic and as obsessively hardworking as I can be (you need BOTH attribute at the same time), I’m pretty sure you can use the failure as a good source of motivation.
However, I’ve come across some of these athletes and decided to just discount themselves of what they are truly capable of just because they don’t know how to move on to the next step and sports are just not _That important a part of their lives that drives them to go and find out how to become better. Dwelling in one’s flaws is the fastest way to detrimental performance. And to benefit those of you who wants to know why I seem to be eternally motivated when i set my mind to do something, I’m writing this post.
First of all, I hate losing. I freaking hate being second to somebody. I realized that only when I was in army and that has cost me many friends but also brought me to great heights of physical fitness and the game of basketball. Secondly and the most important factor(s) here is that as I mature as a human being and sports person, I start to realize some responsibilities that any serious sports person who have a goal to reach should hold themselves to. And I adhere strictly to them.
- Educate those who care for you about what you are doing. Don’t just tell them “I’m going to race, that’s why I train.”…
- Recognize what you’ve done to come to where you are at this moment.
- Recognize your flaws and weakness and work on them
- Always remind yourself: “It is about This Moment.”. It is actually quite zen but it involved steel-like focus.
Point 1:
Educate those who care for you about what you are doing.
This first point applies especially significantly to those who are almost adult but not yet. To clarify first and foremost, this is not about defying your parents’ orders or neglecting your lover because of the significance of training. As an athlete, we have to realize the importance of consistency in training. Without consistency, no programme can work any result out of any talent. And in order to achieve that level consistency, we have to make sure that we inform and educate those who care, about our need and what we’re intending to achieve and that we take that race Seriously.
I understand some of us just want to have fun and training in a group makes maintaining or gaining fitness all the merrier and that much easier. However, if you’re not serious about training or improving, you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog or being part of the team. We take out 3 hours each week at least to go for swim training and listen to my constant nagging and if you tell me you’re not at the least concern about your finishing, I won’t buy that bullshit.
Informing about the race requires you to emphasize some points such as:
- Training consistency
- Goals and results
- Reason for the need of certain training sessions
- What benefits are those training giving you and how are they affecting your life positively
- What you’d expect in terms of unforeseen circumstances in scheduling
- Lastly, doing your due diligence in making sure they know way before hand about how the schedule is like and not wait til last minute
Communication about the race and training HAVE TO BE TRANSPARENT and OPEN. Compromises must be made to both sides to make sure you get the best quality of life. Life isn’t about triathlon or training, it is about maintaining a balance by helping them accept what we have to do and what we can do for them in appreciation of their understanding.
Point 2:
Recognize what you’ve done to come to where you are at this moment.
This point applies to those who constantly feel like they’re not doing as well they think they should be despite having already improved a huge amount. Lets get some things straight. Priority of sporting goals in life should be better health, followed by extra fitness to do sports that we enjoy. Unless you’re a professional racer, you really shouldn’t be so tight on yourself for results.
Most of us came from an obese or generally unfit background and worked our ass off to lose some weight and get to where we are right now swimming respectable timing for age groupers despite training just once per week. But some of us seem to always be looking at how well another athlete (often one who puts in much more time training consistently and have been doing so for a longer time than us) and then do a direct comparison and totally forget about where you’ve came from originally.
As athletes, we have to recognize that fitness has to be inculcated through time. Joe Friel recommends 3 years of base building to see potential even for talented athletes.
I felt that it is important for us to recognize what we’ve done and compare where we’ve came from originally to where we are right now. Think about this: When you race in a 8 lane 200m sprint event. Are you really racing with the others, or are you racing with time?
Look at Bolt’s run, he has trained so well and when the gun goes off, he was 10meters in front of everybody in the track. Is it going to be realistic for him to be racing with the others who’re at least 1 second slower?
To bring the example to something more down to earth, if gen runs a 22minute 3.3km and sam runs a 26minutes 3.3km.. sam shouldn’t look at gen and say “i’m sad.” because she has came from a complete non runner 2 years back to someone who is capable of running a half marathon even with her bad form that has much to improve. While on the other hand, gen has been a competitive badminton player, a sport that is footwork and agility (power) dominant. Isn’t it being a little unfair to ourselves when we compare it that way? Think about it.
Point 3:
Recognize your flaws and weakness and work on them.
Many of us, men especially, are such sore losers and egoistic bastards (I’m guilty). The difference between this type of men in sports often boils down to whether you run away from your weakness because you don’t like to do them as they feel shitty being done, or you work real hard on the weakness so it won’t feel as bad at least. - “I was going REALLY FAST… but I am always dropped in the climb.. I don’t know why.. I think I just suck at climbing.”.. sounds familiar?
For girls, too often I heard “I can’t get faster. I’m born slow.” or “I just can’t climb because I’m pear shape or just too heavy.”..
If you look at it from a neutral point of view, they’re both avoidance of a specific weakness.
Look, working on your weakness in a sport will feel difficult. No matter how you run away from them or complain about them, they will still feel awful. That’s why they are call your weakness. Unless, you learn to accept them and work on them relentlessly and learn to appreciate the LEAST amount of improvement that you can squeeze out of the difficult sessions.
I felt that it is our responsibility to give our mind and body a break from these kind of unnecessary complaints that doesn’t aid in the situation. Being heavy doesn’t mean you can’t lose weight or gain strength to increase power to weight ratio. Being slow doesn’t mean you can’t improve on your skill and mastery of the sport to become more efficient (since with efficiency comes speed). Being slower than others in climbing doesn’t mean you can’t work on your tactics such as starting the climb in front of the pack so when you drop you’d be in the middle of the pack.
It Is our responsibility to recognize our flaws and weaknesses then tailor our preparation phase of our base training to improve on them while maintaining our strengths and that way, you’ll find improvement in timing coming in multiple folds.
Point 4:
Always remind yourself: “It is about This Moment.”.
One thing I noticed from playing basketball and watching the greatest athletes compete in any sport, is that they have this steel-like focus that enable them to keep slamming the hammer at the same intensity no matter how hard it feels. How does it work out to be a responsibility of an athlete? Hear me out.
Planning an annual programme with long term and short term goals are very common. However, for us average joes, we tend to worry too much about reaching the goal than the training sessions itself. And by doing that, we’re not being responsible for the goals we set for ourselves and we’re thus directly being irresponsible to ourselves as an athlete.
One of my training principle is that whatever session you are doing, there Must be an objective and an expectation of how it will feel like in the session. Speed work sessions will feel like your lungs are bursting, Technique sessions are naturally frustrating when you’re doing corrections and climbing sessions are slow and painful whilst time trialing are generally mind boggling on how we can push past our limits in our mental barrier.
And during the session itself, we have to always train our body and mind to work together in a CLEAR AND COORDINATED FASHION. Too often, I see athletes I train come to me and ask me “what are we doing after this?” in the 3rd set of 5 sets of 200 hard swim. There is no right or wrong here, but those who take each 200m and break it down into 4x50m, and further break it down into every 25m, then every kick off and every turn around tend to gain the most out of the training because they put in their best effort in That Moment. And in race, where effort can be so hard and intolerable, it is impossible to put that focus into practice if you don’t do it in every single lap you swim/bike/run.
Allow me to share about my basketball story. I have played many games whereby I’m teamed with the weaker players and have to fight through all odds to have a chance to win… I noticed that when I play in that kind of team, my focus is at its maximum because everytime I get the ball, I’m just focused on finding my team mates and getting the ball into the hoops regardless of who is guarding me. All I care about at that moment I have the ball is how to work my best and find the best opportunity to score, point by point, until the game is set. Very often, I end up very very tired after such high level of concentration but often enough, we, the weaker team came out as the winner because we are focused on doing everything correct and not worried about the result since we’re the underdog anyway.
Some say it is the underdog mentality, I call it Focus.
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Good things will come as long as Smart work is done as Hard as Possible.
Be ambitious but realistic.
Do your best in every moment of training, and that doesn’t means always going hard. Doing your best means if it is a long slow distance, you make sure its long enough and your form don’t deteriorates even as you tire. If it is a speed session, you make sure you come well rested and be as fast as you possibly can. If it is a time trialing session, you make sure you come mentally psyched up and not rush down from work to get into the mini – race. If it is a technique session, you make sure you go slow enough and be PATIENT AND MENTALLY AWARE of everything you do. All these are examples of Doing Your Best.
Elevate your game and fight through the training like you don’t have a choice.
Too often, we humans have too much luxury of choices and options. Many Kenyans don’t have school buses to bring them to school thus they do 5-10km runs everyday, we do it for leisure and often skip them because the weather is Gloomy. Change your mindset and see results come.
Just focus on that very moment of pain and Do It, Over and Over again, and complain lesser. Remember – When you can open your mouth and complain, you’re not that tired. In other words, if you’ve not vomited, you’ve not pushed to the limit yet, so you have to push harder or just keep going!
Cheers
KK
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