Know Thyself

Finding the problem:

People are GREAT at coming up with solutions. The issue is that we can't always identify the problem! Often times I catch myself thinking I am in better shape than the reality of the situation. So I do certain types of workouts that sometimes end up hurting more than helping. If I don't overwork myself, I will make up my own rules and skip steps... Here is a pictoral example:

So just because you found A solution, it does not mean you have identified the problem!

Anyone ever experience something like that? So I went ahead and made an equation that I believe works!

(Please tell me if you have seen this anywhere so I can give credit if it belongs to someone else)

(Scientific Knowledge - Subjective Feedback) + Practical Application = Desired Adaptation

God gave us science for many reasons. In this case, understanding the human body, what it is capable of and how to maximize performance. Do you even realize the unbelievable machines that we are? Do you know what you are physically capable of? There are so many instances where people achieve 'the next level' of human adaptation. It occurs every year with athletics. How much longer can we continue to break world records? Seriously... Michael Phelps? Is there going to be someone better than that guy?

So to briefly break down this equation:

Scientific Knowledge:

This is not the time to guess. If you go by 'perceived exertion' it is very likely that you will lie to yourself and not necessarily on purpose. It's the path of least resistance. Ever heard of it? We seek it mostly involuntarily to some degree every day of our lives. Instead, it's time to learn a little about what is going on inside of your body.
Knowing yourself requires testing yourself. To make these tests a little more scientific in nature, make them reliable/repeatable and valid! If you do not assess, you do not know where to start and where you can really expect to finish.

I'm a huge fan of assessments! It's what I do for a living. In my experience, most people have tons of great goals. However, they have no clue where they are emotionally, physically or psychologically in relation to their goal or how to actually get there... We tend to live in our athletic past. It's is important to know exactly where you are right now in your life and the circumstances surrounding you presently. Not 10+ years ago!

So when gathering knowledge about yourself, be sure to:

1. Make it valid... Measure same time, distance, heart rate in same conditions every time. Metabolic assessments are the way to go in order to take the guess work out of it!
2. Plan for it... Schedule your assessing throughout your training (usually every 4 wks)
3. Have a time budget... Know how much time you can give each week for it.
4. Have a financial budget... Know costs involved to achieving your goal
5. Find your support system... Coach/Team, Spouse, Friend, etc..We all need someone get over it.
6. RECORD IT!! you can get lost if you don't. And you will be amazed when you review it 10 years down the road I promise.

Subjective Feedback:
So in any world of achievement, there are different types of feedback right? Objective and subjective... The reason I choose to subtract the subjective feedback is simply because you have to listen to your body. As scientific as we can be, there still needs to be that subjective input. As you learn your body more, the feedback becomes more clear. You start to know what muscles are hurting and why. Sometimes a day off is better than "pushing through the pain". When certain parts of your body hurt for certain or uncertain reasons it may be best to break protocol. We can never truly predict with 100% accuracy what an athlete is capable of. This wonderful thing called adrenaline kicks in at some point and can change outcomes from time to time. Also, there is an emotional side to training and racing. Tons of overtraining happens when there is an emotional or psychological stress added to variable training intensities. So please..... Take yourself into account!

Practical Application:
What the heck is practical? I don think we use this too much anymore. Most of the time we (especially adults) over think things to the point where it is no longer simple enough to just go do. Let's take swimming for example... Every adult I take to the water to train has some difficulty understanding the word "relax". I believe Bruce Lee said this "the more relaxed you are, the more force you can produce". What would seem the most simple piece of this whole thing, being able to relax, becomes this analysis paralysis type pattern with the question "how do I relax?" well... Good luck with that.
The other part of practical application is training load. If you are in your first couple years of racing, be careful what you do to yourself. We are gluttons for punishment (remember the definition of endurance) therefore, we instinctively do more than we should sometimes. Mainly because in the endurance world there is always something to improve. So instead of trying to fix everything at the same time, we might want to think in terms of how long am I going to be participating in this game? And how do I build the right kind of foundation for both the level that I am at as well as the level I want to be? It's called Progressive Overload... Look it up.

Desired Adaptation: (just for the record... I don't believe we came from monkeys)
I think 'adaptation' is one of my favorite words. It has such a profound meaning in life and the majority of people don't really understand how to control it. Adaptation occurs whether we want it to or not, and is directly influenced by what we do across all areas of life. It does not discriminate. If you place any stress on the body it will adapt. Good or bad. We can teach ourselves to be very efficient at being inefficient if that makes sense. I often use my first car as an example. I had a jeep wrangler for about 9 yrs. Sadly, I had to trade it in because it was a hot mess and because of how I treated it. Sometimes I would race it off the starting line at red lights and the race lasted about 3.2 seconds. And let me tell you, a 2.5L 4cylinder engine on a jeep does not need to be doing such things. When I decided to trade it in it had about 186,000 miles on it. I figure about 50,000 miles was spent in mud or something like that which means that I put a ton of miles on my engine going nowhere. Too often we do this to our bodies and then expect the engine to last and perform at high levels.
When we place the wrong stress on our body it still adapts and makes it feel normal. I have this thing that I say to ALL my clients, "if it feels stupid, you are probably doing it right." So many of us have postural distortions that NEED to be fixed before we place high stress on those areas of our body. Before we try to set time standards as goals we really need to make a large effort to protect our joints over time. Your body will appreciate much more than putting high volume on it's engine when it's not firing on all cylinders. Besides, we are not the one's getting paid for our desired race outcomes. We have a 'normal' job to go to and a family to take care of right?

Coach Lee