Weekly ideas about living a good, meaningful and high performing life in a chaotic world from Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness. Best selling authors of PEAK PERFORMANCE, DO HARD THINGS, and THE PRACTICE OF GROUNDEDNESS.
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Beyond Grit
Published 23 days ago • 6 min read
Reflect: Actual vs. Pseudo Competitiveness
Just after Faith Kipyegon won the gold medal in the 1,500m at the world athletics championship, the TV cameras focused in on a lady in the crowd with tears of joy streaming down her face. It was Beatrice Chebet, a fellow Kenyan athlete. A few days later, Chebet and Kipyegon went head-to-head in an epic battle in the 5k, with Chebet just edging out Kipyegon.
When it comes to competition, we often think we need to hate our opponents, to make them our enemy, to cultivate a strong desire to destroy them. Yet here we have two legends in sport showing actual competitiveness. You can want others to succeed, be happy for them when they do, and still be fiercely want to beat them when the gun goes off.
The capstone test for Navy SEAL candidates, Hell Week, is notorious for its brutal difficulty.
It's five and a half days of extreme training designed to push candidates to the utter brink. It includes sleep deprivation and hypothermia from kneeling in the frigid ocean water with waves crashing into you, all while being assigned physically and mentally demanding tasks to complete. The goal is simple: evaluate how people react under extreme fatigue, stress, and uncertainty.
Can a candidate pull their mind away from the misery of the situation and figure out how to get themselves and their teammates through it? Who can slow the world down and act skillfully during challenging situations? Who has true toughness? For decades, the US military has been trying to uncover the secret sauce that those who make it through Hell Week possess. Do they have a certain mental attribute that separates them from the rest? Research has been mixed, at best. When we asked a former Navy SEAL about who made it versus who didn’t, he replied:
There is no one thing that determines the success or failure of a candidate. However, going into it, I thought the team sports guys, the former football types, would have an advantage. They were used to working with others towards a goal. They were big, strong guys. But I was wrong. The candidates who came from individual sports requiring endurance– rowers, runners, swimmers, wrestlers–those guys made it at a higher rate. I don’t know what it is, but maybe they were used to suffering, being alone in their head. This isn’t just conjecture.
A study commissioned by the US military investigated which physical test could best predict Hell Week success. It evaluated over 2,000 candidates on tasks ranging from strength, speed, agility, and endurance. The best predictor: a 4-mile run. In particular, if you run 4 miles in 28 minutes or over, you have less than 8% of surviving hell week. Improving that time by just over 2 minutes to run under 26 minutes, and the success rate jumps up to 25%. The best success rate, sitting at 35%, belongs to those who run under 24 minutes for the 4-mile course. “The take-home message is to improve your running to the best of your ability because it is the single most important factor for completing Hell Week," write the study's authors.
We can only speculate why running faster tends to improve success rates. It could be that Hell Week requires more endurance, aerobic fitness, and a better capacity to recover from the countless tasks. That certainly is a part of it. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t consider the mental component. When Steve spoke with one of his former athletes who also happens to be in the military, he relayed a story about being stranded in the woods: “It’s easy to lose your head out there. You’re in the woods, with nothing to eat and no idea where you are for days on end. No clue when your next meal is coming or when you will be out of here. Stress, anxiety, lack of sleep, and food; that’s the name of the game. People spiral bad. A normal guy can turn into a shell of himself by the end. People default to their basic survival instincts." When asked about what he thought separated those who were able to keep their cool versus those who let the experience get to them, he said:
You know, in the middle of a race, where you are having that inner debate? Half your mind is screaming at you to slow down as your legs burn with what feels like battery acid. And the other half of your mind is saying, ‘No! Toughen up. You can get through this. You’re fine.’ Being in survival situations is like having that conversation constantly, for hours on end. It’s unrelenting. You’ve got to get used to that back and forth in your head, how to filter out the bad. Running made it where I was used to finding a path through the negative mess. Some guys are used to doing that for short bursts, like a football player who needs to suck it up for a 3-second play before he gets a break to regroup. Others have never really had to experience it all. Modern life allows you to escape without having to win the inner battle. In running and survival, you have to learn how to live on that edge with no breaks coming until it’s all over. That’s not a fun or easy thing to do.
Was Steve's former athlete onto something real in his observations? Did toughness lie in the ability to create space for proper decision-making?
In a study out of the University of Western Australia, coaches of elite Australian rules football teams were asked what characteristics represent toughness. At the top of the list: "consistent and superior decision-makers." Last on their list: "physical attributes." In another survey of over 130 elite coaches across sports, the most important characteristic of toughness was concentration. The concept of toughness is difficult to pin down. We all intuitively know what it means, but when we deconstruct what makes up toughness, it's not so straightforward. In academia, over 30 attributes have been attributed to toughness, including: determination, confidence, self-control, handling pressure, discipline, dealing with adversity, intrinsic motivation, self-belief, and work ethic. The concept of toughness can apply to just about whatever we want it to, which at least in part explains its popularity as a term we love to throw around. It's worth narrowing toughness down to something more clear and simple:
What do the military experiences described above have in common with improving a basketball team, the employee who is about to give a major presentation, the parent who has to decide what the best route for their child is after they've gotten in trouble, or the physician needing to nail a challenging case or deliver bad news to a patient?
What they have in common is did the person make a skillful decision under stress. Did they choose to get up after getting knocked down, to work through their anxiety or reactivity? That, right there, is the core of toughness. The route towards such toughness doesn’t lie in being callous, but in being vulnerable. It recognizes your strengths and weaknesses so you can learn how to respond to whatever you face. In other words, toughness is a skill that you can develop—not through mindless suffering, but intentional practice.
In this week's podcast, we go even deeper, teaching you how to develop toughness, as we bring nuance, hard-earned expertise, and science to a topic that is often reduced to 'grit it out.' Toughness is more than that. Check it out wherever you listen to your podcasts (Apple/Spotify).
– Steve and Brad
Listen: It's Time to Move Past Bullsh*t "Toughness"
Building off of the essay above, we go deeper into toughness on today’s episode of “excellence, actually”. We’re separating myth from reality, and helping you build a toolkit that can help you be actually tough by learning how to…
Exercise your awareness muscle, so you recognize when you need to push versus when you need to lay off.
Increase your capacity and tolerance for discomfort.
Apply the concept of “RPE” (rate of perceived exertion) to everyday life.
Get very clear on the objective and purpose behind each activity you do.
If you’re sick and tired of—or simply confused by—the clown show toughness that you often see on the Internet, this episode is for you. If you enjoy it, please share it with one other person you think will enjoy it, too!
Check out Brad, featured in this WSJ piece on the Nittany Lions, five-star recruit Drew Allar. He shares some frank words of advice at the end of the article — "sometimes you've just got to say f-ck it and let it rip."
An extraordinarily good essay on the end of thinking from Derek Thompson. It's what we preach here and why we read long-form and books all the time and encourage you to do the same. Thinking is a muscle. Focus is a muscle. Don't lose it.
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Weekly ideas about living a good, meaningful and high performing life in a chaotic world from Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness. Best selling authors of PEAK PERFORMANCE, DO HARD THINGS, and THE PRACTICE OF GROUNDEDNESS.
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