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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What's this book about? Who is it for? Let's keep it simple.
Are you a striver, pusher, or someone who is driven for success? It'll teach you how to strive in a harmonious way where you can achieve without it making you miserable.
Do you face performance anxiety, pressure, or worse, choking? I go deep into the science and psychology, outlining a new understanding of why we fall short.
Do you experience fear of failure, self-sabotaging, or imposter syndrome? You'll learn about the fascinating new science of shifting your perspective, of dislodging you from the rut, where you keep getting in your own way,
Do you need to display courage, to come through in the clutch? You'll learn tools and tips on how to shift your biology and psychology to free yourself up to perform when it matters most.
Are you a parent, teacher, or coach wondering how to set your young protege's up for long-term success and mental well-being? I go over the youth sports craziness, the secret to prodigies who make it to adult success, safetyism in the classroom, and what we can do about it.
Do you want to reach your potential? Be it in sport, business, or life. That's what this book is about. How do I know it will help? It's got 300+ research citations, 75+ interviews with elite performers, and my own experience as an athlete, coach, and whistleblower.
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Reflect: Quick Thought
You can’t force fitness. The body doesn’t adapt according to a schedule that you set, instead, it only adapts and grows at the rate that it decides to. What this means is that you have to design workouts to grow based on the current state of your body, not on where you desire to be. Instead, take what your body allows you to do. Let fitness come as you get good consistent work in.
Forcing backfires. This isn't just about fitness. It's about life. You can't force a breakthrough or for you to get over a tough loss. You've got to take what life gives you and manage it the best you can.
This is just one of Steve's 5 Rules of Training. THey don't just apply to fitness. And we discuss them on this weeks podcast episode:
The boring stuff is your foundation
Let it Come, Don’t Force it.
Take the Next Logical Step
You lose what you don’t train
Train the individual, not the system
(Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.)
In the health and wellness space, reversing aging has become trendy. There are all sorts of supplements you can take, protocols you can follow, and dubious tests you can take to help you on your journey to find the fountain of youth. Perhaps the most famous of those on this journey is Bryan Johnson, who claims he's in the top 1% of 18-year-olds on dozens of mostly arbitrary measures. As I recently turned 40 I've been contemplating this modern version of the age-old anti-aging quest. In some ways, this 'Don't Die' quest (as seen on Brian's T-shirts and merch) can be beneficial. Whatever gets you exercising, sleeping, eating less junk, and spending more quality time with friends and family is a good thing in my book. Most of these big bucket items aren't reversing aging though. They're just helping us agegracefully. And I think that's the point where we often get derailed. The goal isn't to be king of mastering arbitrary biomarkers that may or may not extend our lifespan. It's to live a good life. Whatever that means to you. It's akin to the athlete who is convinced that the whole point of running is to run their mile repeat workout faster...Meanwhile, they miss out on the joys of the experience, the exhilaration of competition, and the contentment of trying to master something hard. And...they miss that running those mile repeats faster doesn't even promise that your actual performance will improve.
Instead of trying to resist aging, there's power in accepting it. Just like when it comes to toughness, if we deny or try to resist the pain or fatigue, it generally backfires. If however, we learn to accept that the race we're running or task we're doing will be difficult, that we might fail, and ultimately don't have full control over the result, we find ourselves able to navigate it. The same goes for aging. Instead of resisting it, accept it.
In that acceptance comes wisdom. We get to learn and adjust as we go. Instead of trying to look to the past, we can use our experience to stay in the game longer— and enjoy doing so. I've recently had the longest injury-free stretch of running in many years. And most of that is attributable to accepting my limits. By not trying to pretend I'm 18 again. It's why I run 35 miles per week, instead of 100. It's why I do small sprinkles of intense workouts instead of trying to 'go see God' every week... It's in accepting reality that we unlock the ability to navigate it better.
With that in mind, here are a few lessons I've learned as an aging athlete who can still run pretty fast but is also having a lot of fun doing it.
Stop short. Almost always.
There's an adage in running that you should have one more rep in the tank. It's also called the no hands on your knees rule. Both get a simple point, the risk of pushing to get that final repeat is seldom worth it. The benefit is small if it even exists.
This is even more true as you age. Instead of one rep short, it's several. Instead of doing a 5-mile tempo, run 3. Instead of 20x200, do 14. It's not wussing out. It's trusting your mind and body that if you need to go to the pain cave in a race, you've been there before. Practice is about balancing the risk and reward. And as you get older, that balance is shifted to minimizing risk. Because the name of the game is...consistency trumps everything else. Where that line is for each person will differ. But it's often ego and insecurity that causes us to push too far in practice. We ignore that slight twinge in our calf until it strains. We overlook the feeling of fatigue until it's full-blown burnout. It takes true confidence and self-awareness to stop short, giving you a better chance of coming back tomorrow, the next day, and the next.
Don't try to be a social media workout hero. No one is impressed — at least anyone who knows anything.
2. Use your hard-earned wisdom to your advantage.
Experience is your asset — when younger you would ignore your body, present you now knows to listen to it. When younger you might have gone out in a race too quickly, only to fade, present you knows how to thread the needle to pace perfectly. Use your experience to your advantage. This mainly means don't do stupid things that you sometimes could get away with when you were younger.
3. It's easier to maintain than build.
Building up a quality or capacity is hard. You've got to convince your brain and body to change. That means a regular stimulus that embarrasses your body just enough so it adapts in the right direction. Maintaining what is already built up is a lot easier. There's no convincing your body to change, it's just about keeping what you have around. As I've aged, I'm trying to take advantage of the over two decades of training. The goal isn't to go somewhere I haven't gone, to push new bounds. It's to simply maintain some of the capabilities and capacity I've painstakingly built over decades of training. Instead of 60 miles per week, I can get pretty aerobically fit off 35-40. Instead of 10x400 at mile pace, I can do a handful of repeats and get most of the bang for my buck. Sure, there are some things I've neglected for a while that I'll need to build back up. But that's the point. Identify what it is you can maintain. It takes the load off, and you get the most out of the benefits for 30-40% less work.
4. Redefine what success means to you.
When you're young, success seems rather straightforward. You either won the race or didn't, ran a personal best or fell short. That narrow definition of success may work when progress comes easy, and the relationship between working hard and improvement is highly correlated. But as we get older, that relationship breaks.
And it's a good thing it does. It forces us to move from judging our success by the simple and external to the multidimensional. Success could now be based on the feeling or experience; that challenge of navigating a tough patch, or the feeling of being alive as you're overwhelmed by sensory feedback. Or you could zoom out and see exercise as a part of a broader journey. One that allows for mastery as you challenge yourself in something you can control. Or perhaps winning is about simply showing up. When your pursuit is about connecting with others, just being there is a win — regardless of the outcome. Your pursuits can fulfill different needs or roles. And those may change and fluctuate with the different seasons of your life. This move away from the simplistic doesn't make you less competitive. It allows you to explore the craft in a way that fits gracefully as you are in this present moment, not as you were at eighteen.
P.S. Steve gave in and is tracking his masters training journey on Strava. He even created a run club there to share insights and training tips.
Discover: More Good Stuff
Steve recently went on the Rich Roll podcast to discuss his new book, parenting, the latest in coaching, why so many health influencers get it wrong when it comes to endurance training, and much more. This was an epic conversation. Give it a listen!
3 additional posts related to our main piece, from the growth equation library:
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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