17 days until the start of the 2017 EWS season and 49 days almost to the minute until racing will conclude at UCI DH WC #1 in Lourdes.
The freshness of it all, new teams, new riders on new bikes, colours, kits, venues and new ventures. Wheel size or watts the shiny new things are what keep so many people coming back for a fresh dose of race fever. Whether rider, racer, industry hack, journalist, spectator, coach, fan or fan-boy…this “newness” each season drags the heart-rate a little higher, pushes the addiction a little deeper and keeps the glint of hope shimmering in everyone’s eyes.
Wrapped up with the freshness & newness is the sameness – a must, the blend of fresh and same-old keeps things authentic, keeps DH and Enduro what they are – racing can’t change too much from the basics; A to B, fastest wins. That’s what we are all here for. Displays of preparation and execution against the clock.
Driven by instinct maybe or more possibly culture, the “players” whether fans or media keyboard jockey will speculate. Bench racing; who’s on the up, who’s got what to prove?
The athlete’s in all this need to be strategic, strategy implies purposeful thought. Getting sucked into speculation and expectation is a recipe for disaster – tactical nightmare, shuffling emotions about as best one can only partially dealing with the physiological fall-out inevitably linked to emotional reaction.
2016 is gone. Those with paper to fill will talk of the title defense, the rising star or failing veteran. But there is nothing to defend.
Whether your name is Rude, Ravanel, Callaghan or Winton. Atherton, Gwin, Seagrave or Minnaar. Races can only be won. There is no defense to make. Each week, day & racing minute are opportunities for action only. If you aim to write some history, there’s only one way to go about it.
Races & Championships are only won, never defended.
TIL16 #2; racing a bicycle fast is complex physics but mammal brains work physics with heuristics not equations! Fast & Frugal! Train so! pic.twitter.com/FI4YLglpyr
#til16 #6 – live well, smile, give thanks to those you love & those who respect you.. If it matters commit to it, own it, prioritise it. pic.twitter.com/7mY5lz0GZY
#TIL16 #8; adaptability of training planning. Plan B,C,D etc.Should trump plan A As they exist due to better insight into current state! pic.twitter.com/e7oyKOZfbu
#TIL16 #9 – realised that competiton is always a jungle – training atheltes for life in the zoo will never lead to the best outcome. #bufferpic.twitter.com/spX7YXOG2P
#TIL16 – #12 a picture may tell 1000 words, but whole story is made of millions! Understanding movement solutions needs kinetic & kinematic. pic.twitter.com/QOncebdl8n
Obliquity is, I think anyway, pretty tough to pronounce. At least at a glance when reading… < Obb – lick – witty >? That’s about right!
Straight line; direct, plan of action, clear objectives, Do A and B happens, good decisions happen because I know my goals etc…
All of the above, are generally, what goals are all about. With 2017 already here many a human and push-bike piloting human at that will be setting a fire under their arses, setting goals, making resolutions and….sticking to them! The only issue being that life, by which I mean our human interaction with the world at large, often dishes up tasty unknowns…meaning planning to change the plan based off of these unknowns is the only plan we should have!
Amplify and Dampen – rewritten as Grow and Shrink – these are the core “skills” in adaptive planning aimed at achieving your “end-results” or goals. With rigid plans based off of cause & effect thinking A always leads to B, you are often found late to the party when it comes to capitalizing on an emergent situation or dampening a not so desired outcome. So whether that’s making the most of good weather or adjusting your plan to make the most of training even with an injured leg, having you’re goals set “obliquely” means you can deal with all eventualities and be still far more likely to succeed come the “crunch”!
While some smart people thought adding the S.M.A.R.T approach to setting outcome type goals would help, and it does, the “all in” end goal approach still fails so many people that different way of doing things is needed!
Here’s an anecdote to help ease the pain of my ramblings…
Say you want to loose 5kg of fat; to help you climb faster, slow down quicker and shred the bike better; at the same time you want to get stronger!
Goals = Loose 5 kg by April; Add 15kg to Squat and 30kg to Deadlift by May. No that’s all pretty S.M.A.R.T. stuff, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time framed! So next step? Design the perfect strength training plan; higher a nutritionist once off and have them build you a “diet plan”! Job done…follow those two things for the next 3 months and you’l be set!? Lean, mean and keen?
Alas…who feckin’ knows….4 to 5 months away is a long way away! And all the while you’ll be focusing on those numbers, numbers, numbers! And what do those numbers mean…..not much, they are the by-product of success not the measure of it. The are extrinsic focus that will hammer down your intrinsic motivations…
So instead – add some obliquity….
Ok – How about? Become MUCH leaner than I am now; and get stronger in such a way that it shows up when I’m riding.
Instead of normal goals we go for some indirect changes…
Eat protein at each meal
Only snack on fruit or nuts
Visible Reduce portion sizes except for after training meals
Weigh yourself at regular intervals, but also track fat mass lost with pinch testing and take a body composition photo with each weigh in!
Track/Record your training session. Likewise take pics of your meals to compare content and portions
When you weigh in and measure fat mass – see how your habit and lifestyle changes and training practices are working….notice a trend? Amplify it!
For your Strength oblique-goals you could try;
Strength train 3 times a week minimum for 5 weeks
Include 3 compound lifts in each session
Identify limiting factors to movement efficiency and quality
Add 1.25 kg to all compound lifts weekly at a minimum
Track weight lifted and how it felt (speed, effort, intent etc…)
Track your fatigue during and after riding on demanding, steep or “wild” trails
Is your current approach to getting storing leading to noticeable improvements on the bike?
The above are not conditional; they are how you will achieve what you want to achieve. They form behaviors that become habits that become success!
The reason you’ll see “track” or monitor in there so much is that as we strive for our goals we learn about them, learn about how useful that new “place”, new “you”, new “state” will actually be and learn about how our actions shape the speed and direction we are heading in and if that direction is the right one, wrong one or even a better one.
If great cathedrals were just built to pray in then they would not look like they do…if you focus only on the end goal; winning or loosing weight then you’ll miss every last opportunity to improve, to grow, to change, to amplify.
The pounds look after themselves only when we take care and cherish every wee penny.
To summarise:
Set small goals that allow you to build groundwork to large successes
Once larger objectives achieved – don’t stop
Embrace serendipitous discoveries in pursuit of our objectives
Realise that behavior, habit, mindset and emotional intelligence are what achieve big goals long term
Make changes both based on emergent situations and to initiate learning and discovery (will a low carbohydrate day a week work for me?)
Only by doing can you learn how things happened, planning only works as a description of what may happen
There’s nothing wrong with dreaming big and setting outcome goals – they just need to be backed-up obliquely
Oblique goals allow you to tinker and learn on the path to success within an evolving but effective frame-work
This is a re-post from the Point1 Facebook page; because frankly Facebook is a horrible medium for longer, dribbling narrative! Enjoy.
So, to carry on from Friday’s yip-yap on Posture and Technique…
One of the relationships (some were trade-offs) listed was
Pre-Reaction~Reaction
The first term above being a misnomer – deliberate at the time. The correct term in fact would be, I think,
Prospective. Prospective control.
And as is becoming very clear in my own development as a coach, the relationship of qualities, traits and sub-systems within the athlete (rider) is of utmost importance, this must be respected & understood.
Relational thinking TRUMPS categorical thinking….always. When we speak about performance improvement at least.
“Prospective control refers to the means by which actors (read: rider in our case) adapt behaviour in advance to the constraints and behavioral opportunities afforded in/by the environment” ~ Fajen, Riley, Turvey; 2009
Prospective control is thus ESSENTIAL for the emergence of skilled actions. Without it all you would do is react to what the trail/race-track is giving you. But as we all know, reaction is after the fact, it is, no matter how “fast” too late. Too late for you the rider to successfully navigate each distinct section of trail in such a way as too link up distinct sections into fast, flowing, effective riding.
So when you see your favourite, rider, athlete or celebrity carry out some reactive “eye-hand” co-ordination drill in the gym, remember that reaction is too slow; and regardless most of the “reactions” we make, when riding an MTB well, are somatic reflexes, not reactions…and once that gym “drill” is learned then it would be the prospective control of posture, position that would allow for faster “reaction” to emerge. So again, full circle, relational thinking; reaction to a stimulus is much faster with better prospective control!
So in the immediate term what does this mean for you if the whole notion of prospective control is new too you?
– Posture = Prizes; the whole reason the “attack-position” bares so many hallmarks and similarities (attractors if you know Dynamical Systems) among good riders is. That that position/posture allows for joint angles, muscle length~tension relationships, peripheral nervous system function, afferent control & force production to operate within an optimal bandwidth to deliver the required technique on trail in the fastest way possible. Prospective control of posture given the trail affordances means “skill” emerges to perfectly match speed. This in essence is “trail efficiency”!
So what can we do to improve our potential to always display usable posture regardless of the trail demands? A shortlist only below….
1. Cultivate & Maintain adequate control, mobility, proprioception, strength and stability through all joints and movement patterns.
2. Develop adequate and ever evolving strength of your “hip hinge”; both eccentric and concentric muscle action, with a stable spine achieved through excellent function of all torso musculature from hip to shoulder (and likely more)!
3. Identify “rate-limiters” to postural maintenance and re-setting. These could be anything from foundational physiological qualities like aerobic metabolism to very specific characteristic qualities like your interaction with a particular size bike, with a certain tyre pressure on certain gradient of terrain!
4. Given the minute detail of the last point above it becomes clear that developing, year on year, season on season, a large physical/physiological buffer of foundational qualities that support good posture on trail will reduce the likely hood of poor mechanics or characteristic rate limiters cropping up under duress/fatigue or emotionally demanding situations.
5. True sport form and improvement in Prime Postures can only be viewed, refined, quantified and understood if enough training takes place in the environments you race in...so that means shredding your bike like fuck in the mountains, up the mountains, down the mountains etc… sounds like fun!
To wrap up a quite abstract post; prospective posture allows for prospective position on trail and that allows for fast, smooth, efficient technique application on trail; which will look to the observer like skill. This is basically all we want as a rider – as skillful navigation of long sections of trail reward us with a sensory and neuro-endocrine response that trumps many experiences in life.
Do this often enough and you get that “flow” feeling…and that leads to intrinsic motivation to shred, removing the space for strange extrinsic motivators like health, weight-loss or victory and in there you find endless drive to improve and a near total lack of anxiety.
So as I said above – relationships of qualities; not categories of qualities please!
I get the feeling, often enough that you could say daily, that most people think that there are secrets to sports performance, secrets to health and fitness improvements. “Hidden” tips, tricks and my pet-peeve, “hacks” that provide shortcuts to success. A Those in the know, know situation, those out of that loop are on the back foot, destined to failure because they ain’t hacking their way to success.
With the above “spiel” in mind this series of very short blog posts aims to provide full-disclosure, no bull. Just straight up advice on what works and why in improving different areas of your sports performance and life.
In the fitness industry the pendulum swings from extreme to extreme; but time and again the truth and reality of sports performance improvement is stuck in the fuzzy grey middle. That’s not to say there are no “right” answers, but given how complex humans are the right answers evolve as you do!
I’ll be open to suggestions for topics to cover via social media…so get messaging and mailing.
First up in the series?
Sleep; sleep and a “subtraction” not “addition” approach to using it to improving your health and performance.
While sleep is seldom the questions it is often the answer. No matter what the performance related question I get these days a huge percentage of people who come my way for advice on the shiny pretty trinkets of training (like the best “H.I.I.T Protocol, supplement, diet restriction, fancy strength training method etc…) are lacking in quality & consistent sleep; the late night “treat” of box sets til 4am, the weekend lie in, the disturbed night of wall climbing after 16 snapchat laps and a Facebook frolic while the heads already on the pillow! Sound familiar?
If you want to learn from the consistent World Class performers in any sport and maybe apply some of their approaches to your own health, well-being and performance then sleep is #1. The linchpin of gainzzz. The consistent performers get quality, consistent sleep. That’s full disclosure on my behalf, because from the experience and data I have from Point1 athletes it’s a very obvious trend. Consistent & Quality Sleep = Consistent #Gainzzz
The ever evolving science and understanding about how sleep is regulated and how it affects life and well-being during waking hours is fascinating. With some recent papers published in the area of energy balance and sleep providing some much needed glue to hold many sleep/performance ideas together better than ever.
To list just a few of the key things sleep is responsible for:
Tissue remodeling and muscle growth
Regulation of Energy Balance
Hormonal Health and Efficiency
Metabolic Efficiency and Neuroendocrine Regeneration
Appetite Regulation
Memory Formation
Immune Function and Innate Immunity regulation
Skill/Motor Learning & Consolidation
Many of the above are regulated by a tight relationship between what and when you eat and sleep! It’s clearly a well regulated tightly coupled system that can be quickly derailed by the choices on offer to us in modern life, but now knowing that it’s basically the one two way system between our guts and brains that regulate appetite, metabolism and sleep means we can do things like; eating regular meals, going to bed “full”, avoiding stimulants like Caffeine, nicotine and cocaine (joke) in the 4-6hrs pre bed will all have profound effects on the quality of your sleep!
The point of these blogs is to not get to sciency, all the neurobiology and neurochemistry of sleep science is waaaay beyond me but the magic that happens when we get to REM or Stage 4 sleep seems to be pretty easy grasp! The brain acts like it’s awake but the body is all but paralyzed! True regeneration. The longer you sleep and better the quality the longer you’ll spend in REM sleep and the more of the above awesomeness will happen! Simples.
The How?
Pretty basic stuff that’s easy to implement but will require a no-bull, get shit done attitude
Quality Sleep Environment
Decent Bed
No electronics 45min pre-sleep
No caffeine in the 4hrs pre-bed
Set Sleep time
Set Wake up Time
Going to bed well fed
Breathing Drills and Relaxation if you’re a midfield of fidgeting in the bed!
Wrapped Up
The thousand pin pricks of modern responsibilities can wear the most resilient athlete down, sign hear, be hear, do this, remember that!? Sleep is the ultimate and primary off-set of these pin pricks! You can be as cool as you please but neglecting sleep will break you not make you. Fragility is no man’s friend and the sleep deprived athlete is always a fragile athlete!
It’s not about what fluff and glitter you can add to your training – it’s about removing limitations to performance like your poor sleep quality and consistency!
Friday Freebie at it’s finest! Here’s a simple, fast and tasty recipe to have in the “recipe bank”. Perfect carbohydrate packed bars to bring on rides or snack on about 1hr pre-training if it’s gonna be a tough one!
As always the recipe can be modified based on needs and availability of ingredients, but sticking give or take to teh ratio of “wet” to “dry” ingredients is important.
Bananas and figs make this one nutrient dense and taste filled. So you’ll have no issues with hammering all ride long and longer term health and robustness will be taken care of a little with all the minerals, vitamins and trace elements packed into this package!
Ingredients
2 cups of rolled oats
2 tbsp ground flax and/or chia seed
1/2 + cup chopped figs
2 very ripe mashed large bananas
1/4 cup honey or maple syrup/honey mix
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or real vanilla pods
1 teaspoon cinnamon/nutmeg mixed
1/2 teaspoon salt
How To
Mix all your dry ingredients in a large bowl.
Add your honey, mashed/blended banana and finely chopped figs to saucepan.
Heat over a low heat, stirring regularly until everything is nice and runny and gooey, you may have to presoak the figs or even blend and heat separately if you want a very smooth texture.
Be careful not to burn the honey/banana as it won’t taste so good if you do.
Once happy with your texture transfer the wet to the dry, mix well to combine.
Transfer the mixture a baking paper lined oven-tray.
Pat it down using extra baking paper or a large, flat spatula! The thicker you lay the mixture the chewier and softer your bars will be; too thin and you’ll have rock hard bars. not ideal for the trial.
Bake in a pre heated fan-oven at 180c for 18 to 20 min
1 Recipe – 2 types of protein packed snack block; multiple uses!
Snack, Travel, extra calories
or
Recover and Re-Build
The Base Recipe
65g whey isolate protein powder (flavour of choice)
100g ground almond meal
35g desiccated coconut
95-125ml milk of choice (unsweetened almond or hazelnut or cow’s milk)
The base ingredients, mixed, rolled and blocked!
The add-ons, add-ins and changes for your needs
Recovery Bar: So if you want a recovery bar substitute the Whey Powder for a Whey based recovery powder! The chocolate bars pictured used High5 Recovery Protein Powder. If you need or want even more carbohydrate in the mix then add some honey, maple syrup or break all the rules and sprinkle in some cane-sugar!
Orange/Chocolate Bar:I’ve added cocoa powder (the real deal) and orange zest, then substituted some of the milk with fresh squeezed orange juice to make an unreal tangy block! Chocolate-Orange with all of the gainzzz!
Vegan bar: For those who ain’t keen on tasty animal products then you can easily substitute the Whey for a Rice or Hemp Protein! Job done!
Travel Bar: If you want these guys to pack an even bigger nutritional punch or need them to be even more satiating for travel then add in some chopped goji berries, chia seeds and nuts of choice like brazil and walnuts! You’l have to adjust liquid to dry ingredient ratios though!
Protein Block , cut and ready for the fridge/freezer
How To:
Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl
Measure out or weigh your milk of choice
add a little liquid and start to mix, things will seem very dry at first but the dry ingredients will absorb the liquid slowly and start to bind
have patience, adding and mixing slowly
you should get a pretty workable and dry mixture after a couple of minutes
roll the mixture into a log, sprinkle with almond meal so it is easy work
roll it out and cut into discs; shape those discs into blocks as pictured
refrigerate for up to 1 hr
they are ready to roll at any time, but once out of the fridge you can coat with dark chocolate or a chocolate and yogurt mix and it will set fast
The base recipe is key – you can go wild with modifications to suit your needs
This recipe makes about 6 to 7 blocs – double or triple as needed!
Freeze, refrigerate for up to 1 week! These go great as a quality snack after training with a coffee, in the back pack for the long missions or rides (perfect after the 3hr mark) or as a travel stop-gap when jammed with seeds and nuts!
Imagination is only limitor!
Out of the fridge and ready for dipping in chocolate or eating!
Hhmmmm Protein, Fat and all dem nutritious nutrients
Very few mountain-bikers will reach “excellence”; defining excellence alone is neigh on impossible. More importantly very few riders desire world class performance, they desire feelings of self actualisation, belonging and achievement. Competency is the word. Competency of technique application… i.e skills!
Following on from the Skill Acquisition 2.0 blog; this one is short and sweet. The Car-park…the place one may go to “drill” skills, doing skills drills. As that is what many a coach, internet guru or other expert claims to be the key part of the learning process. You see similar attempts in team sports; cones, bags, lights and lightning foot-work.
Mountain SkillsDusty Car-park “skills”
The issue lies in that as we’ve chatted about before, car-parks are not where we ride, no-one has the same kind of fun and experiences of awesomeness in a car-park as you get in the forest, mountains and trails! So while I could waffle on, again, about how the car-park drill serves little purpose as it is not the task environment and as soon as we remove the characteristic constraints of the environment we are then engaging in part practice and basically pissing into the wind, I’m gonna curve ball it as our USA friends would say.
Complex vs. Complicated
A core idea behind the rationale of less car-park more bike-park! Mountain-biking of any kind is complex, not complicated. Complicated is getting an internal combustion engine to work flawlessly for years on end. It takes, planning, design, mathematics, exact step-wise construction etc… Shredding your bike down a mountain side takes skill developed over practice in the environment. Those skills never develop in the same way for two people on the same time course, with the same challenges emerging and being dealt with. Contrast that with the Volkswagen production line…every single diesel engine follows the same exact timeline of construction.
Mountain biking is complex not complicated #PAcoupling
So full circle, how does the distinction between complex and complicated relate to your car-park!? Getting better at applying technique in MTB is best done in the task environment…why? Because not only can you get better at the core skill in question but the complexity of the environment will always lead to expaptations…meaning that while outcome 1 was get better at off cambers, you will invariable through natural process of self organisation get better at or discover other solutions to numerous other movement problems on the hill!
To clarify with an example. Imagine a Long left side off-camber with a right hand corner on exit, numerous tree roots, variable soil type and a long bumpy entry before the off-camber versus a car-park drill with a long plank of wood or MDF propped up against a curb or wall. looking to “mimic” a left side off-camber.
Both may lead the learner to discover the necessary lateral weight shift, posture, speed control and braking to successful enter, roll on and exit the off camber. But only one environment will lead the learner to discover or organise better posture in rough terrain, adequate perceptive skills for organising posture during one skill to prep for the next required technique…only one scenario will allow the learner to discover the effect tire pressure or direction of travel has on bike and body when encountering roots and rocks etc…
The car-park scenario assumes complicated movement solutions to a problem. The mountain allows complex solutions to movement problems to emerge, solidify and exapt other positive learning experiences.
The King of the Pits is impressive but seldom King of the Hill!
Constraints Led Approach to Skill Aquisition
I’ll expand on this more soon as we’ve not even covered the possible and plausible idea of “negative transfer” that may occur in exaggerated part practice. Nor have we covered the issue of the “car-park” removing so many affordances that should dictate technique that you may be just simply wasting time.
Comments welcome.
And for those who wish to read more about the above ideas in a general context – click here.
Streamlining training success with a 1 Flow Warm-Up® ; that was the only goal with designing a smooth transition dynamic warm-up for Point1 athletes.
Below the current “1 Flow Warm-Wp®™” is demonstrated by CRC/Paypal/Nukeproofrider Joe Smith. The “moves” chosen all have purpose and intention, meaning they will not only improve your movement quality and capacity but will also lead to better application of technique on your bike as they remove unnecessary variations BUT increase usable ROM!
Use it before strength training, before DH runs or Enduro skids! Use it on it’s on for fun or regeneration. Just USE it! Consistency = Success
1 Flow – DMWU*
Start standing; relaxed. Draw in 5 big breaths. In through nose out through mouth! Fill your belly not your chest.
remember the below should flow
Spider-man lunge
T-spine rotation to free side (look up to hand)
Hamstring Mobilise
T-spine rotation to support side (look up to hand)
Deep Squat with T Spine Overhead Reach
Squat to stand
Walk out on hands
Scapular Retraction Push Up
Calf Mobilise
A Frame Hip Extension
Cycle through the above, with no stopping for 3 to 5 reps per exercise per side; by side I mean each rep starts on a spider-man lunge on one side, cycles though all moves before you lunge to the other side.
Finish with Bear Crawls, Bounds, Jumping jacks and centre jumps to ramp up your HR and body temp!
Simple fast, fun to learn and highly effective.
*DMWU = Dynamic Mobility Warm Up
The video shows Joe “starting” the Flow from the Scapular retraction Push – Up
Currently learning a little but making a conscious effort to apply and above all “concrete” fresh ideas, concepts and thinking I’ve learned in the last 3 months (there has been alot of self-led learning lately). Application of knowledge is the best part of coaching, the most, maybe only essential part of coaching and at times the most taxing…at least for me.
For applying new ideas to real world situation and real people (athletes) sets them and ultimately me up for failures. As absolutes don’t exist in sports performance I’ve only got principles to guide me so as long as the application of new “things” is underpinned at all times by principle then, well, then we should all be OK!
Excepting success graciously and failure willingly and learning from either is after all key to growth!
Prepared to learn no matter the outcome; mind at ease because discipline happened!?
Growth for the athletes I coach, myself as a coach or rider and growth in general is all about MINDSET – some even call it Growth Mindset and you’ll see plenty of sweet wee info-graphics out there with all sorts of “people with a growth mindset don’t watch TV” type think on the go out there! Lovely stuff!
So yes, I am all about the growth mindset, but I don’t think it something best actively cultivated more something that is made obligatory for you by your approach to your environment.
So Step 1 would be make sure your environment is pretty good. If it’s not change it or if that’s not possible….deal with it! Don’t have access to a sweet gym with Olympic bars and coloured plates? Only got too dumbbells and 5 X 5m sq. to train in – fine shut up and get to it…..but of your goals or needs involve increasing max strength or re-habing from injury then maybe seeking out the fancy gym or making your will have to happen. That’s environment management in a nutshell – deal with it or change it!
Tight-Rope of Mindset – Thanks to trainugly.com
Anyway I’ll get to the point; Discipline = Freedom or Discipline creates Freedom. A guy called Jocko Willink said that. He was a military man where discipline keeps you alive in the country you’re invading for no good reason.
But the discipline he’s on about isn’t in relation to conduct in the presence of superiors. It’s self-discipline and that’s where it relates or transfer to all things coaching and performance. The key common trait in people that perform consistently is discipline and as I’ve said 100000 times consistency is King when it comes to progress. So where does the freedom come in you ask? Well everywhere. FREEDDDOOOMMMM! 😉
When you are disciplined daily then freedom happens. It may seem paradoxical…but it’s not. It’s freedom in light of your goals, wants, needs and desires. For example, self-discipline removes doubt, removes internal ego struggle and get’s ride of ineffective and incessant daily micro-management. All of the above suck time out of day and reduce your freedom. Not it may feel like sticking to your 6;00 a.m turbo session removes freedom, but all it does is create it.
When it’s done it’s done. Add into that the fact that you know after a hard turbo session you needs 60g of Carbs, 30g Protein and some fats, along with the fact you know you’ll be hunger again at 10 a.m. due to EPOC and BMR effects. So your A.M snack is sorted. Homemade muffin, a banana, 1 yogurt and some coffee anyone?
Discipline in daily choices creates simplicity in subsequent choices and that frees up all the space in your head to think and do much more, frees up all the hours outside of training or work or chores, job done!
No micromanagement means you not worrying about every wee detail….you’re not guilty about missing your morning training, you’re not wondering if you deserve that snack, your not wondering if you’ve eaten the correct thing before training this evening, your not wondering if 45 min between the end of work and picking the kids up is enough to warm-up, Mobile, foam roll, train, cool-down, yoga and then eat your Paleo brownies while praying to the high fat gods. All that micro management bullshit is finished with. Results happen because your discipline leads to consistency and that consistency frees up your life for anything and everything else!
Sounds to simple maybe? But the whole idea has it’s own built in safety net and back door. If you’re consistently disciplined and achieving your goals but not happy or not achieving your goals then those goals aren’t for you. Move on, next chapter, new focus!
For the coaches out there reading this you may be wondering how that relates to the you? Well discipline in your approach to everything you do with athletes you train gives them a solid framework, a system almost that they grow to understand and love, they will, if you do your job right preempt you in many of your choices and decisions, meaning that they to now have more freedom and that empowers to “buy-in” to your training philosophy. The athlete will know the goal of a session, understand the intention and desired out come and as such have the freedom to almost build their own training around the key outcome goals. They won’t be doing anything for coach it will all be for them!
Discipline = chicken dinners; just ask Callaghan
The final anecdote is a classic – the coach, athlete or exerciser, perceived by friends, acquaintances and family as the fitness fanatic. In reality they are just the disciplined and it’s easy, why? Because it works!
There’s a party or social gathering and you the “fanatic” refuse alcohol or the pre-dinner nibbles or whatever other processed filth is circulating the room. Some frown upon your “arrogance” or “impoliteness” others marvel at your self-discipline commenting about how it must be so hard!? But the discipline =freedom; freedom to know you ain’t missing out on anything by avoiding the pringles, freedom to eat plenty of extra meat and veg at dinner, freedom to know that there is no “catch-up” HIIT to “endure” because of your il-discipline one night, Freedom to eat the dessert; why? Because you know discipline works, discipline is easy, discipline creates freedom and freedom = fun!
It’s the sporadic jump on a training plan, juice diet, boot camp loving, yo-yo dieting self loather that goes on a fitness binge or dry January that then must reward their “discipline” with something “forbidden” that never gets results, never tastes true freedom and never, ever has any real fun!
The disciplined has all the freedom; freedom to know that shredding 5 days in the Alps won’t kill them, freedom to eat that extra dessert, freedom to choose a road ride over MTB or freedom to just sit and enjoy a coffee with friends knowing the work got done, gets done and will again and again, get done!
The discipline to do the simple important stuff always has a knock on effect everywhere else in your life! Simples…freedom!
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