"A single target written on a piece of paper and stuck to your fridge is more effective than the most elaborate goal plan that is put in a drawer".
I read that as I was planning my race season for 2020. Doesn't that just seem like a distance memory...
It's been almost three years since I've written a blog post. I probably stopped because there weren't enough hours in the day to get it written. Well, we've all got a bit more time on our hands now, in the context of living out our lives against the backdrop of a global pandemic. The thing is, our way of life has changed, but many things about the human condition persist.
Hold it. It might be worth differentiating between the human condition and the athlete condition. Athletes, and certainly triathletes, have a tendency to set targets for ourselves on a regular basis. Swim this fast, bike this hard, run for this distance, etc. The thing I got wrong until this year was that I never externalised those targets. The goals themselves were always very real for me, but never did I externalise them. Never before did I write a target on a piece of paper and stick it to my fridge. I always figured my motivation to go out and train would be enough. How wrong I was.
A friend of mine (a research fellow at Bath University) told me at the start of this year the single most useful piece of sports psychology I'd ever heard. He said the basic mistake athletes make when thinking about motivation is that they tend to think of it as an amount that fluctuates up and down, like a thermometer. Instead, he told me, think of it as a continuum with intrinsic (internally motivated) at one end, and extrinsic (motivated by the input of outside factors) at the other. Our motivation swings between the two like a pendulum.
This blew my mind. I'd always considered myself a pretty intrinsically motivated guy. Getting up for early sessions on the turbo, late-night swims, running alone in horrible weather, I'm fine with all of these things. But what happens when my pendulum swung back into the extrinsic side? (plot spoiler; this happens to EVERY athlete at some point). I assumed extrinsic motivation would be achieved by talking to other athletes or having my training plan on the fridge. No, said my friend. Make a goal plan.
So I made a goal plan. It was a clumsy and rudimentary thing. A column for swim, bike and run, and a row for each month. Each month I wanted to hit a certain time for the Olympic-distance disciplines. I did a time trial at the end of each month and wrote them on my goal plan. I looked at it on my fridge. Every day. And knock me down with a feather, the thing actually worked. Seeing that I'd hit sub 27 minutes for a 1500m swim when I was supposed to hit 28 minutes gave me the kind of confidence boost you pay good money for with psychologists.
And so, the goal plan led me towards two main goals. Nail a new personal best for the half marathon distance, and be ready to attempt to qualify for GB age group triathlon team. Now, thanks to the global outbreak of Covid-19, my half marathon was cancelled, and it seems likely my qualification race for the GB squad will be cancelled also. Goals out the window?
No way. I'd worked too hard. And so, galvanised by the external motivating power of a bit of paper stuck to my fridge, I went out and ran a half marathon anyway. And I chopped my PB by almost two minutes, coming in with a time of 1:26:52. And none of it would have been possible without the goal plan on my fridge.
So in these strange times, when we're forced to stay indoors, when training can suffer, when races are cancelled, and when motivation can drop, try writing a goal down and putting it somewhere visible. It might not be a race goal. It could be a goal to spend at least an hour a day playing games with your family. It might be to write a short story each week about your life during the Covid-19 pandemic. Keeping your goals is crucial for our mental health during this crazy time.
Whatever it is, try writing it down and putting it on your fridge. It might just blow your mind like it did mine.
I read that as I was planning my race season for 2020. Doesn't that just seem like a distance memory...
It's been almost three years since I've written a blog post. I probably stopped because there weren't enough hours in the day to get it written. Well, we've all got a bit more time on our hands now, in the context of living out our lives against the backdrop of a global pandemic. The thing is, our way of life has changed, but many things about the human condition persist.
Hold it. It might be worth differentiating between the human condition and the athlete condition. Athletes, and certainly triathletes, have a tendency to set targets for ourselves on a regular basis. Swim this fast, bike this hard, run for this distance, etc. The thing I got wrong until this year was that I never externalised those targets. The goals themselves were always very real for me, but never did I externalise them. Never before did I write a target on a piece of paper and stick it to my fridge. I always figured my motivation to go out and train would be enough. How wrong I was.
A friend of mine (a research fellow at Bath University) told me at the start of this year the single most useful piece of sports psychology I'd ever heard. He said the basic mistake athletes make when thinking about motivation is that they tend to think of it as an amount that fluctuates up and down, like a thermometer. Instead, he told me, think of it as a continuum with intrinsic (internally motivated) at one end, and extrinsic (motivated by the input of outside factors) at the other. Our motivation swings between the two like a pendulum.
This blew my mind. I'd always considered myself a pretty intrinsically motivated guy. Getting up for early sessions on the turbo, late-night swims, running alone in horrible weather, I'm fine with all of these things. But what happens when my pendulum swung back into the extrinsic side? (plot spoiler; this happens to EVERY athlete at some point). I assumed extrinsic motivation would be achieved by talking to other athletes or having my training plan on the fridge. No, said my friend. Make a goal plan.
So I made a goal plan. It was a clumsy and rudimentary thing. A column for swim, bike and run, and a row for each month. Each month I wanted to hit a certain time for the Olympic-distance disciplines. I did a time trial at the end of each month and wrote them on my goal plan. I looked at it on my fridge. Every day. And knock me down with a feather, the thing actually worked. Seeing that I'd hit sub 27 minutes for a 1500m swim when I was supposed to hit 28 minutes gave me the kind of confidence boost you pay good money for with psychologists.
And so, the goal plan led me towards two main goals. Nail a new personal best for the half marathon distance, and be ready to attempt to qualify for GB age group triathlon team. Now, thanks to the global outbreak of Covid-19, my half marathon was cancelled, and it seems likely my qualification race for the GB squad will be cancelled also. Goals out the window?
So in these strange times, when we're forced to stay indoors, when training can suffer, when races are cancelled, and when motivation can drop, try writing a goal down and putting it somewhere visible. It might not be a race goal. It could be a goal to spend at least an hour a day playing games with your family. It might be to write a short story each week about your life during the Covid-19 pandemic. Keeping your goals is crucial for our mental health during this crazy time.
Whatever it is, try writing it down and putting it on your fridge. It might just blow your mind like it did mine.
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