I have recently got a job an hour drive from my home. Initially the commute was enjoyable, a great chance to unwind and it enabled me the opportunity to train at different spots along the way home. I listened to the radio and generally zoned out. The first few weeks were bliss as my mind wandered and enjoyed being a ‘cosmonaut’ as I drifted in and out of conscious thought for 2 hours a day.
Eventually I got bored and I calculated that the 10 plus hours a week of my life was being wasted in the car listening to music and drifting off with the pixies. I wasn’t actually doing anything productive with my time.
I really needed to turn this wasted time into an opportunity! I just needed to think creatively about how I could use the time. I jumped around a few ideas from learning a language, dictating blog articles that I would write up later or I could explore the world of audio books. After analysing all the pros and cons for each I decided to commit to audio books and over the last month I have absorbed four books on my drives. Admittedly I have missed a few sentences along the way but I have been surprised with how switched on my brain is and how much I take in during the drives. I have even evolved to playing the books at 1.5x speed and was pleasantly surprised at my retention rates.
During my day job as a science teacher I was becoming aware that I was drawing on my newly acquired knowledge with increasing regularity, so something was sticking.
My journey started with a book that I have always wanted to read, A brief history of everything by Bill Bryson and I then moved onto Limitless by Jim Kwik then Atomic Habits by James Clear and I just finished 7 Habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey. I must admit I loved the first three books as they were relevant and somewhat attuned to the modern life we live in. Limitless opened my mind to possibilities and Atomic habits gave me the tools in which to do something with my newly minted potential. A history of everything directly enhanced my teaching as I drew on the amazingly researched book to add depth to my students' learning.
Seven habits of a highly effective person on the other hand stumped me. I searched hard to find relevant meaning. The book came across as dated when compared to the modern views expressed in Limitless and Atomic Habits. While Limitless and Atomic Habits focused on a change mindset for personal emotional growth, Seven Habits seemed to focus on appealing to a capitalist audience which consisted of insurance salesmen who wanted to increase sales or parents who craved for perfect children or bank managers that wanted to maximize profits.
‘How was this book helping me?’, I remember thinking as I stared at the red traffic light on my drive one morning.
I never really wanted more money or perfect children or to maximize my performance at work. All those things seemed to focus on exerting my desires on those around me. I am content with the money I make, I am in the top 3% of the planet's wealthiest people and I earn just above the average salary in Australia. I love my children for who they are and how they grew into being who they are. And I have risen through the ranks of work and the higher I got the less perspective I had about the things around me that matter in life. In the end 7 habits left me sadly disappointed. When I finished this highly acclaimed best seller I was left thinking it was the equivalent of reading Frankenstein and expecting a book on cutting edge pathology practices.
Only on deep reflection did I realize its value to me. While Limitless and Atomic Habits are books I would recommend all day everyday, I wouldn’t recommend Seven Habits as a self help book due to its dated approach to dealing with interpersonal relationships. It is slightly 1950s'esk with its views expressed from a patriarchal view point. I would, however, highly recommend it to mind based endurance athletes who are struggling to create a synergy between body and mind on those long sessions. During these fractured sessions a 1950’s patriarchal approach would work as a negotiating tool between the pre-frontal cortex and the primitive response focused mid brain in order to come to a mutual win-win outcome. (If you want to read an article I wrote about the battle of the brain click here).
So it is with that as the backdrop of my book recommendation, allow me to quickly summarize the book and how the 7 habits can help you improve your performance in training and racing.
1. Sharpen the saw. Don’t train yourself to death. Strive for a sustainable work life training balance that gives you time to recover, recharge and be effective at that moment in time when you need it the most. Race day!
As athletes there is a tendency to write or read a program while you are at your peak of arousal. If you have a 100 km ride we often think of the end in mind. How we will feel when we complete the ride, not how we will feel at the depth of the ride. With this in mind make sure that you sharpen the saw by being mindful of a contingency plan while we are out there.
2. Be proactive. You have a natural need to wield influence on the training session you are about to do and the race we are about to start. We unfortunately spend the majority of the training session and race reacting to external events and circumstances. Take charge and assume responsibility for those aspects that you have direct responsibility. I am a very big proponent of marginal gains, and how focusing on the 1% percent efforts when combined create a substantial overall difference. My approach is to sweat the small stuff and the bigger picture will look after itself.
3. Begin with an end in mind. Don’t spend your whole training session or race working aimlessly towards an unverbalized goal. State your intention loudly and to all those who will listen, both in your own mind and amongst your family and friends. A verbalized goal gives tangibility and a voice to the goal. It is like throwing a team jersey to the goal and saying welcome to the team. By having a vision for the end point of the training session and the race it allows you to align your actions accordingly to make it into a reality.
4. Put first things first. To prioritize your training session or race day, focus on what’s important, meaning focus on the marginal gains that bring you closer to your vision of the finishing chute or the final effort of your training session. Don’t get distracted by non urgent and unimportant tasks. Focus on those elements that you pre-arranged. Like taking your nutrition every 45 minutes, or the spare CO2, or your pre-arranged pacing.
5. Think win-win. It is a given that in a long training session or when you are at the depth of despair in a race that is not going to plan, you will have that much dreaded conversation between that part of your brain that wishes to quit and that part of the brain that wishes to go on. When this conversation happens, and it will, you need to plan the dialogue around the time honoured concept of win win compromise. When negotiating with your internal voice, don’t try to get the biggest slice of the cake, but rather find a division that is acceptable to all parties. ‘Let’s run to the next aid station and we will stop and have a chat to the pumped up volunteers and share some gatorade.’ The concept of win-win will mean that both parties will gain their fair share. Obviously the charged side of your brain that still believes that it has a chance to win the race will want to sprint the rest of the race but the defeated side of your brain wants to quit. The middle ground is to run/walk. But this has no appeal as both see no benefit. By refocusing on a tangible ‘prize’ or ‘reward’ the middle ground of the win-win compromise gains acceptance by both parties. In the end you get both sides of your brain coming together to build strong positive relationships in the process.
6. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. When the race or training session presents you with a problem, we often jump right to giving a hastey solution. For example ironman training lauds the benefits of the bike to run brick training sessions. But little or no training is dedicated to the swim-bike transition and because of this the first 10km of the bike in an ironman is an exercise in futility as the athlete struggles to get their cycling legs working and the blood moving from their arms and shoulders into their legs. They feel off and fatigued and consume more water and eat food that is not going to have any effect, simply worsening the deadening feeling of their body. Obviously this process of throwing the fire station at the fire is a mistake. You need to take the time to listen to what your body is telling you. Step back and analyse the scenario that has developed. By allowing the body a chance to talk and us having the time to listen can we offer recommendation.
7. Synergize. The final step of the seven habits is to adopt the guiding principle that you are not an individual that leads you closer to a race. You are in fact a group of elements that contribute to the success of you as a whole. The contribution of the many will always be stronger than the contribution of an individual.
As an example of this concept I recently announced in class that I can prove to you that 1+1=3! I simply put a single piece of balsa wood across two tables and placed a weight in the middle and the weight broke the balsa wood and fell through. I then proceeded to get two of the same pieces of balsa wood and suspended a rope across the top of them and canter levered them against two books. I then hung the three weights from the centre of the rope and the balsa wood didn’t break. While one piece by itself could not hold one of the weights the combined structural integrity held three weights. While the physics of tensegrity was at play here the metaphor of my demonstration hit home to the students and is relevant to the 7th habit. By combining the individual strength and focusing it into a shared vision you have the ability to improve performance.
Triathlon is a sport of three disciplines. Fitness in all three contribute to performance in any and all of the disciplines. The lesson here is to use the concept of tensegrity to synergise your efforts. This will help you achieve fitness goals you could never have reached by simply leaning on one skill alone.