3

sharpening your focus

For the first few years of my athletic career, I was bad at running up hills. For whatever reason, I lacked the proper technique, and my leg muscles had not developed to the point where they could efficiently power up sharp inclines. But I didn’t realize it. We all have weaknesses. That itself is not a problem. What is a problem, however, is the tendency for athletes not to recognize their weaknesses. Coaches and others, with the best intentions, will often build the athlete up with praise, only pointing out his or her strengths. Believing that this is helpful and that positive thinking is a component to success can, in fact, allow small weaknesses to remain unaddressed. Pretending everything is fine and glossing over problem areas may be comforting in the short term, but it will not facilitate continual growth. Positive thinking is not all it takes. While I agree that positive thinking has its uses, it can do more harm than good when it prevents us from seeing and therefore addressing problems.

Once I realized this, I began approaching my workouts differently. Not quite to the point of telling myself that I was terrible, but I did become highly sensitive to my shortcomings. What was holding me back? What was preventing me from running faster and maintaining a quicker pace for an extended period? Were my legs getting fatigued, was my heart beating too fast, or was my breathing at a near-panicked pitch?

I developed a mental checklist and would go through it each workout to determine my weakest link. If, for example, I determined that the reason I was unable to raise my pace was because my legs felt heavy and unresponsive, I would make up a workout program aimed at strengthening them. After a couple weeks of implementing the new program, my leg strength had improved by leaps and bounds. Problem solved.

being critical of yourself helps you identify weaknesses and fix them

TRAIN YOUR WEAKNESS, RACE YOUR STRENGTH

This is a line I recall hearing on several occasions during my racing days. Basically, it’s a way of saying only show your good side and, when no one is looking, fix your problems. Weakness must be exposed before it can be corrected, but the time to be critical of yourself is during training. When you are ready to perform, you can turn off your self-criticism censor, for it will do you no good on race day and can only serve to weaken you.

JUSTIFIED CONFIDENCE

One of the commonly accepted measures of personal strength is the willingness to identify our weaknesses. If we’re not open to exposing our weaknesses to ourselves, we will never be aware of our shortcomings. And we will not be able to establish a plan to fix them. Identifying our weakness will make us stronger — even if we thought we were too strong to have any weaknesses to address.

The result of identifying and eradicating weakness can be referred to as “justified confidence.” Being critical of your faults and taking calculated steps to eradicate them is the basis of continual improvement. When you show up to race, you know you are better because you have addressed your problems with real solutions. The confidence that you now exude is genuine and justified, not a false confidence developed through positive thinking. Subconsciously, your brain knows the difference.

For me, this approach has worked tremendously well, facilitating consistent and genuine athletic improvement over the years. The most exciting aspect, however, is that it is not limited to sports and can be applied to any aspect of life.

identifying and addressing problems is necessary to achieve authentic confidence

PERSISTENCE

Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet several people who, at least by Western standards, have done well for themselves. I grew curious about what, if any, common thread these highly successful people shared. More importantly, could it be learned and applied?

A common attribute did emerge. For some of them, it’s an inherent personality trait; they don’t even realize they’re doing it. Others have had to consciously build and cultivate it as one of their tools. I’m talking about persistence. It sounds so simple, yet it is profoundly effective.

Persistence is one of the most praised traits of people pursuing success — at anything. We’ve all heard inspirational stories of someone who continually failed at a pursuit, yet persisted undeterred until the goal was achieved. Often the central character in these stories has shortcomings and faults that “humanized” him or her. After facing personal challenges as well as those dished out by the antagonist, our hero persists to overcome the odds.

This notion of persistence is well ingrained in our psyche. We know that if we want something, we have to work hard for it. Interestingly, people who are regarded as highly successful tend to have failed more frequently than the average person. Those who are successful simply try more often; they are the personification of persistence.

There are times, however, when persistence is not the best approach. And it takes intuition to recognize these situations. This is what I believe separates the most successful people of our time from the merely moderately successful. Sometimes, to not persist can be the quickest route to success. Sometimes, a change of strategy is in order.

Throughout my high school years, I trained for running and cycling every day. Before school, I would ride my bike at high intensity on a trainer in the basement. After school, I ran in the hilly, wooded trails surrounding our house. Then I’d have a quick shower, eat dinner, do homework (or not), and go to the gym. By the time I arrived home it was about 10 P.M. I would drink a smoothie, go to bed, and get up at 6 A.M. the next day to do it all again. Needless to say, there wasn’t much breathing room. Every minute was accounted for to maximize the use of my time; I had traded time for augmented fitness. As a result of this tight program, my running and cycling improved tremendously.

In 1993, I graduated from high school. I was delighted; this meant I could train more. I was going to have time to fit swimming into my program and begin triathlon racing.

I approached swimming with the same vigor I brought to running and cycling: Cram as much in as possible. Since I made significant gains with my running and cycling progress over the previous few years, I figured the more-is-better approach would be the recipe for quick swimming gains as well. I spent hours in the pool each day — for three years. Swimming up to 5.5 kilometers at a time, I was certainly getting fitter. But I wasn’t getting much faster. I was putting in the time, the distance, and the effort but failed to show any noteworthy progress. I added another swim workout, now swimming six days per week and twice on Sundays. I never missed a workout and was the embodiment of persistence. But still no sizable improvement to speak of.

Since I had now dedicated three years to becoming a top-caliber swimmer in the ambition of kicking off my triathlon career with a bang, I grew increasingly frustrated. It was time to try another approach.

I sought the advice of a top-level swimmer. He agreed to make up a swim workout for me, but he insisted on watching me perform it. We met at a local pool. Following a short warm-up in the gym, I hopped in the water and began the workout specifically tailored for me. After I’d swum only one length of the pool, he yelled “Stop!” I stood up in the pool. “I know what your problem is,” he said. “You don’t know how to swim.”

What? “I’ve been swimming every day for the past three years,” I said in a tone that undoubtedly sounded more than a little annoyed.

He responded by pointing out that, sure, I could swim, but I didn’t move fluently through the water, I was fighting every stroke. “Each stroke you make is incorrect. Do you think a golfer would improve if he practiced his swing incorrectly for hours a day, while trying to pack in as many swings as he could and doing them as fast as possible? No, he would ingrain the incorrect movement into his brain. This would make him hit the ball into the bushes every time he teed off. That’s what you’ve done with your swim stroke; you’ve ingrained the wrong movement.”

And I realized he was right: I had been repeatedly doing the same thing over and over to the point of nausea — persevering at all costs in swimming copious distances and finishing every single workout — without evaluating whether it was serving my original goal of swimming proficiently.

persistence solely for the sake of persistence is a poor use of energy

That day, I took a step back and reevaluated the situation logically. Altering my program to focus on the basic mechanics of swimming, cutting the distance I swam by two-thirds, I slowed down to perform the process of “deprogramming” the cumbersome technique I had inadvertently developed. I replaced regular swim workouts with drill sessions in the water and began to correct my inefficient stroke. After a year of this, I reintroduced the longer, harder workouts, since I was now moving through the water with a proficient stroke. It, in turn, had become ingrained.

I never did become one of the premier triathlon swimmers, but I did bring about significant gains. And I learned not to persist simply for the sake of persisting. The following year, 1998, I began my professional Ironman triathlon career, with all its 3.8km lake swims.

AT A GLANCE

• Being sensitive to personal faults is necessary in order to identify and eliminate them.

• Positive thinking can do more harm than good and can hinder ongoing progress.

• Building “justified confidence” will significantly help in any pursuit and is only possible once weakness has been determined.

• Persistence is necessary but not the answer to every problem.