Tag Archives: behavioral psychology

Human OS and Endurance Athletes

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Jim O’Shaughnessy is a favorite follow and introduced me to Human OS.

Human OS is our default operating system. After birth, our OS is reinforced by our parents, communities and environment.

It wasn’t until I started training _very_ seriously that I became aware of my default programming.

Athletic stress is a low-stakes method to surface our default settings.

Amateur sport has lower emotional, and financial, stakes than our families, and careers. It is an effective venue for self-improvement.

Awareness is the first step… I’ll share certain traits you might want to notice.

Once you see these in your sport, look for them in your driving (another training ground for elite emotional control), at the office or around the Thanksgiving table.

There is no “right” answer.

What’s useful is understanding our tendencies then allocating time to train against preference.

The goal being to remain emotionally stable as stress ramps up.

The benefit being the capacity to think clearly under duress.

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Hills

A hill pushes against you.

What do you do?

Do you have the capacity to anticipate the hill? Shift to an easier great, or shorten your stride, in advance of your heart rate spiking?

Step outside your sport.

Life pushes you.

What do you do?

Start with hills, it’s easier.

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Where do you place most of your energy?

At the bottom, middle, or top of the hill?

I’m a “top of the hill” rider – I want my power to be highest when air speed is lowest.

I want to optimize overall time and avoid the pain of regret.

My son is a “bottom of the hill” rider – he likes the challenge of hanging on.

My son wants to win. He is likely to regret not giving maximum early effort.

We can learn from each other.

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Weather

My kids love bad weather racing.

Why?

Because they’ve learned it hurts the competition more.

How do you deal with weather?

Surprisingly simple to retrain our attitudes here.

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Pacing

  • What’s the fastest part of your interval, set and workout?
  • What’s the slowest?
  • How does your profile compare to other people?
  • How often do you train against your preference?

Understanding the slowest part of an event, then training to be fast in that segment, will give you an edge in your racing.

Understanding our own tendencies makes it more challenging for others to exploit them.

Some mantras that have helped

  • Stay in the game
  • Always finish strong
  • Speed up, before slowing down
  • Quit later
  • Never get in the van
  • Be the brand

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Feel

Do you have the capacity to feel speed?

  • The air against your body, the water against your skin, the pressure of the pedals…
  • Breathing rate, muscular tension, heart beats, lactate…

There’s a feeling to all of the above.

How about seeing speed? How fast you’re moving.

With the gizmos available to us, it’s easy to lose the ability to choose how we’re feeling.

Feelings, our response to stimulus and stress, are highly trainable.

Take charge of your ability to decide how you’re doing.

Being excessively data-focused can drain mojo, without benefit.

Be more than your data.

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Setbacks

How often do you get sick, injured or have a setback?

A pattern of setbacks will have more to do with your approach than fate.

A simple ‘trick’ here.

Build your circle with coaches, partners and mentors with different blind spots than you.

Consider looking outside your agegroup, gender and sport.

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  • What do you ‘talk” about when you get home?
  • Ever re-read your training diaries?
  • Your journal?
  • Where’s your mind focused when you’re not exercising?

Relentless positivity is not common.

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Personal Narrative

This one’s important

What’s the story you tell yourself about exercise?

  1. Born to train
  2. It’s work
  3. So I can eat more
  4. Just get through it
  5. Because I need to lose weight
  6. I’m an Olympic champion
  7. Because I will gain weight if I do less
  8. Because…
  9. Because…

Really listen to yourself here.

Why?

No matter your story, you will act to prove yourself right.

All my stories have proven false.

Most of my stories were useful.

Know your story.

Sunday Summary 3 July 2022

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Top Threads

  1. Dynamic Loading via Daily Readiness Assessments
  2. Four Step Return to Pain Fee Running
  3. How to write a book with Steve
  4. How to Endurance (Advanced)
  5. Low Back Pain and Open Water Swimming

Workouts & Working Out

High-Performance Habits

1,000 Day Pacing and New Habit Creation

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Strength training is the ultimate long game.
Each session moves me further away from what I’d be without it.

I’m going to explain how I qualified for World Champs, won Ultraman Hawaii, found my wife and improved my parenting game.

Big wins – different domains.

Here’s my template…

  1. Create one new habit at a time
  2. Set the bar low (!)
  3. Hit that bar daily (30, 100, 500, 1000)
  4. Remove what causes me to miss the minimum
  5. Sort the specifics after the habit is on autopilot
  6. Access experienced mentors
  7. Surge effort when conditions are favorable

What would happen if you made a choice to…

  • Do a little bit of cardio
  • Do a little bit of strength
  • Help one stranger
  • Share a simple lesson you know well
  • Make one connection
  • Eat a salad at 3pm
  • Eat 2 apples at 11am
  • Write 100 words

…every single day for the next 1,000 days?

Build one small habit.

Repeat.

My 8:29 Ironman performance started when a fat finance guy (me) decided it might make sense to walk to the pub rather than drive.

I can remember that one choice.

I can remember a later choice to do something-every-day.

I’ve done my “1,000 days” many times => writing, investing, wife, kids, sport, connection, strength training

Knowing the power of compounding, I still underestimate the speed of improvement.

What are your deep wants and desires?

What one thing, if it happened, would change everything?

Why not move a little forward each day?

Why wait to be great

The Real Thing

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Above treeline with my kids on a Wednesday – most definitely, the real thing

Cam recommended a book…

A favorite currency is good ideas.

One good idea per book, per meeting, per trip…

Taking my kids to the library every Tuesday this summer => has proven to be a good idea. We look forward to the time together.

I spent decades being too busy to implement any good idea that involved slowing down.

I was only interested in ideas that helped me get more.

The good idea from the book above is “seek the real thing” => it’s similar to advice I give myself => look deeper, consider my un-met need, what are my actions saying about my values…

Approval – social media is driven by our need for approval. We get just enough to keep us coming back for more.

For me, the real thing is teaching kids. They are hardwired to think any reasonable human is an all-star, and that feels great.

Another favorite currency… a child’s hug, a deeper form of “like.”

Self-aware of goodness in action.

With the real thing, there’s no clutter, no background noise, no BS.

The author talks about sex being a motivator and it is, obviously.

…but that’s not always an option.

Consider skin-to-skin contact.

Massage, hugs…

Time, to look around

As an elite athlete, I’d rarely stop, take pictures or notice my surroundings. There was a constant feeling of being in a rush.

This feeling goes back as far as I can remember.

At child’s pace, there is plenty of time: tiny flowers, distant goats, chubby marmots, streams, snow patches shaped like dragons and bugs…

Time to notice > scrolling in air-con.

There’s a persistent illusion that I’m doing something when I’m roaming online, but I’m not.

And nature is a much more effective form of nothing.

…but I need to get past my personal inertia.

…and that’s the author’s point.

In a world of competing interests, prior commitments and personal goals… where to focus?

Focus on moving myself towards the real thing.

Each of our kids has a calming blanket – programmed into them since birth, along with skin-to-skin human contact. The blue one in this pic works well on both of us. 😉

Find The Win

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We kicked off home school this morning by sharing “scrapbooks so far.”

Kids loved it!

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My early morning routine is a good example of applied psychology.

The routine incorporates…

  • a lot of winning
  • anticipation
  • a sense of purpose
  • a focus on “the clearly better”

I pay attention to “the clearly better” because it shows me where it is worth applying effort.

Worth repeating => When I choose, I spend effort, time and attention on things that leave an emotional taste of “clearly better.”

3:55am – The day started by waking up 5 minutes before my alarm, which makes me happy.

I’ve been going to bed at the same time as my kids so waking up 2.5 hours before them is cake.

4:00am – I’m downstairs and every single light on my main floor is switched on. Up Before The Enemy – we haven’t had any prowler reports before 6am. I give the bad guys an incentive to skip my house.

4:05am – Third win of the morning is a mug of coffee. I set the coffee up the afternoon before so I can look forward to it.

My Skull Mug is reserved for my toughest sessions and is hand painted by our youngest. I have another one from our oldest that says #1 Dad.

The difference between the best coffee I can buy and the cheapest is ~20c per day

4:30am – This morning was a lot of step ups.

I am my son’s margin of safety in the mountains => this knowledge motivates my prep

4:45am – Fat Boy Slim’s Right Here, Right Now comes on. I remember Okanagan Lake and a morning in August many years ago. Looking across the lake in the best shape of my life.

Pushing to the finish many years ago => I’m not that skinny in my memory!

5:00am – Decide I might want to remember my session, it was a lot of step ups… send my wife a text to come and take of picture of me.

Monica has been waking up in the “4”s during lockdown and looks absolutely fabulous when she arrives (Team Win!).

5:45am – My workout wraps up and I head upstairs to eat some muesli.

I prepared the muesli yesterday so I’d having something to look forward to while grinding out my step ups. While I advise people to be careful about setting up the exercise-sugar reward cycle, I’m not above motivating myself with a special breakfast.

Wake up, lights, coffee, music, workout, wife and breakfast => Seven Wins Before 6am

The only person who can screw up my morning win-fest is myself.

Attitude is Everything

Marriage Material

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I blew up my first marriage in a year.

If you asked me about it then, not only would I have blamed my ex-spouse, I would have blamed the entire concept of marriage.

Roll forward a couple decades (!) and here’s a lesson that I’m seeking to pass along to my kids.

Sibling bickering is exhausting, painful and universal.

Rather than focusing on “fixing” my kids – who seem healthy, loving and normal – I use conflict as an opportunity to teach.

I wait for the energy to go out of the situation.

Hey, I want to teach you a Jedi mind trick.

When you are upset…

Watch your mind.

 

It is going to fix on something outside…

…Bella’s voice

…Axel’s question

…Lexi’s tone

…my face

 

Your mind is going to trick you into thinking that the problem is out there.

Not helpful.

Because you can’t do anything “out there.”

 

What you can do is pause and ask, “What do I want?”

And you’re going to find something to helpful to do.

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Simple, not easy.

Long Term Healthy

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Yet another friend convinces a doctor to give her a procedure so she can continue to do what’s causing her pain…

…reminds me of a realization – prescribing is less fun when I see my role in hurting the health and home life of my clients.

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Avoid Athletic Ruin

Missing one day of cardio makes me serious, two days off and I’m quiet, three days off and I’m sullen…

Ruin, in an athletic sense, is dealing with the implications of not being able to exercise.

If that rings true then what follows might help.

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Given my lifetime of extreme exercise, bike crashes and running injuries, a radiologist could find a lot of things “wrong” with my body.

Knowing that I’m a walking insurance reimbursement opportunity – I stay away from those that profit from unnecessary treatment.

When I pay attention to what follows, my body works great.

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Before paying someone to cut, inject or irradiate you…

Rest – addicts seek extreme friends to reassure themselves that an unreasonable lifestyle is sustainable – sometimes I’m the seeker, sometimes I’m the friend.

Lifestyle Modification – winning isn’t important, racing isn’t important – ask a broken down athlete what they miss and you’ll hear a similar story, I wish I could simply get out the door without pain. It’s worth a lot of compromise to maintain my ability to get out the door.

Pre-Habilitation – why not try a world-class rehab program BEFORE you opt for surgery. For non-acute injuries, rest as if you had a procedure then give your best effort to strengthen your body and increase your range of motion.

My demographic takes pride in doing what-it-takes for athletic success. If you want a true challenge then do the above and deal with the internal dialogue that results!

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Risk seeking friends – this is wider than athletics.

My past choices have shown that I have the capacity for bad judgement.

  • Elevate my heart rate.
  • Introduce group dynamics and social proof.
  • Surround myself with charismatic risk seekers.

…and you have the recipe for a good time! 😉

It’s also a perfect storm to spin myself into fatigue, injury and depression.

Remember who gets to deal with the wreckage.

Family Leadership

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My kids are at the stage where they’re still asking for permission to go to the bathroom.

That will change.

When it does, I want to be ready for a chat on family leadership.

As a young man, I was a passionate believer in advancement based on merit. Merit being (solely) a function of competence and output. This suited me because what I lacked in tact was overcome by effort. I’m guessing most teams have members with weaknesses that are overcome by high output.

When we ask the world to judge us solely on output, we’re setting ourselves up for problems.

We are going to find most people confusing. This confusion will manifest in our families and relationships.

What’s my emotional output?

  1. How do people feel after they interact with me?
  2. How do I treat people that have no recourse against me?
  3. Do I stand ready to do what I’m asking you to do?

Thinking back to how I would have answered these 25 years ago…

  1. I don’t care
  2. No idea
  3. I use other people’s time and money to accomplish my goals – they are free to do what they want

I’ve found a large return from small adjustments.

What We Don’t See

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Twenty-five years ago, I heeded a call to be a better person.

Just a bit better.

Frankly, at the beginning, it would have been tough to see the “better.”

My changes were, essentially, being less unhealthy and less of an asshole.

Even small acts of improvement are not easy.

They are challenging because, inside my head, I only “see” one side of life.

In the moment, my only experience is discomfort.

They are challenging because, I had created a life that supported my poor decisions.

Remember, what we don’t see.

Avoided Setbacks and Unforced Errors.

We never experience avoided health problems, relationships not falling apart, sidestepped addictions, bypassed financial ruin…

I’m grateful the 20-something version of myself was sick of being sick and decided to go for a walk.

 

 

Applying Wealth Wisely

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A reader recommended a book about Living with a Seal. The book is an entertaining read, but I did find myself swearing far more than usual afterwards (burpee test!).

The book is about a marathoner who spends a month training with David Goggins (former seal). Having done extreme training, I think it’s safe to assume the rest of the guy’s life was on hold during his month with Goggins!

Complete control of your schedule and the ability to focus on one thing for an extended period of time.

Whether you want to train with a seal, start a business, write a book or simply get really, really good at something… the ability to control your schedule is the starting point for your journey.

Can you take a month “off” to focus on “one thing”?

A month is a good unit because it’s about what it takes for me to start a new business, write a book or bump my level up in anything.

As an elite athlete, I’d spend 13-week blocks focusing on my sport. By that time, I was already good, and seeking to become the absolute best I could be.

You need time because a second use of wealth is accessing, then following, the ACTIONS of world-class teachers.

Advice without action is entertainment.

I’ve been guilty of throwing money and other people’s time at anything I found unpleasant. It can be a winning strategy but it was a band-aid for unnecessary complexity in my life choices.

If you’re a do’er then work towards control of your schedule so you can learn-by-doing alongside the best.

Parenting is similar to learning to swim — we’re not going to become world class on a couple hours per week!

Make sure your mentors have the sort of lives, and character, that you’d like to emulate.

Chose wisely!