How to Build a House
How to Build a House
As I write, contemplate, read, and experience more about running, I further understand how great of a teacher it can be. Experiences that arise through running are such great teaching points for runners at any experience level, and with different relationships to the sport. The experiences and wisdoms ring true regardless of what “type” of runner you are. This is something that fuels my own running to this day, and drives my passion for coaching. It’s here, where I find the heart of After Hours Athletics, and the perspective I want to coach from.
I often get asked, “what’s the most important part of training?” This question, while overly simplistic, will frame this blog. My answer is nearly always, “consistency.” There are endless old adages about eating elephants, stacking bricks, and showing up. And the thing about “old adages,” is that they are usually “old adages” for a reason. Now consistency, I believe, is a major pillar to success in life in general, but I will focus on running and training here, while also acknowledging again, that running is a microcosm.
So what does consistency look like in running? In the age of the popularization of “run streaks,” Strava’s boom, and emphasis on numbers and outcomes, it’s easy to think that consistency falls in this domain. While sometimes, consistency may look like running every day, it’s far more complex (classic coach answer, but the art exists in the nuance). I look at consistency as a level of workload that can be replicated sustainably without increasing risk of breakdown. This “level of workload” is all encompassing; mileage, strength sessions, nutrition, mental training, and other systems in your life that allow for these boxes to be checked. When consistency is of highest priority in your training, you begin to stack. And when you stack weeks, upon months, upon years, upon decades of work, you accumulate an extremely large pool of fitness and skill, that you can pull from at any moment.
Consistency raises the floor, and provides a foundation from which to take risks, and jump from towards your goals. It also is the fuel for sustainable improvement. We often take single performances as markers of improvement in running, but the athletes that have been pushing limits and performing at a high level for the longest time, illustrate this beautifully. While their singular performances often get better year over year, their average performance improves fairly consistently. One tool I use with athletes to measure progress is to measure long term growth from the average of their top three performances, instead of using singular data points. This places emphasis on consistency and sustainable performance improvements, which believe is more conducive to long term success and growth in the sport.
While we recognize that consistency is important, how do we get more of it? What behaviors can help drive consistency? The most important thing is being able to periodize and organize your training in ways that will keep you healthy. The number one threat to consistency is injury. And the number one risk factor for injuries is a suboptimal training protocol. So erroring on the side of caution with mileage, workouts, and a race calendar, is important to give yourself the best chance of staying healthy for a long time. Following principles such as, balancing stress with rest, and learning to run to effort and feel, are two pillars that drive my coaching. Another crucial piece to staying healthy, and therefore consistent in training, is having a flushed out strength programming. Strength work is the best way to prevent injuries, especially when individualized to your injury history, biomechanics, and life schedule. Another piece that often goes unlooked is the way athletes mentally and emotionally approach training. Being emotionally “low key,” and abstaining from getting “too high” or “too low” from workouts or races is key to being able to string together training blocks. Of course, their are moments to get charged up for a workout, or a race, but this must always be met with space to come down, and take a reprieve from this emotional output. Just as we have to follow blocks of physical stress in training with physical rest, this goes for the mental and emotional piece of training too. This opens up a large new discussion on emotions, thoughts, and our relationship with them that I won’t go into here.
To bring it back to our “old adages” around consistency, I look at it as building a house. You have to put in one brick at a time, into a solid foundation, in order to create something beautiful on top. Each brick might be a little different, with different skills and stories infused into its nature, but together they are representative of this journey you’re on, and will create a solid base for you to take risks and reach for your goals.
How do you build a house? One brick at a time.
