Earning The Right: The Are No Shortcuts
|I’ve linked to Dr. David Lipman’s work here a few times before and his latest piece, “Earning the Right,” is one of his best yet. The short of it is that we’re in a third running boom, many runners—especially newer ones—are going too far, or trying to do too much, too soon (most of this driven by social media and/or ego), and that real progress comes from nailing the fundamentals, being smart about your training, and “earning the right” to level up in distance, workload, etc.
“Simple never sells, and as such complexity is often what is used in the attention industry, resulting in people at times skipping the basics which they need,” he writes. “Specifically, it is worth noting that the best in the world are training like they are now because it is best for where they are now, at earlier stages they were using less advanced methods. If you use advanced methods too early, you rob yourself twice; once via not using the basics and the second time when you start to plateau with the advanced methods.”
As I texted David after reading the piece: “The problems you describe are a big reason I have (and will continue to have) a job.”
Case in point: I’ve coached many runners who don’t come from a formal running background. Often, they got into the sport by signing up for a half-marathon, marathon, or ultra as a way to challenge themselves and pursue a big goal. They got hooked—and have stayed hooked—on going long(er). (David calls this the “longer is better” reinforcement loop.) But over time, it’s not uncommon for performance to plateau and/or for overuse injuries to pop up. One of the first things I usually recommend in these situations is to dial things back: drop down in distance and focus on running faster for a while. In short: Work on the fundamentals of becoming a faster, more well-rounded athlete. Sometimes it takes a bit of convincing, but the benefits are always worth it:
1. They realize that training for shorter distances is just a different kind of hard. It might not look as epic on Strava or social media (or even to their own ego) but it challenges them in new ways.
2. They unlock speed they never knew they had, simply because they’d never trained for it before.
3. They raise their performance ceiling, using that newfound fitness to get even more out of their marathon or ultra training when they return to it.
This is but one example of committing to mastering the fundamentals first, an unsexy and often un-Instagrammable task in our “go big or go home” world these days. But as anyone who’s been in this game long enough will tell you: If you skip steps it will take you twice as long to get where you’re trying to go. There are no shortcuts.