An important strategy to get better at something over the long term is to make your habits align with your goal. If you’re fighting your habits, it’s hard to make progress. As coaches, we talk a lot to our athletes about decreasing habits that aren’t useful to the goal and increasing habits that support achieving that goal.
One thing we SEA coaches have been chatting about recently is the subject of “good” habits. You see, we always ask new athletes “Are you willing to change your habits to support training for your goal?” We do this because it’s important to be reminded that results don’t change if PEOPLE don’t change. However, one of the implied values of this question is that only “bad” habits will need to change. Notice the use of quotes. The thing that may be misunderstood is that sometimes it is the habits we consider to be good that need to change. This can be for different reasons, here are a couple:
One possible reason for having a “good” habit that needs to change is that the habit that resulted in your strengths might be the same habit that limits your ability and desire to work on your weaknesses. This habit might have been good, but in order to move to the next level, you may need to change it.
Another reason that you may have placed a “good” value on a habit that is holding you back is that we live in an extreme society. Modern culture by and large celebrates excess, and rewards media and business that make extreme claims and this shows itself in MANY ways in sport. You don’t have to look far to see someone proclaiming the value of an extreme diet as “good,” or an extreme training philosophy as “good.” The benefit of these extreme approaches is that it can get people excited and invested and give them a feeling of believing in a group, cause, or dogma. The downside, however, is that long term success is almost always a function of balance and moderation, and thus extreme behaviors often hold people back. This means that you might have learned at some point that a certain extreme approach is “the path to success,” and thus think the habits of that path are good habits, even though they’re actually fighting against your long term progress.
Some good examples of habits that athletes may have learned to value, but are actually holding them back (by no means an exhaustive list):
- “Harder is better.” This is simply a product of our culture. “If I want to be fast, I need to go hard all the time.” Then the athlete identifies going hard all the time as a good habit. They may be proud of this habit, proud of their motivation to go out and push hard every day. However, the vast majority of coaching and science over the last century agrees that to be good at endurance sports, you actually need to go pretty easy most of the time. Therefore, in order to make the most progress, this athlete is going to need to change one of the habits that they place a lot of value in.
- “Strict” vegan, vegetarian, paleo, keto, etc. diets. Our society places value on strictness. Ever heard someone say “well, you aren’t a real vegetarian because one time I saw you eat a piece of bacon.”? Here we place the “good” value on the habit of following diets strictly whether it’s what our body needs that day or not. But if, for example, an athlete struggles with getting protein as a vegetarian, or with getting carbs as a paleo athlete, then they may have to change their “good” habit of being strict in order to progress.
NOTE: Diets are tools. They aren’t inherently good or bad. But like with saws and hammers, it’s possible to use the wrong tool for the job. - Rigidly following the plan. Yes, our first tenet is FTFP (“Follow The F*&%ing Plan”), but as we discussed above, anything taken to the extreme typically hurts the long term. Sometimes you’re hurt and shouldn’t follow the plan, and sometimes you’re sick and shouldn’t follow the plan, and sometimes you wake up on the wrong side of the bed and shouldn’t follow the plan. For sure, following the plan is generally a good habit, but taken to extremes it becomes a “good” habit that’s holding you back and that you need to change.
We probably all have some of these. We’d love to hear from you what habits that you have that you value that might be holding you back. Email us, info@SummitEnduranceAcademy.com
