As a coach of both elite and “average” non-elite athletes, I run into a lot of interesting beliefs non-elite’s have about elites. Whether it’s about how hard elites train or if they train so much because they “hate themselves” (man, that was an awkward conversation), there’s definitely an interesting narrative in our culture about those of us who are really good at things. It even comes into our language. We talk about elites as “freaks” (positively), as “robots” (usually negative), or “aliens” (mostly just in confusion). While the results and performances of elite athletes might seem otherworldly, it’s important to understand that the PROCESS is largely the same. What got an elite athlete to a 13-minute 5k is very similar to what will get you to a 17-minute 5k. The biggest difference is just AMOUNT.
You can think of your fitness like a house made of bricks. Elite athletes have friggin’ brick mansions, and the rest of us get by nicely with a two-bedroom brick townhouse. It’s not that elite athletes are building houses out of gold and the rest of us are building houses out of shit-smelling straw, it’s that elite athletes simply HAVE MORE BRICKS with which to build their house. Furthermore, it’s not that they make bricks differently, the physiology of an elite athlete is functionally EXACTLY the same as yours. The process of making a brick is the same no matter the size of the house.
While, sure, elite athletes may have been given a few bricks by their parents, or their bricks might be a tiny bit bigger, but the fundamental difference between an elite athlete and a non-elite athlete is that the elites have spent 20 to 30 hours a week, 50 weeks a year building bricks for 10, 15, or even 20 years. This results in a LOT OF FUCKING BRICKS! In comparison, I’d estimate that most race finishers in the US train between 5 and 10 hours per week, maybe 20 weeks a year and probably only two out of three years for 10 years. This means that an elite might have 20,000 hours building bricks, and the average race finisher has 1320 hours building bricks. And this math is even discounting the fact that physiologically, the bricks fall apart if you stop making new ones. So while that elite athlete is constantly stacking new bricks on top of old bricks, the average athlete is spending significant amounts of time REBUILDING the bricks they made last year.
My hope is that this analogy is perhaps at first a little shocking, but then inspiring. The difference between you and being a whole hell of a lot faster/able to go longer isn’t that “fast people are different,” it’s just that you haven’t put in the work YET.
Now go build some fuckin’ bricks!
