Optimizing our ability to explore nature as athletes over the full term of a human experience takes a bit of strategy and planning. It would be a real pity to break our bodies down or not develop them well while chasing certain short term goals, especially goals that are fed to us from outside and that are not grounded in our highest inspirations. Yet, sadly that is what most of us do.
It’s not actually surprising that our approach to exercise tends to sacrifice long term capability for short term desires. We don’t really know better, and in many cases it’s just how we were trained to think. Short term mindset is baked into the very DNA of our culture. It may be the hallmark of our culture considering our approach to natural resources and the environment and our myopic focus on short term profits and economic “growth.”
We each have the power to free ourselves of the pathology of short term focus. Particularly when it comes to our own bodies, we are in complete control of how we train and develop ourselves. In Part 1 we discussed what capabilities we need to develop and maintain long term as outdoor athletes. In this post we’ll discuss how to avoid the typical short term exercise and athletic traps that tend to keep people stuck. With patience and a long term outlook, we can become a lot happier and healthier. We might not lose as much weight in our first 90 days as we would with some program that drives us to exhaustion and burns us out. We also might not be quite as strong for a race this season as we would be if we scrutinized power data and mathematical formulas to bring us barely shy of overtraining for a few months. However, we’ll be thanking ourselves in a few years and certainly in ten years as our bodies keep progressing and we keep doing more inspiring things.
The reality of human physical development is that how we train to maximize short term results or short term enjoyment and how we train to optimize long term health and performance are very different. The primary differences lie in the intensities that we use and the specificity of our training. Long term development generally uses more lower intensity training and more attention to building general capacities. When we are not in a hurry we can actually build solid foundations. Switching gears to a long term approach will be frustrating and confusing because we want our results right away, and there are actually plenty of ways that work to bring us really quick but superficial fitness results. Adding to the confusion, the corners that we cut to be more time efficient, to do only what we enjoy, or get some short term results often don’t catch up with us for years. It’s like pretty much everything else in life.
It’s tough to keep a clear head about long term training amongst the short term noise and all of the “science” that is blasted at us. I’ve spent a great deal of time reading exercise science studies and it has been my experience to find that media headlines typically don’t do justice to the often murky results of the actual studies that are cited. When marketing teams get their hands on a scientific study, we often start to see blatant distortion. One great thing about being human is that we don’t need to out-science it or “hack” it - our reality is pretty awesome as it is. We are uber athletes, with great stamina, great mobility, and good power, and these capacities take some time to develop. Attempts to manipulate this in the short term come with tradeoffs, so it helps to be well grounded in what we really want out of life when making effective training decisions.
Here are some pointers to train smart as outdoor athletes for the long term:
The thing that most people don’t understand about athletes is that when they use really high intensity training it is just to peak for competition. High intensity energy systems and peak capacities tend to be built and lost really quickly. Yes, it really works, but we can’t do it all year. Our bodies are not made for that and athletes don’t train like that all year long. Programs designed to maximize short term results based on principles that athletes use to peak are simply taking advantage of this and manipulating us.
We should remember to pay some regular attention to each of the capacities described in Part 1. Over the course of a year, there are some good reasons to shift more attention to certain capacities over others and there may be times where we take a recovery break from training a certain capacity, but it’s never a good idea to let any of them completely slide for an extended time. “Use it or lose it” is pretty true when it comes to athletic capacities and “use it frequently” is critical for progression.
Going from zero exercise to a really intense exercise program for a few months is sort of like sucking water out of a reservoir faster than its filling rate. Our improvements tend to slow to a trickle and frustration and even alarm may kick in. Good foundations are built progressively from the bottom. We start with what our bodies can truly handle sustainably and gradually we keep adding difficulty. In this way, we manage our inflows and outflows and our reservoir grows. We treat our bodies as we would ideally treat our planet.
We should avoid the temptation to ramp up training loads too quickly. This leads to overtraining and injury. The National Strength and Conditioning Association recommends that increases in aerobic training frequency, duration or intensity should be limited to 10%, and only after the body has adjusted to its training load.
It doesn’t help to compare ourselves to other people. The only comparison or race that matters is with ourselves. Competitive athletes will be particularly challenged by comparisons and temptations to prioritize short term performance, especially in our sports culture that operates largely by breaking an endless supply of bodies. Comparisons have a tendency to pull a lot of people away from a healthy path of development. Everyone’s body is different and everyone responds to training very differently. Some people are genetic freaks or are using performance enhancing drugs and we’ll often hurt ourselves if we train like them. Many people around us are just doing the short term thing so it helps to ignore them. The key to avoiding the comparison trap is staying focused on our own training progress, doing athletic things that inspire us so that we can appreciate the strengths that we have, and pursuing ever greater inspirations as we progress.
It helps to remind ourselves that training is pretty simple. Periodically we hit “plateaus” in progress or have bad days, and this is true with any training method. This is not something to be alarmed about; this is just part of the body’s long term adaptation process. Physical development is never a straight line path, and all great athletes know this. True development plateaus often serve as signs to adjust one or more training variables so that our bodies can adapt to a new stimulus, but sometimes little flat stretches are actually what our bodies need. As we learn ourselves, we start to understand the difference. Particularly as we become more advanced, it takes a while for the body to get ready to break through to the next level. If we are freaking out about not making “progress” every week of training, the first thing to fix is our minds.
When we get a bit bored or frustrated, we often encounter voices telling us what we are doing is “wrong” and that we need to change everything (or buy some supplements). There are always some things we can do for a little variation, but when we keep looking for the “best” way to train we can find ourselves just bouncing around and we don’t end up doing anything truly progressively.
Adopting a long term training approach is a growth opportunity for learning patience, a skill that will help us in life and make us happier. After the initial period of training any skill or strength, the rate of improvement slows down but progress does continue with consistent practice. This is just the reality of the human development curve and no amount of “muscle confusion” psuedo-science will change this. Many people falter after the first few months of a fitness plan when rapid initial advancement slows. This psychological challenge is an opportunity to get stronger in a different and perhaps more important way. Strength and fitness function like compounding interest, so let’s visualize who we will be after 10 years of good habits and how many amazing adventures in nature we’ll have enjoyed. Every workout we can remind ourselves that there’s no place we’d rather be and that training is the path to freedom.
Maintaining the long term outlook is a real discipline of its own. In a culture that wants shortcuts and burns through its people and its other resources, it will pose challenges but ultimately it will boost our trust in ourselves. The long term view is the key to lifelong fitness and athleticism instead of broken bodies and typical fitness frustration stories. The healthy long term body follows the healthy long term mind.
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