You Don't Need to Always Do The Hardest or the Most

When it’s up to you to decide what to do in a workout, what do you choose in terms of duration, distance, and intensity?  Do you choose to go the hardest and/or longest you possibly can?  Contrary to popular opinion, The Hardest and/or The Most is not necessarily The Best.

Read this Coach Tip Tuesday: 

https://www.fullcircleendurance.com/blog/coach-tip-tuesday-you-dont-always-need-to-do-the-hardest-or-the-most 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening
• 0:16 What Do You Choose?
• 0:57 What Does “Hard” Mean?
• 2:42 Don’t Assume The Hardest and The Most is The Best
• 5:39 Prove Your Ability be Thoughtful and to Exercise Restraint
• 7:37 The Bottom Line
• 9:17 Closing

Transcript

(0:04 - 1:18)
Hello and welcome to the Full Circle Podcast, your source for insights into the science and art of endurance sports training and racing. I'm your host Coach Laura Henry. Today is Coach Tip Tuesday. 

When it's up to you to decide what to do in a workout, what do you choose in terms of duration, distance, and intensity? When presented with a workout that has options or ranges for duration, distance, or intensity, do you typically gravitate toward or select the lower end of those ranges or do you select the higher end? If you're like a lot of athletes out there, you likely gravitate toward selecting a duration or distance that is on the longer side and or an intensity that is on the harder side. I've heard variations of the same sentiment time and time again from athletes over the years. I need to work hard. 

I want to feel like I'm working hard. When athletes utilize the word hard like this, they don't necessarily always mean that they need or want to work hard in traditional sense, meaning intensity-wise, though it's very possible that they could mean high intensity. However, they might be using the word hard to say that they feel that they need to do something long or far.

(1:19 - 3:21)
Something long or far, even if completed at an easy or a moderate intensity, very well might meet their definition of hard. When left to their own devices, athletes will often self-select the longest option, the furthest option, or the highest intensity option. I like to colloquially call these the most and the hardest. 

And this self-selection happens whether athletes are self-coached in having to come up with their own workouts or if they are working with a coach who is giving them ranges and workouts. A lot of coaches, including me, will sometimes plan workouts with a range. For instance, I may say something like ride for one to two hours or run for five to eight miles or swim at the effort that feels best for you, or do a workout for up to two hours. 

When I do this, it is not uncommon at all for athletes to self-select the highest or the top end of the range I specify, whether that range is based on distance, time, or effort. In fact, I'd say that it's much more uncommon that an athlete chooses something shorter or lower intensity when they are presented with options like this. And to all of you out there listening who resemble this situation, I have some, perhaps hard to hear, advice for you. 

The hardest and or the most is not necessarily the best. When I, and probably other coaches too, write ranges into workouts for athletes, I am intentionally turning over some of the control and power of the workout and the overall training plan to the athlete. The athlete gets to self-select their intensity, duration, and or distance in this scenario. 

I am not planning the exact parameters down to the minute details. Instead, I am empowering the athlete to both practice and demonstrate their self-awareness skills and their own abilities to manage their effort and what they are doing. As I mentioned earlier, I observe that athletes almost always do either the hardest or the most that the range I plan allows for.

(3:21 - 8:10)
These observations are really valuable insights because the reason why I plan ranges and the reason I give some of this control to the athlete is to see, engage how they manage it. I observe what choices athletes make in individual workouts. And I observe trends over time, over the course of several workouts that are planned and scheduled like this. 

I ask myself questions such as does an athlete show thoughtfulness about what they do? Do they do something that makes sense for them on that day or in that situation? Or does the athlete automatically default to doing the hardest and the most version of what is planned whenever they have a workout with ranges scheduled? Or does an athlete always default to the low end of the range? That's also just as valuable. But what we're talking about today is the hardest and the most, and the hardest and the most is not necessarily what's best. While there are absolutely times when longer durations, further distances, and higher intensities make sense in an athlete's training plan, going easy, short, or slow is also necessary to help athletes adapt to the training stimulus that is being imposed on them and to help them make gains over time. 

In fact, all of this is honestly necessary more frequently than doing the hardest or the most. Planning workouts with ranges and seeing how athletes navigate them gives me insight into how an athlete will manage and navigate something unexpected that pops up for them in a training workout or race. It takes many forms. 

This is an understatement, but no matter what form or shape it takes, adversity is a certainty in endurance, sports training, and racing. Thus it is critical for athletes to be able to successfully navigate and manage it. When it does happen, giving athletes opportunities to make choices and seeing how they respond to that is one way to gauge how they will respond to adversity. 

Adversity will require them to make choices that they might not expect and to leverage the tools that they have in their athlete's toolbox. If I observed that an athlete is always choosing to do the most and the hardest when they are presented with options or ranges, I know that I need to give that athlete a lot more guidance because they are not demonstrating mature self-awareness skills. They need to have some help with expanding the tools in their athlete's toolbox. 

And so that's what it clues me into that I have to give them that. All too often, athletes feel the need to quote unquote, prove themselves by doing the hardest or the most, meaning that they think that doing anything less than either the hardest or the most is not good or that it will say something negative about them. This thinking is flawed. 

Let me repeat that. This thinking is flawed. If this is you, you are not necessarily proving something positive by doing the hardest or the most. 

In fact, you may be showing improving that you lack self-awareness and the ability to exercise self-restraint in the world of endurance sports. And quite frankly, in life, too, this is not a good thing. One of the most important skills for an athlete to develop is to be able to resist the temptation to go hard or long and to rein themselves in both when it really makes sense and when it's just a good choice. 

This is a mental skill more than a physical skill and mental skills are just as important, honestly, if not more so than physical skills in endurance sports. Thus, training mental skills is just as important as training your physical body. It is also important for you to prove that you have strong mental skills so that you can progress towards more advanced level workouts over time and to learn how to properly manage your efforts in a race situation so you can properly pace a race to have your strongest performance. 

Contrary to what many athletes think, exercising self-restraint, implementing thoughtfulness about which duration, intensity, or distance you choose, and choosing to do something that is less than the top end of a planned range is not a negative thing. And it does not say something bad about you. If you can do this, if you can exercise a self-restraint, you are proving something important and worthwhile. 

You are proving that you can and that you will resist the temptation to do what you want and that you can instead do what is pragmatic both in the short term and in terms of the larger scope of your training and racing. If you realize that you are someone who always defaults to doing the hardest and or the most, recognize that you have an opportunity to quote unquote prove yourself by developing and broadening your skills to do things in a variety of durations, distances, and effort levels. You have an opportunity to face the discomfort dragon and sit with the discomfort of doing something quote unquote less than what you think you quote unquote should be doing. 

So choose this. Choose to do quote unquote less. Choose the shorter or the lower end of the range.

(8:10 - 9:15)
Remember, there is nothing wrong with feeling good. What is so bad about feeling great? You don't need to push yourself to the point where you feel like you're running out of steam, you're running out of gas, or maybe even that you're going to hurt yourself. Constantly always choosing the most or the hardest can lead to injuries acutely and over time. 

And like so many things that we talk about on this podcast, this is what makes it deceptive for athletes. They can't necessarily see if they get injured that it's the cumulative effect of many days, weeks, months, or sometimes even years of making choices like this. So like anything else, continued exposure to executing these types of choices will help breed comfort and familiarity. 

You will get comfortable and more familiar with making these decisions. You will keep yourself safer and healthier over the long term. You will expand your athlete's toolbox because once you have that comfort, familiarity, and confidence, you will be able to leverage those skills in both workouts and in races to help yourself reach your goals and your best performances.

(9:15 - 10:02)
That was another episode of the Full Circle Podcast. Subscribe to the Full Circle Podcast wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. If you like what you listen to, please be sure to leave us a rating and review as this goes a long way in helping us reach others. 

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To find training plans, see what other coaching services we offer, or to join our community, please visit fullcircleendurance.com. I'm Coach Laura Henry. Thanks for listening.