Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Streamers
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
Excellence - by Joe Friel
Here's a little article I thought was pretty interesting by Joe Friel. He's spent years coaching athletes and these are some of his guidelines as to what makes an athlete successful. This doesn't just apply to athletics, it applies to life as well. Try it, you might like it.
Excellence -
Excellence is not for everyone. It’s far too difficult for the great majority of those who participate in sport. In fact, those who seek excellence are often ridiculed because they are different from their peers. And so it isn’t easy to seek excellence either. Humans are social animals; we don’t like being outcasts. It’s much easier to go along with the crowd than to stand out in a crowd. But there are athletes who pull it off, and with great aplomb. Have you ever noticed how young, pro athletes often try to give the impression that nothing about their training or dedication to the sport is unusual? They’ve learned to give the appearance of being “just like everyone else,” even though their performance in competition tells us otherwise. Going out of their way to be laid-back is how they cope with the dilemma and help prevent others from branding them as strange. And that’s a good strategy which I would recommend to anyone who truly seeks excellence: Try not to give the air of someone who is seeking excellence. Appear ordinary in every way you can.
What brought all of this up was a question someone asked me over dinner tonight. We were at a surprise party for an athlete I coach who had just won his age category at his state’s time trial championship. It was clear to my dinner-table neighbor that this state champ had altered his course in the past year and was becoming excellent at cycling. So my new friend wanted to know what I looked for in a person who wanted to hire me as a coach. How would I know if a person could be successful? I started to tell him all of what follows but we were interrupted by party goings-on. Here’s the long list of what I think are the best predictors of excellence in sport, in their order of importance, in case he gets a chance to read this post.
• Motivation. This one is more important than all of the others combined. If the athlete isn’t motivated excellence is highly unlikely. In fact, the other predictors won’t even exist without motivation. This goes well beyond giving lip service to goals. The truly motivated athlete is on a mission and has a hard time keeping himself or herself in check. This person really needs a coach to pull on the reins to prevent overtraining, injury, illness and burnout. If the coach has to use a whip then it’s a losing cause no matter how talented the athlete is. The coach will never give the athlete motivation. It must come from within. When I’m interviewing athletes I ask lots of questions to find out how truly motivated they are. For example, I ask how often they train with other athletes versus alone. The low-motivation athlete will need companionship frequently. If you are motivated then all of the following predictors of excellence will fall into place eventually.
• Discipline. This is very simple. The disciplined athlete will make daily sacrifices and make due with hardships in order to excel. This person doesn’t miss workouts short of a disaster. Weather is an insignificant factor. The disciplined athlete knows that the small stuff is important. He or she doesn’t get sloppy with diet, recovery, equipment or anything else that has to do with goals. Discipline is not easy. Others can accept motivation, but they have a hard time dealing with people who are disciplined. You’ve got to make light of or even hide your discipline is you want to be accepted by your peers. Good luck here.
• Confidence. Some people seem to live life completely with an unwavering belief in themselves and their actions. These folks are indeed rare. I’ve met very few athletes who didn’t have some concerns about how well suited they were for whatever the task at hand may be. There’s a sliding scale of confidence. Most of us are somewhere in the middle. To move closer to the high-confidence end all we typically need is some success. Success breeds confidence. While it’s hard to come by you can create your own. For the athletes I’ve coached whose confidence was decidedly on the low end I’ve suggested a daily confidence-booster. When they go to bed and after the lights are out, I tell them to go back in their memories and find anything in their day’s workout or related activities that was successful at any level. This could be a very small success such as feeling strong going up a certain hill during the workout today, or eating fruit instead of a cookie for a snack. I tell them to then relive that small success over and over until they fall asleep. Occasionally there are big successes. These become “anchors” which they relive often and store away in a vault to be pulled out whenever they feel low confidence coming on, like at the starting line of a race. Thinking of one’s successes breeds success. Success breeds confidence.
• Focus. This could also be called purpose; the athlete knows where he or she wants to go in the sport. Daily training is a purposeful activity that will lead to excellence. Each workout (and accompanying recovery) is a small building block that eventually results in excellence. But you have to take it one step at a time, which brings us to the last predictor, patience.
• Patience. According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Outliers it takes about 10,000 hours for a person to become a master of anything. I had never tried to quantify it in terms of hours, but experience told me that performing at the highest level in sport takes something on the order of 10 years of serious training regardless of when you started in life. So I think Gladwell is probably right. There are certainly exceptions, or at least it appears that way on the surface. But when an athlete comes along who seems to go to the top right away we often find on closer examination that he or she had been developing outside of the recognized success pathways. Patience also has another level that goes beyond this long-term approach to success. This is a more immediate, daily component associated with the ability to pace appropriately early in workouts and races. Athletes who seem unable to learn this skill are less likely to be successful than those who master it.
Notice that I didn’t say anything about innate talent, physiology, skills, or even experience in the sport. All of these things can be developed and learned if the other predictors are there. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have the capacity to develop each of these mental abilities. As mentioned earlier, the challenge for most of us in seeking excellence is learning how to do it without appearing to be doing so. Watch how most of the pros do it and try to emulate their apparently laissez-faire attitude. Good examples are Chrissie Wellington in triathlon and David Zabriskie in road cycling. In their own unique ways they give the impression of being unconcerned about excellence. But no one achieves their levels of accomplishment without being highly motivated, disciplined, focused and patient.
Excellence -
Excellence is not for everyone. It’s far too difficult for the great majority of those who participate in sport. In fact, those who seek excellence are often ridiculed because they are different from their peers. And so it isn’t easy to seek excellence either. Humans are social animals; we don’t like being outcasts. It’s much easier to go along with the crowd than to stand out in a crowd. But there are athletes who pull it off, and with great aplomb. Have you ever noticed how young, pro athletes often try to give the impression that nothing about their training or dedication to the sport is unusual? They’ve learned to give the appearance of being “just like everyone else,” even though their performance in competition tells us otherwise. Going out of their way to be laid-back is how they cope with the dilemma and help prevent others from branding them as strange. And that’s a good strategy which I would recommend to anyone who truly seeks excellence: Try not to give the air of someone who is seeking excellence. Appear ordinary in every way you can.
What brought all of this up was a question someone asked me over dinner tonight. We were at a surprise party for an athlete I coach who had just won his age category at his state’s time trial championship. It was clear to my dinner-table neighbor that this state champ had altered his course in the past year and was becoming excellent at cycling. So my new friend wanted to know what I looked for in a person who wanted to hire me as a coach. How would I know if a person could be successful? I started to tell him all of what follows but we were interrupted by party goings-on. Here’s the long list of what I think are the best predictors of excellence in sport, in their order of importance, in case he gets a chance to read this post.
• Motivation. This one is more important than all of the others combined. If the athlete isn’t motivated excellence is highly unlikely. In fact, the other predictors won’t even exist without motivation. This goes well beyond giving lip service to goals. The truly motivated athlete is on a mission and has a hard time keeping himself or herself in check. This person really needs a coach to pull on the reins to prevent overtraining, injury, illness and burnout. If the coach has to use a whip then it’s a losing cause no matter how talented the athlete is. The coach will never give the athlete motivation. It must come from within. When I’m interviewing athletes I ask lots of questions to find out how truly motivated they are. For example, I ask how often they train with other athletes versus alone. The low-motivation athlete will need companionship frequently. If you are motivated then all of the following predictors of excellence will fall into place eventually.
• Discipline. This is very simple. The disciplined athlete will make daily sacrifices and make due with hardships in order to excel. This person doesn’t miss workouts short of a disaster. Weather is an insignificant factor. The disciplined athlete knows that the small stuff is important. He or she doesn’t get sloppy with diet, recovery, equipment or anything else that has to do with goals. Discipline is not easy. Others can accept motivation, but they have a hard time dealing with people who are disciplined. You’ve got to make light of or even hide your discipline is you want to be accepted by your peers. Good luck here.
• Confidence. Some people seem to live life completely with an unwavering belief in themselves and their actions. These folks are indeed rare. I’ve met very few athletes who didn’t have some concerns about how well suited they were for whatever the task at hand may be. There’s a sliding scale of confidence. Most of us are somewhere in the middle. To move closer to the high-confidence end all we typically need is some success. Success breeds confidence. While it’s hard to come by you can create your own. For the athletes I’ve coached whose confidence was decidedly on the low end I’ve suggested a daily confidence-booster. When they go to bed and after the lights are out, I tell them to go back in their memories and find anything in their day’s workout or related activities that was successful at any level. This could be a very small success such as feeling strong going up a certain hill during the workout today, or eating fruit instead of a cookie for a snack. I tell them to then relive that small success over and over until they fall asleep. Occasionally there are big successes. These become “anchors” which they relive often and store away in a vault to be pulled out whenever they feel low confidence coming on, like at the starting line of a race. Thinking of one’s successes breeds success. Success breeds confidence.
• Focus. This could also be called purpose; the athlete knows where he or she wants to go in the sport. Daily training is a purposeful activity that will lead to excellence. Each workout (and accompanying recovery) is a small building block that eventually results in excellence. But you have to take it one step at a time, which brings us to the last predictor, patience.
• Patience. According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Outliers it takes about 10,000 hours for a person to become a master of anything. I had never tried to quantify it in terms of hours, but experience told me that performing at the highest level in sport takes something on the order of 10 years of serious training regardless of when you started in life. So I think Gladwell is probably right. There are certainly exceptions, or at least it appears that way on the surface. But when an athlete comes along who seems to go to the top right away we often find on closer examination that he or she had been developing outside of the recognized success pathways. Patience also has another level that goes beyond this long-term approach to success. This is a more immediate, daily component associated with the ability to pace appropriately early in workouts and races. Athletes who seem unable to learn this skill are less likely to be successful than those who master it.
Notice that I didn’t say anything about innate talent, physiology, skills, or even experience in the sport. All of these things can be developed and learned if the other predictors are there. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have the capacity to develop each of these mental abilities. As mentioned earlier, the challenge for most of us in seeking excellence is learning how to do it without appearing to be doing so. Watch how most of the pros do it and try to emulate their apparently laissez-faire attitude. Good examples are Chrissie Wellington in triathlon and David Zabriskie in road cycling. In their own unique ways they give the impression of being unconcerned about excellence. But no one achieves their levels of accomplishment without being highly motivated, disciplined, focused and patient.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Defeat
Right now I'm driving home from the Cotton Patch Classic Omnium in Greenville, TX and unfortunately I have a lot to think about. Maybe think isn't the right word maybe it's more like dwell on.
This weekend didn't go anything close to how I hoped it would go. In fact it went almost the exact opposite. Pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
In Saturday mornings road race despite racing a killer race for 66.8 miles i got screwed in the finish by a very poorly laid out finish. Kudos to the promoters for putting on such a great weekend of racing, unfortunately all that is going to be talked about is how bad that finish was laid out. As we made the last right hand turn I was on my teammate, Mark's, wheel and ready for a leadout. Then all of a sudden the pack starts scrambling and scattering about. The promoters decided to bottle kneck our finish. The finish that was to be full open road was now bottle knecked to to just one lane. Might not sound like a big deal but when you take 50 guys going 40 miles an hour and then all of a sudden close off the road it's got a pretty big impact on the outcome. What was even worse is how they decided to bottle kneck the road, by lining up police cars on the left side of the road and that's right where Mark and I were. He was able to jump across to the right
side but I had to break quite a bit to avoid being taken out by the cop car and by the time I could try to move to the right I was totally boxed in and rubbing wheels and pumping shoulders with riders all around me. It was mass confusion and I should actually just feel lucky I was able to keep the rubber side down but I don't and I feel like I got screwed and had almost no control of my result. If you tell everyone you will have the full road at the finish, then make sure we have the full road. But wait it gets better, there were no meter markings so we never actually knew where the finish was. That's awesome. I didn't drive 191 miles and race 66.8 miles to get screwed at the finish and not even really have a chance at the win because of poor planning by the promoter. On a positive note Mark's move to the right paid off and he got the win. Then he got clipped and went crashing to the ground, spent the afternoon at the hospital and won't be back on the
bike for at least a week. I am proud of Mark and I. We raced that race to win and did a great job of working together. We never let anyone get too far up the road and took it in our own hands to bring back a majority of the breaks. We were active up front, raced a good clean race and for there only being two of us from the team there in this race I'm not sure we could of done anything any better. It was also nice to race with Erin Elliot, who came to the front and helped us reel everyone in. Hopefully we'll get to race together more next season.
Had I really thought about it before hand I probably could of predicted my time trial time. That's not necessarily a good thing though. I'm stuck in this rut of averaging between 25 to 25.5 mph on my tt's. It doesn't matter the distance, 40k or ten miles, most likely it's going to be within that range. At least I'm consistent I guess. This is one area of my cycling that I would really work on and improve by next season.
Sunday mornings crit, well it sucked for me also. My legs felt a little fatigued but opened up after about 30 minutes. Not win the race good but I'm pretty confident I could of snagged a top ten and at least got a little redemption from Saturdays races. That wasn't in the cards for me I guess. Going into the third left hand turn on the bell lap I hit a small hole with some busted chunks of asphalt in it and blew my rear tubular tire. I was able to stay up and avoided washing out as I went on through the turn but it was so late in the race I wasn't able to go the wheel pit and get my free lap. Perfect way to end the weekend and my season.
Thanks Phillip, Mark and Andy for making the trip. It was great getting to hang out with you guys.
Now I'm just trying to hurry and get home to see my girls. What I've been waiting for all weekend and the only way to end my weekend on a good note.
Sent from Chad's iPhone
Friday, September 18, 2009
Right now I'm headed to Greenville, TX to wrap my season up at the Cotton Patch Omnium. My weekend will start with a 65 mile road race at 8:30 tomorrow morning then on to a 9 mile time trial tomorrow afternoon. After the tt we'll grab some grub and try to rest a little bit to get ready for our one hour criterium race Sunday morning. Keeping my fingers crossed for a win this weekend.
Hotter n' Hell
Okay, I've had this saved in my Blackberry for a while now thinking I would have time to finish it. It's not looking that way, because now I have other things to write about but here's my abbreviated race report from Hotter n' Hell.
A race is like life, you have to be able to adjust for whatever might be thrown your way. Sure, everyone has a plan for their life or even for the day, but most likely things will not go exactly as planned and if you aren't able to modify your plan accordingly you probably won't get the end result you had hoped for. The same goes for racing bikes, you have to race the race, not the plan. That is the lesson we took home from HHH.
I finished the race 8th of 65 or so riders. That result wasn't the plan. We did go into this race with a great team plan and it probably would of worked last year, or the year before or any year that it's actually hot. This year, it was nice and cool and the heat wasn't a factor. The problem with our plan was that we stuck to it for too long and had we been racing the race the end result would of been different. Would it of been better, we'll never know, but the race would of definitely been more suited to our liking. Chalk it up as another lesson learned. One more down and many more to go. This was my best result at HHH so far, and each year they get better, so next year is looking promising.
A race is like life, you have to be able to adjust for whatever might be thrown your way. Sure, everyone has a plan for their life or even for the day, but most likely things will not go exactly as planned and if you aren't able to modify your plan accordingly you probably won't get the end result you had hoped for. The same goes for racing bikes, you have to race the race, not the plan. That is the lesson we took home from HHH.
I finished the race 8th of 65 or so riders. That result wasn't the plan. We did go into this race with a great team plan and it probably would of worked last year, or the year before or any year that it's actually hot. This year, it was nice and cool and the heat wasn't a factor. The problem with our plan was that we stuck to it for too long and had we been racing the race the end result would of been different. Would it of been better, we'll never know, but the race would of definitely been more suited to our liking. Chalk it up as another lesson learned. One more down and many more to go. This was my best result at HHH so far, and each year they get better, so next year is looking promising.
It's Getting Closer to November 20th!
Here's the new New Moon trailer. Check it out. Tickets go on sale Monday, get 'em while they're hot!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
