Trauma Units, Podium Places and Mind-games
In early January of 1992 I was a
“sometimes” member of a swimming squad consisting mainly of triathletes. The
squad made use of a local girls high school pool on weekday mornings and the
Olympic-sized Newlands facility on Sunday afternoons.
The group was quite an eclectic mix of individuals, but good friends all the same. With the majority of this squad being triathletes of elite ability, I was just happier than hell to be part of the action, especially given the age gap between myself (mid-teens) and the others (mid-twenties upwards).
One of the guys in the squad was one South Africa’s best triathletes at the time. A medical doctor by profession, he worked part-time in various day hospitals on the Cape Flats thus allowing him time to train for elite-level competition. This was almost a misnomer because there were times where his lifestyle (work/family/other interests) would eat up most of this seemingly “free” time, often resulting in nocturnal training habits and, in some cases, drastically reduced hours on the road.
The aforementioned time-period was one of those instances of his seemingly being totally over scheduled, especially since that time of the year was when the provincial championships would take place, which were one of the more important events of the year back then. His arriving at swimming practice on the Sunday evening before the championships (scheduled for the following Saturday) were telling: he had spent an entire week working 16-hour shifts at a hospital trauma unit and was attending swim training for the first time in almost a fortnight. He also commented that he had cycled exactly once that week before inquiring on whether I was enjoying my school holiday.
That he went on to finish a close second in the following weeks championship was quite extraordinary if viewed strictly at face value. Taking into account such factors as his scattered training, excessive hospital workload and lack of sleep, it is amazing that he toed the starting line at all. Yet the converse of his example could be interpreted more along the lines of a large fitness base, not trying to control the uncontrollable and merely stepping back from his usual regimen due to circumstance. I’m pretty sure his result would be nowhere near the podium had he tried to squeeze in extra training sessions for training’s sake or panicked about his apparent lack of workout time.
The above example certainly lends credence to the phenomenon of rising to the occasion. Furthermore, an athlete making the best out of their own unique situation will almost certainly perform closer to their potential instead of trying to emulate others. Which begs the question: are we ever truly ready to compete?
Most literature and online information would like you to believe so. If you follow specific advice on how to peak following a set schedule, you are sure to deliver come race day, in theory at least. The problem with a theoretical model is trying to make it fit all shapes and sizes. As my technikon photogrammetry lecturer often stated: we do practical assignments to apply what we learn in class. Needless to say that many of my assignments just scraped through the required minimum pass mark but that is the whole point of such exercises; self-interpretation of various theoretical models into a practical form via trial and error, making several mistakes along the way but hopefully learning from them nonetheless. That is why it is so difficult to apply a cookie-cutter set of principles to anything athletic and expect to simply reap the benefits.
I suspect that many busy individuals could relate to the example of my doctor friend. Sometimes life just gets in the way of the ideal. This could extend to optimizing ones time effectively, departing from the usual “fit-in-as-much-as-possible.” Consider the following hypothetical situation:
A busy guy with a wife and two young kids is a competitive cyclist. In order to remain competitive, he rides several (early) mornings per week. To avoid getting stuck in rush-hour traffic, he needs to be home by 6:35am at the very latest. Conventional wisdom and peer pressure dictates his workout duration to be 90 minutes in length, so he times his return home to be around 6:29am giving him around ten minutes to shower, change and be in his car for the daily work commute.
A more viable and sensible option would be for our cyclist to reduce his workout time to around an hour, giving him the seeming luxury of more leisurely post-ride routine; he now has time to wash behind his ears, watch the 6:30am news bulletin and even wake up slightly later. Whilst the rational voice would endorse this more pragmatic approach and thus result in less pressure, the more compulsive one would no doubt be doing back-flips at the thought of reduced workout duration. I mean, nobody rides for an hour, do they?
Sometimes less is truly more, although specific to the individual. During a Saturday morning ride last year, a friend commented how racing often gets in the way of enjoyable training, especially since most cycle races in South Africa fall on a Sunday. My friend and I share a mutual enjoyment of Saturday cycling; riding a bike on the morning of the sixth day feels different, exciting and enjoyable all the same. There is no other day like it, so any reason to curtail this activity can actually be counter-productive, racing the next day or not.
Were my friend to just roll for an hour because of the impending Sunday race could most likely result in a sub-par performance, not to mention a “climbing-the-walls” sensation for the rest of Saturday. Our solution was to ride a route with some good climbs that, whilst seemingly long, would only result in around 2hr30 in total duration. Cape Town is like that, with the feeling of “being in the sticks” whilst actually close to home being achievable in many instances. I coerced him into riding a few maximum efforts during the ride (whilst I watched) thus giving his engine a “rev” in the process. The combination of the seemingly challenging route, actual duration and short “pipe-cleaning” sprints fooled my friend’s body and mind in an effective way, providing the required placebo effect of perceived time and effort via the masking of the actual duration and intensity. Effective mind-games in other words.
Not to say that this approach would work for everyone. Far from it, in fact. I suspect that many folks would reap the benefits of minimal activity pre-race. Not everybody shares my love of Saturday exercise though, nor has the time or inclination to indulge in such exercise on both weekend days. I know of one local cyclist who rides on either a Saturday or a Sunday, never both. This extends to race weekends too. Not that it seems to affect him though, as his win-rate his rather impressive.
The group was quite an eclectic mix of individuals, but good friends all the same. With the majority of this squad being triathletes of elite ability, I was just happier than hell to be part of the action, especially given the age gap between myself (mid-teens) and the others (mid-twenties upwards).
One of the guys in the squad was one South Africa’s best triathletes at the time. A medical doctor by profession, he worked part-time in various day hospitals on the Cape Flats thus allowing him time to train for elite-level competition. This was almost a misnomer because there were times where his lifestyle (work/family/other interests) would eat up most of this seemingly “free” time, often resulting in nocturnal training habits and, in some cases, drastically reduced hours on the road.
The aforementioned time-period was one of those instances of his seemingly being totally over scheduled, especially since that time of the year was when the provincial championships would take place, which were one of the more important events of the year back then. His arriving at swimming practice on the Sunday evening before the championships (scheduled for the following Saturday) were telling: he had spent an entire week working 16-hour shifts at a hospital trauma unit and was attending swim training for the first time in almost a fortnight. He also commented that he had cycled exactly once that week before inquiring on whether I was enjoying my school holiday.
That he went on to finish a close second in the following weeks championship was quite extraordinary if viewed strictly at face value. Taking into account such factors as his scattered training, excessive hospital workload and lack of sleep, it is amazing that he toed the starting line at all. Yet the converse of his example could be interpreted more along the lines of a large fitness base, not trying to control the uncontrollable and merely stepping back from his usual regimen due to circumstance. I’m pretty sure his result would be nowhere near the podium had he tried to squeeze in extra training sessions for training’s sake or panicked about his apparent lack of workout time.
The above example certainly lends credence to the phenomenon of rising to the occasion. Furthermore, an athlete making the best out of their own unique situation will almost certainly perform closer to their potential instead of trying to emulate others. Which begs the question: are we ever truly ready to compete?
Most literature and online information would like you to believe so. If you follow specific advice on how to peak following a set schedule, you are sure to deliver come race day, in theory at least. The problem with a theoretical model is trying to make it fit all shapes and sizes. As my technikon photogrammetry lecturer often stated: we do practical assignments to apply what we learn in class. Needless to say that many of my assignments just scraped through the required minimum pass mark but that is the whole point of such exercises; self-interpretation of various theoretical models into a practical form via trial and error, making several mistakes along the way but hopefully learning from them nonetheless. That is why it is so difficult to apply a cookie-cutter set of principles to anything athletic and expect to simply reap the benefits.
I suspect that many busy individuals could relate to the example of my doctor friend. Sometimes life just gets in the way of the ideal. This could extend to optimizing ones time effectively, departing from the usual “fit-in-as-much-as-possible.” Consider the following hypothetical situation:
A busy guy with a wife and two young kids is a competitive cyclist. In order to remain competitive, he rides several (early) mornings per week. To avoid getting stuck in rush-hour traffic, he needs to be home by 6:35am at the very latest. Conventional wisdom and peer pressure dictates his workout duration to be 90 minutes in length, so he times his return home to be around 6:29am giving him around ten minutes to shower, change and be in his car for the daily work commute.
A more viable and sensible option would be for our cyclist to reduce his workout time to around an hour, giving him the seeming luxury of more leisurely post-ride routine; he now has time to wash behind his ears, watch the 6:30am news bulletin and even wake up slightly later. Whilst the rational voice would endorse this more pragmatic approach and thus result in less pressure, the more compulsive one would no doubt be doing back-flips at the thought of reduced workout duration. I mean, nobody rides for an hour, do they?
Sometimes less is truly more, although specific to the individual. During a Saturday morning ride last year, a friend commented how racing often gets in the way of enjoyable training, especially since most cycle races in South Africa fall on a Sunday. My friend and I share a mutual enjoyment of Saturday cycling; riding a bike on the morning of the sixth day feels different, exciting and enjoyable all the same. There is no other day like it, so any reason to curtail this activity can actually be counter-productive, racing the next day or not.
Were my friend to just roll for an hour because of the impending Sunday race could most likely result in a sub-par performance, not to mention a “climbing-the-walls” sensation for the rest of Saturday. Our solution was to ride a route with some good climbs that, whilst seemingly long, would only result in around 2hr30 in total duration. Cape Town is like that, with the feeling of “being in the sticks” whilst actually close to home being achievable in many instances. I coerced him into riding a few maximum efforts during the ride (whilst I watched) thus giving his engine a “rev” in the process. The combination of the seemingly challenging route, actual duration and short “pipe-cleaning” sprints fooled my friend’s body and mind in an effective way, providing the required placebo effect of perceived time and effort via the masking of the actual duration and intensity. Effective mind-games in other words.
Not to say that this approach would work for everyone. Far from it, in fact. I suspect that many folks would reap the benefits of minimal activity pre-race. Not everybody shares my love of Saturday exercise though, nor has the time or inclination to indulge in such exercise on both weekend days. I know of one local cyclist who rides on either a Saturday or a Sunday, never both. This extends to race weekends too. Not that it seems to affect him though, as his win-rate his rather impressive.
