Month: March 2018

Real world goals will do it

Rene Borg (Running Coach) Leave a comment

Runners today have access to more measurements and metrics than ever before. Once upon a time an estimate of distance and the time on your stop-watch was the maximum you could hope for. Then the heart rate revolution happened and in later years GPS enabled real-time measurement of distance and pace and finally an estimate of power output, Ground Contact, stride length and more.

The ‘Unreal’ World

We can call these ‘primary metrics’ in that they measure one direct phenomenon: i.e. the speed you are travelling at or the number of beats your heart makes per minute. These measurements exist in two types – those that measure real-world effects (pace, distance, power) and those that measure elements of the process (stride rate, Ground Contact Time). To this, initially confusing, cohort of data points, has been added many ‘secondary metrics’ which are calculations based on a combination of ‘primary metrics’ such as looking at the Efficiency Factor of a runner by assessing how far a runner runs per Watt of work he creates or assessing stress by comparing the intensity and duration of your run against certain test performances and so on.  It goes without saying that once you delve into that level you’re no longer putting the tyres and chassis on your car – you are polishing the chrome. Like in this metaphor – polishing the chrome is worthwhile but not a priority for driving.

An advantage I possess as a coach is that I can look at all this (it’s my job) and make sense of it within the greater picture I am trying to paint with an athlete. Even then I have a cardinal rule when it comes to all measurements which I strongly suggest non-professionals adhere to in the interest of their own time:

“Look at your measurements to find answers not to create questions.”

To elaborate: use your measurements to identify the likely answer to specific questions you have – do not go to look at them because it’s the nerdy thing to do and come up with all sorts of distracting questions. This time would be better allocated to do something practical for your running instead (such a longer cooldown). If you need to go for a few minute to look and bask that is ok: positive emotional reaction to all things running is a good idea.

The Real World

This returns me to the title of this article. The human mind is not motivated by improvements in Ground Contact Time or a nice trendline for your Running Stress Score. Even if the intellectual mind could be fooled into considering this a primary aim, your subconscious mind (the ultimate arbiter) will find it irrelevant. No prolonged success can happen without the blessing of your subconscious mind. It’s needs must be met at all times or it will punish you (usually with pain – it’s way of saying ‘I don’t like how you are spending our time’).

Now: learning to run for 2 hours or completing a lap of a 400m track in 60 seconds or less constitutes real world goals. So does breaking 40 minutes for the 10 km distance or gaining the ability to run 7 days per week as a matter of choice. So does covering a certain well known mountain course close to your house in 1 hours 50 minutes this week and then hoping to do it in 1 hour and 48 minutes without too much extra effort the next time. So does running for specific reasons important to you and you alone as long as they are not delusional or dishonest (if you love running for the attention it get’s you, do not tell yourself it is for some higher cause – the subconscious will not be deceived). In my experience whenever runners run for reasons that are not entirely their own, pain results (psychosomatic – i.e. ‘physiological changes causing pain in tissues created by the subconscious mind’).

True deep motivation and connection to our goals (which will help meet the needs of our selfish, childish and overprotective subconscious) can only be gained through connection to real-world goals.

Implications

As a coach it is easy to be a nerd. The coach can survive this flaw as long as he does not transfer it onto his athletes. The runner can survive this as long as he or she does not let it get out of hand. The primary goals set for a runner or that you set, as a runner, for yourself  must be concrete. Not only does this mean they must be primary metrics, the goals should make sense in a normal conversational sentence containing no three-letter acronyms and no jargon. Yes ‘reach an ATL of 2000, three weeks out from my peak race’ will not cut muster. ‘Complete a 2 hour easy run and a 1 hour steady run through gradual progress in the next 6 weeks’ will pass.

Every workout we do is a task set for our bodies to solve. I want to delve into this more in upcoming posts. For the moment I bring it up only to support what I am trying to express here: you were designed to solve problems in the real world not the unreal world. Your body and mind (which are the same thing, it’s unfortunate language has provided two words for it) will respond better to focusing on a real world concrete task. Everything becomes easier: measuring progress, keeping motivation, planning the steps to complete the task.

So – no measurements?

Does this make other measurement irrelevant? We revert to my principle above: ‘Use your measurements to answer rather than create questions.’ This means if my stated goal was to progress to 9 hours of weekly running at intensities that will be beneficial for my long-term healthy, I can go into my data to look at heart rates and stress scores to see if the condition was met – does the data suggest I was straining rather than training?

Questions can also be asked ‘on the run’ by a look at the watch. My question might be as simple as ‘this feels a bit faster than I expected’ which a look at the watch can confirm or disconfirm. Like in almost every case, the question is never whether we should use something or not (a gun, a running metric, a treatment) but how we should use it.

Summary: keep your overall training and racing goals tethered to real world practical outcomes. Use more esoteric measures only to answer concrete questions that arise during the process of achieving these goals.

Change of my business

Rene Borg (Running Coach) Leave a comment

One of the advantages of not being a ‘faceless corporation’ is that I can communicate about changes to my business the way you’d have a chat in the pub (or cafe as it is these days).

7 years in the making

It’s been 7 years since I began the venture ‘ChampionsEverywhere’ with Jason Kehoe, the first athlete I began to coach, as my business partner. Our goal was to create a ‘one-stop shop’ for runners combining both products and servics runners would need. This was later refined to services only as the business grew organically.

The last few years I noticed my work was becoming a victim of the core idea: trying to deliver everything. We had trimmed the business already by discarding certain side-projects (such as Primal3 and the Running Superstore clinic) but I still felt I was not spending a large enough proportion of my time coaching athletes. Over the years, our business had grown to 5 separate profit centres – corporate services, workshops, training plans and online coaching, Neuromuscular Therapy and personal consults – along with various ad-hoc projects.

Apart from the work involved in maintaining focus on these different parts of the work, all the mundane administration also bloats when you have such a structure: web design and maintenance, accountancy, marketing, scheduling, customer support, budgetting, venue booking, equipment purchase and replacement, insurance and so on and so forth.

Specialising again…

The area that suffered most was my writing output which I consider critical as part of the ongoing conversation with both my current runners and those I may work with in the future. So Jason and I decided to do another trim and effectively this means ChampionsEverywhere does note exist anymore as a legal entity but is rather just the online shop through which you can book our services.

From the 1st of April this year (2018), all online coaching services will be delivered solely by me through my new company Borg Coaching Services whereas Jason Kehoe will deliver all of our previously ‘face to face’ services such as personal consults and Neuromuscular Therapy through his clinic: JK Therapy in Tallaght. We no longer promote or schedule any workshops although groups or clubs can approach us to host one on request which we will consider based on availability.

This move allows me personally to focus 100% on the area I am most interested in: coaching you for better running performance. It does mean that I will no longer be providing advice on running technique, rehabilitation, strength and conditioning and injury in general.  This is despite recently qualifying as a Neuromuscular Therapist as another part of a hard-won skillset acquired the last 7 years. I decided against setting up a clinic here in Wicklow for reasons I may expound on at a later time but will not do here for the sake of brevity. If you have a niggle or injury but want to work with me, I have written an article suggesting what you do first.

The benefits

This change takes an enormous adminstrative burden off my table helped along with some automations and changes to how I sell my plans. Instead of doing it upfront I now use monthly subscriptions which involves less administration both for my runners and for me. My goal is always to spend less time on marketing, accounts and other admin and more time with coaching runners and writing plans as well as articles. I hope with this move everyone is going to see positive results even if it was bittersweet to say farewell to the workshops this weekend having invested so much time in first introducing them to Ireland and then continuing to develop them beyond that.

So for those reading my articles or working with me – I look forward to this next focused chapter. My only remaining side projects are Trailloebsferie.dk (where I deliver trail running holidays for Danish runners) and Lap of the Gap – the marathon here in Wicklow where I serve as Race Director. Apart from that I continue to serve as Head Coach and Chairperson of Glendalough AC. I have cleared my plate of certain other long-term commitments such as my race directorship of the Wicklow Way Relay which I am transferring to my ‘co-Race Director’ Jason Kehoe this year.

I couldn’t help but think of Warren Buffet who said ‘the key attribute of very successful people is that they say no to almost everything’. We can all learn a lot from that without turning into ‘selfish bastards’ – when we overcommit or spread our skills too widely, everyone around us is not served as well as they would be if we are committed to the right level and focused on the right priorities. I personally am very excited about this change.

Training people when time is short

Rene Borg (Running Coach) Leave a comment

I’ll admit it here: as a professional coach I sometimes have to make business decisions along with coaching decisions. Ask my wife and she’ll  tell you I’m not nearly enough of businessman but here’s the rub: if I told every person who wanted to work with me exactly what I think they must do, most of my clients probably would not be able to work with me. There’s a simple reason for that.

It takes time…

To train to full potential you first of all need a long time: much longer than most people are comfortable investing in before we have developed a personal relationship. It’s cheaper to buy most subscriptions for a year yet most of us try a month first. It’s understandable.

Secondly, the decision to hire a coach often occurs to runners I work with ‘too late’ for an optimal build-up. My approach is not to turn these people away and ask them to come back later because quite frankly it means a lot of people will never come back. This is again the business man speaking but I need food on the table in order to be able to write and think coherently enough to coach. This decision-making does not have to be bad for you or for me as a coach as long as it’s clear what’s happening.

How short is too short?

I do not accept clients for shorter build-ups than 12 weeks (nothing material can be accomplished with shorter plans). If someone works with me for 6 weeks almost all the results they get (good or bad) is down to historical training – not my plan. So if things go badly, they will blame me in the wrong and if things go well I could take credit for results that are not my doing.

When I work with people ‘short-term’, I try to change things gradually away from current training and I consider the current plan a ‘stepping stone’ towards a longer term commitment where we have ‘time to do everything right’ later. I call this my ‘slow-track’. It does have the advantage of not shifting people out of their regular routine too quickly – something the body hates.

The Path to Full Potential (Arthur Lydiard)

The ‘fast-track’ is ironically the approach that takes longer to implement. I still call it the fast-track because it will get you to your full potential quicker. Focus on short-term success ALWAYS comes at the expense of fulfilling your ABSOLUTE POTENTIAL. I understand that for many of my runners long-term success is not the main goal – the next race is the goal and that may be it. I coach many runners who prepare for one big race and then that’s the end of their main running career. It’s pointless to impose career planning in those cases. It sometimes comes later.

The fast-track requires starting at least 28 weeks out from the main goal race of the season. At that date you already need to be fit enough to take on 10 weeks of heavy volume training (‘heavy’ is relative to you) so if you’re unfit (by your standards), you’d need to start even further back. You can see the problem here from a consumer (or I should say ‘client’) point of view: not many people plan THAT far ahead. The 28 weeks normally consist of:

  • 10 weeks GENERAL practice
  • 6 weeks RELATED practice (transition)
  • 12 weeks SPECIFIC practice consisting of about 6-8 weeks training, 2-4 weeks coordination work and 0-2 weeks Taper

BY FAR the majority of my clients sign up initially for 12 weeks or less – so we cannot run the full gamut of necessary work – we have to compromise initially. Keep this fact in mind here: most biological adaptations only begin to be build in the 6-12 week period after the initial stimulus. So a lot of what is achieved during a 12-week training plan is only ‘harvested’ by week 18 and 24! If your race is in week 12, you’re seeing only the early physiological adaptations especially the neuromuscular ones that happen quicker than processes such as capillarisation, mitochondrial biogenesis and so on.

Clubs and peer groups contribute a lot to the pressure here because we are often in the situation ‘here’s a club race 10 weeks from now – you ready’ and your scenario is that you’re just a few weeks back from an injury. It’s hard to say know especially if you’re a ‘goodist’ (want to please others) – there’s a reason selfishness is a vintage trait for high performers.

Going forward (I am launching my new coaching packagtes this month) I will try to make this clearer to anyone who works with me: the current plan works within certain time constraints (so it’s the ‘slow track’) but next time we work together we should be on the ‘fast-track’ (so be thinking about the right training roughly 28 weeks or more ahead of the next big goal.

 

The dangers of switching and of short plans

The most consistent underperformers are runner who constantly rotate their approach. I try to sniff them out in the early conversations as I know that although I will receive a payment, the relationship ultimately won’t work because the person wants immediate results and has a habit of shifting to another system ‘mid-stream’. The old heuristics nearly always work: don’t change horse in the middle of the fort.

Those who do have been brainwashed by our society to expect the results of a pill no matter what they buy – our culture of instant gratification. Many runners without coaches do the same – trying one approach of training for six weeks then changing to another. This has little value and won’t facilitate any real improvements except for learning about different methodologies (something I have to do a lot).

So when starting with a new coach – be it I or someone else – I advise you to give them quite a long commitment (I’d say that eh?). The only reason you should cut a new cocahing relationship short is if you can feel the chemistry is not there.

Coach and athlete chemistry is essential no matter how knowledgeable the coach is. If there’s no chemistry and rapport the message and the trust won’t develop necessary for working together. And don’t feel guilty about ‘dumping me’ or any other coach: I do the same – if I can feel early on that the chemistry between a client and I is not what it should be, I try to let the relationship naturally fade out. This means doing as good a job as possible for that runner but not making any effort to recruit them again or upsell them (businessman again – you see!) on future plans. In the rare instances where I have come up against a brick wall I do the same – I try to let the client ‘slip away’. Every one of us encounters a puzzle we are not made to solve and it’s important to give up then before too much time is wasted. In one case I had to tell a client that we could never work together again due to a breach of trust – this is crucial to in a coach and athlete relationship as trust is the foundation for any real relationship and your ability to adapt to training is directly affected by your subjective belief in and enjoyment of your training.