The Building Blocks
Quit jerking off to your future
I was on a podcast recently with one of my athletes, and it’s pretty cool.
Don’t forget to reach out to me if you want help at Unbound Gravel this year!
Here’s my second paid Member video, this one’s all about strength training!
We get way too focused on goals and what we want to do eventually. While it’s important to have big goals, we can’t let that get in the way of good execution now.
Some of this is because of the huge amounts of training shit (like this substack) out there. Athletes are interested in the details. So they think about the details. They like to talk about the details. And thus instead of doing what they should (executing current training), they think/stress/flick the bean to how cool their training is going to look later. Because they have some pre-concieved notion of “what good training looks like.” And guess what folks, that doesn’t fucking matter. What matters is what your body can adapt to right now.
The truth is, you need to learn first to nail a week. And when I say learn, I mean learn NOW. I don’t care if you’ve been a pro for 20 years. If you can’t put together a good training block or season, then you need to back up and nail a week.
And then once you can nail a week, by which I mean get through all the planned work feeling pretty strong and consistent, not hanging off the back of the workload, then you need to put six of those weeks together.
If you can’t get through the week, check your carbs. If your carbs were ok, and you couldn’t get through the week, then you were doing too much, adjust the workload down.
If you nailed the week, but couldn’t nail six weeks, then either your first week was actually too much, or your ramp was too much. Start over and fix it.
Once you can nail six weeks, meaning that you felt strong throughout and gained measurable performance, and didn’t get sick, and didn’t get injured, and didn’t push more than two or three workouts because of fatigue, then guess what, you are now a JV athlete. THIS IS THE FUCKING BASICS. Nothing else matters. If you can’t NAIL six-weeks of training, then you have nothing.
That’s it. That’s the only thing. As an athlete, your job is to get all the other bullshit out of the way TODAY to make sure that your body can adapt the most possible to TODAY’s workout. Next week doesn’t matter. Next month doesn’t matter. You need to execute this day and week.
The more time you spend thinking about what your training will/should/might look like the future, the more time you’re spending going “fuck, I must suck, because I’m not there now.” And this often makes your execution of today’s training pretty shit! It can make you sad, it can make you impatient, it can make you ignore the problems in the week because “goddamnit I need to get to x hours per week!” And this just fucks everything up.
The only thing that matters is now. And spending a bunch of time worrying about the future can really fuck up the now. What is now? Nailing THIS week of training.
I listened to you on Travis Macy Show podcast and a lot was emphasized on that-We often overestimate what we can accomplish in a day or a week and underestimate what we can accomplish in a year. Runners will try to run 100 mile weeks for a couple of months in order to get faster not knowing that this thing is all about SHOWING UP for years on end & not just a couple of weeks or months. The adaptation a person's body goes through can't be fastened like AI can summarize a book in a couple of pages. Consistency is the name of the game & not a couple of bouts of intensity workouts even though intensity plays its role in making anaerobic adaptations in our bodies. It is all about gradual build up & nailing the basics.
But 90% people don’t know it first hand as you itself know that there is a lot of fluff around running/physiology content. Everybody just wants to buy the latest pair of shoes/gadgets/clothing but what about reading books and blogs and what about sleep, nutrition, mobility/strength/conditioning exercises? What about keeping 70% of activities in Zone-1 or low intensity where the central nervous system isn’t fatigued to moderate or maximal level on daily basis.
We need to focus on what is the best we can do for our future selves irrespective of how the result pans out. 100% of shots are missed that are not taken, sho why not take the shot by keep showing up & give ourselves chance to be the best version of ourselves.
One can't get faster in just a couple of months in any sport. Even Nils Van Der Poel (Swedish Speed Skater) put up 30 hour cycling weeks to prepare for speed skating which means he was working on building a huge aerobic base to perform at his peak even though he needed a pretty good anaerobic engine as well. As it is said- Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
Right now I am preparing for a 100 KM Stadium Run(250 laps of 400 meter). I am hoping to run it under 7 hours 30 minutes in order to get a qualifier for Team India for 100 KM World Championships 2026.
I ran a training run on 30th November(201*300M)=60,300 m in 4 hours 26 minutes. I never felt fatigue much and the aftermath of this training run wasn't much but just a couple of blood blisters. No high level fatigue felt in Central Nervous System, no quads blow up. I was pretty confident that heck yeah I can do it now as I have done simulation but after that on 23rd December I felt some knee pain and I took a couple of days off. After that I came back to running 12 KM for 2 days then 15 KM for 1 day, 18 KM for 1 day, 21 KM for 1 day & now for the last 2 days I have been running 28 KM(all of this in a single run). Today I averaged 5:25 pace per KM for 28 KM. And I am targeting 4:30 pace per KM for 100 KM on 24th January.
I still believe I can do it but can't bring my ego to training as I would want the results right now and in order to achieve that I will increase both the volume & intensity for just a couple of weeks which can hamper. I have said to myself that it is better to be healthy at the starting line then burying my body into the ground. I want results, I want a spot in Team India but what's the point of spot when I will be injured. So, just keep things in perspective its I am in it for the FUN and for the long haul.