Latest / Total Barnage / The Secret To Meaningful Progress: The Principle Of "Gain, Don't Prove"

Transcript

The Secret To Meaningful Progress: The Principle Of "Gain, Don't Prove" · Total Barnage

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Total Barnage.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to another episode.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Today it is me, Charlie, soloing it out.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: We've uh we're pretty busy down at the gym at the moment and our schedules haven't quite um haven't quite merged.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm here doing another hopefully shorter episode than last week's one.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna try and keep this to about half an hour and just talk about one little topic which is really important to me at the moment.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big mindset and principle shift um that I've done in the last in the last couple of years.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's gonna be really relevant to me going forward because I am on the cusp of potentially getting back to um to running and to jogging and doing some run walks.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are new to this podcast, um it is a you know, it is a gym podcast.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about fitness trends, we talk about stuff that's relevant in the gym space, relevant for maybe your journey, your fitness journey, um, and then also some some stories.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some stories from the members in our gym.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we've lined up a a few more guest episodes going forward in the next few weeks, so watch out um for those.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And personally, me, I have uh had a pretty serious surgery uh to realign my tibia to sort out a tracking problem that I've had with my knee for the past couple of years, and it was one of the main reasons why I actually left.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was training out in America, left America, um dropped out, come back here to get myself healthy and get back to a decent level of 800 meter running, um, but more so just being able to walk pain-free would be a nice one.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, this concept that I'm gonna talk about today, it is all about not trying to prove ourselves, and it's a concept that I saw.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I actually saw a video, I think it might have just been Geordie Beamish, who is a 1500 meter runner, a miler, um, kiwi, kiwi runner.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he's also a three zap 3,000 meter steeple chaser, um, which is the you know, jumping over the barriers and jumping into the water.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you that might not be familiar with the uh the athletics scene, but Geordie Beamish won the World Indoor Champs over the 1500 metres uh a couple of years back in Glasgow, and I'm pretty sure it was from him.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know who else I could kind of get it from, but he said in his um in his interview, there's one thing that stuck with me, which was that something that he changed in his training and his approach was to gain and not prove.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the approach that he had, he said pretty simply that he didn't really go like super super hard trying to prove his fitness um in certain sessions, and instead it was more about just investing and putting in the work and just keeping what we might call like B plus sessions in running.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um so the B plus sessions is basically that you know it's a good maybe seven out of ten intensity.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um you're leaving a bit in the in the tank, um, you're leaving a bit to the imagination with your training and in the sessions, but you are still putting in a decent, a decent effort, you know, it's nothing fancy, but these are the sessions that you just stack week on week, month on month, and that's what makes the real improvements.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and for me, that sort of gain don't prove approach to things was really relevant, especially at the time because I was out in I moved out to America, uh out in South Carolina to um compete and to try and progress my running uh career out there.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the the environment in America being on a scholarship, there is a certain uh standard that an expectation of me that I would need to meet.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you know, I would need to be able to you know compete at a decent level to make sure that I'm worthy of having the financial backing um by the university, by the college, and so it was necessary at some point to prove my worth to them.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then also I kind of felt, and this is something that I've had you know before, is I would try and prove my worth then to other people on my team.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm the new person in the team, uh, I want to show them that I'm worthy of being on the team and you know, maybe um be kind of an exciting addition to it, and and to establish myself as kind of one of the fastest runners there.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: The issue with that is um, you know, it's not just on the race day that I would like prove myself, it would also be maybe competing in sessions and pushing too hard.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And this kind of proving mentality, it's almost the same as you know, you've got a bank account, you've got an investment account, and instead of you know keeping keeping like investing the money in um consistently, you start withdrawing and you start taking the money out and you basically biting off a little bit more than you can chew.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and after a while, you've kind of you might have overtrained or you might have tried like a bit too hard here and there, and you end up being a bit burnt out.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of want to go through in this um shorter episode just about the mentality of proving ourselves and why we shouldn't prove ourselves to um to anyone, really, um, and what kind of mentality shifts, what approaches we can make um to maybe undo that that firm grip of always trying to prove our worth.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first thing is um it's useful, it might have been useful in the past to prove ourselves because it might have been you know given us status or renown from others.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and like I said, you know, it provides a sense of worthiness and that literal just you know approval from others might be able to you know get us a good job, a good uh you know, test result.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: We might have you know rankings, there might be obvious kind of comparisons with others, and it might have given us popularity at school, or it might have given us a place on a team in sport, anything like that.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: There are lots of places and lots of kind of experiences in life where having approval from others could have benefited us in some way.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you're listening to this and there is, let's say, your fitness journey, um, which is very personal to you, and I mean any sort of journey that you're on in your life is completely personal to you, then it might be worth questioning if we can approach our fitness journeys from a different kind of perspective of um gaining and not necessarily kind of proving.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: The main thing that I've had, which has been the most um the most paradigm shifting experience is of course injuries, and the main thing that injuries provide is they give a completely different way of training and approaching things.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: That the comparison isn't actually readily available because the rehab that you're doing, the exercises that you're doing, and the training that you're doing to getting back is so so different to anyone else.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you're not doing the main the main training or the competing, and so you are then forced to just do stuff, um, just do do your own thing, pretty much.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the that's the first thing I'd like to touch upon is you've got to do what's best for you, and this might be you know, you might be focused on getting stronger and lifting weights, but you might be focusing on doing it in a slightly slightly wrong way, being that you might want to get really strong, but what you actually need is to be a little bit more mobile, let's say, or you want to move in a certain way.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you are having injuries, you might not benefit from just doing classes and doing strength sessions.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to do something that's bespoke to you, and it's things that Guy and I have spoken on um episodes in the past about why personal training and why bespoke plans and programs is so important, and what you get out of having that that personalised aspect of it.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it's yeah, it's trusting and doing what's what's best for you, and you can take inspiration from other people, you can always take um inspiration from different types of workouts, different fun workouts, and have freedom to explore that.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's always worth taking stock and having a look at, especially if you've got particular and specific um you know kind of goals or aspirations that you want to you want to do, or you know, different values in lot your life that you want to live by, you kind of want to be in alignment with those with your training.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: So worth always questioning and evaluating, having a look at the way that you train, the way that you eat, and all of the rest of it, and just questioning if you are doing what's best for you, or if you're not, maybe unpicking and asking yourself maybe questions why you might be following someone else's plan, or you might be doing something because someone else said for you to do it.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the that is the first thing is is really doing finding out what's best for you, finding out how you work best, and um maybe speaking to a professional to get a streamlined program for for yourself.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing that I've been thinking about with proving outside of proving your worth to other people, is proving what you can do in a session or on a run um because you think you'll lose it.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So it's prove it because you think you'll lose it.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is a classic example of you go out on a random Thursday and you've got a maybe a race or a harder session at the weekend, and you're supposed to be going out on an easy run.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: You go out for your easy run, and a couple of I was actually having a chat with um a lad, um a mate, uh it was actually during a pub crawl last night.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a classic conversation obviously comes up, but he said, Yeah, you know, I on a on a Thursday I'll go out for a run and 3k in to my 5k easy run.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm feeling so good, I'm feeling so good, and I just want to turn on the afterburners, I just want to absolutely crush it, and I just go for it.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is boring, I'm feeling great.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Why not just prove and see what I can do and really hammer it?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the interesting thing about that is, you know, let's say that you are following a training program and that you are needing to maybe do a harder session on the Friday or the Saturday, is it then that source of inspiration and you wanting to prove how quick you are to prove your fitness at that time, that's then going to negatively impact the long term and actually the short term of the session on the next day.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, and I say this is because you think you'll lose it, and this is the you'll either it's either losing the ability to do it, which is you know, trusting that you are still able to, you know, turn on the afterburners when you need to, but it's also approving it because you think you'll lose the motivation.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you are someone that uh might rely more on uh sparks of motivation and inspiration for your training, then when that comes about, you want to make the most of it, and you'll think that you know the next day you might not have this finite source of inspiration, and so you want to you want to use it as much as possible, uh, and that actually might be the reality of training with an idea of gaining fitness and strength and mobility or whatever you want to do rather than proving it, is you might have a really unfortunate series of events, which is on the days where you're supposed to be taking it easy, you're very highly motivated, and then on the days where it's really you know, you need to put in the effort and do the harder sessions, then you're demotivated, and sometimes it might just be a case of having discipline both ways, and using more discipline than you feel is kind of um than you feel you've got, or you feel is necessary.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So on the days where it's easy days and you're supposed to be kind of just like maybe steady state stuff, or um, you know, you're not trying to hit PBs, that sort of stuff, it is having the discipline of of restraint and not going all out, and then on the days where you do need to put in the effort, you're gonna have to have the discipline of doing more and actually like actually going for it.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes it might just be really unfortunate, and you just might have a really untimely string of events of motivation swings, uh, but the main thing during that whole process if you is you've got to align your short-term impulses with your long-term goals, and this comes down to awareness in the moment, um, uh something I bang on about all the time, but whenever I think or start to go through the the motions of a certain concept or a certain application to to training, it always comes back to awareness and understanding at the time doing what's best for you and not necessarily what what you want to do.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it is having a practice where on those easy days you are sticking to that easy level, right?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going hard just because of something online, like just because you post it on Strava, and we'll get onto we'll get onto the kind of the social media approval because that's probably something which is massively um massively probably coming at odds against this whole gain don't prove concept, and so it's not doing it for the for the the the social approval, and it's having that awareness in the moment, having a practice where you can align the short-term impulses with the long-term goals, and maybe having a breathing practice.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a couple of things that I do, which before every set, I will shut my eyes, I'll take three deep breaths, and on the final breath, I will exhale, and that will set me for for the set coming up, and that will allow me to have the right intention, either the right focus or the right intensity, exactly what I need out of that session.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you can judge this as well by planning the sessions beforehand if you've got a coach or if you do it yourself, and having uh specific effort levels for the intensity of the session.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're not familiar, there is a concept called RPE, rate of perceived exertion, and it is just a way to measure how much effort you are putting into a set and to measure the intensity of the lift or of the run or of whatever activity you're doing.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, rate of perceived exertion, you might have it on a scale of one to five, one being you know, pretty easy.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: This could be like heart rate zones.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: So like zone one is pretty easy recovery, zone two is like a conversational pace, and zone three is that like tempo getting to comfortably hard.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um zone four is getting up to being pretty difficult, but not all out, and then zone five, five out of five is like yeah, you're you're blasting it, you're in that anaerobic, anaerobic level.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's like one to five.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: You could also have it just one to ten, which is it's just gonna be the same, right?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it's but it's doubled.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can there is a scale of RPE, which is it's not necessarily one to twenty, but it's more six to twenty, and it's more a uh it's more representative of heart rate, your heart rate divided by ten, right?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: So six out of twenty would be literally like resting, um, RPE of six, it's like sixty beats per minute.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say your resting heart rate is about sixty, and that's just like you know, super super chill, you're not really doing anything.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then let's say you've got your zone two might be a 14 out of 20, you know, conversational pace RPE might be 14 out of 20, and that's about 140 beats per minute, something like that.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, whatever RPE scale you want to go off, make sure that the way that you design your training is that you are having an adequate amount of intensity to get the adaptations that you want out of the session, but also making sure that the intensity isn't too high that you're not recovering from it in the long term, so having a mixture of you know easier days and harder days, and so that is going into it, having working off effort and gaining that way, and just keep investing with the effort that you're putting in rather than going at 10 out of 10 effort every single time and trying to PB every session.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you are feeling good and you end up PBing on a you know an 8 out of 10 effort, then fantastic.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, the intensity might require that you are going pretty much close to better than you've ever done done before.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: So don't let it restrict you from doing as well as you can.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it is important that you stick to roughly that that effort level so that you can get the most out of whatever you're training for.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that is yeah, that is sticking to the plan and also you know, allocating rest periods into your training.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've I've had a lot of experiences of mainly it's overtraining, but not even realizing maybe that I'm overtraining.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's more so that for me, my mind might be a lot stronger than my body, or I've not uh I've underestimated how long it takes for uh the joints and the tendons to to load up when my aerobic fitness is a lot more you know quickly improved.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the making sure that you are doing what's best, not what's most, and trusting that less is more a lot of the time.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, making sure that you are doing enough training so that you are going to get the adaptations that you need.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is the classic, classic paradox of people taking advice is that it if you maybe people that need to take the advice to train more, um take the opposite advice, they'll see something that says, Oh, yeah, you should probably have a rest day, and they'll be like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll take a rest day.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: When actually they've already just had three rest days and they're you know not eating and sleeping right and the rest of it, and then you've got people that their strong suit is pushing harder, and that comes naturally to them, and so they look at the whole kind of grind mentality and training more, and they see that information and that advice, and they'll go and take that advice.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, rule of thumb is a lot of the times the advice that you take is probably the opposite of what you feel you should, and just questioning exactly you know what is best for you in the moment and try and zoom out long-term horizons, think a little bit further into the future, and afford yourself more time so that you can allow yourself to gain and invest and allow things to compound, just like in investments, you know, you over a longer period of time you accumulate more investments if you were to just deposit something every month, and then as long as we are net positive returns over a few years, that will then exponentially go up.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, afford yourself a bit of a longer time horizon and um and just focus on gaining and and not proving.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the next bit is kind of what I mentioned about social media and the presence online and having a um you know, maybe uh an image that you want to present online, and you see a lot of people now with putting content out and they'll get lots of money from it, right?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: They'll you know, on Instagram and wherever else, YouTube and stuff like content creation, uh influencers will be making a lot of money from um you know from whatever they're whatever they're doing.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are, let's say, you're a running influencer, and you are not able to to run, but you've made your whole following by by running and your let's say your performances, then you know how are you going to be able to communicate that sense of worth and that sense of value to your audience?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but but a lot of us we're not run fluencers, we're not people that are going to be posting loads on social media, but we might fall into the trap of it on some.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: something like Strava or something in like in group sessions or even if you see someone in the street that is also going on a run and you might want to beat them.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: But for you, you have to do your easy run.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: So don't go and beat them because you're not proof you're not also you're not proving anything, right?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: In like what you what are you what are you really proving?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: They could be having something completely different.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: They could just be coming back from injury or they could be doing whatever.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we've all got completely different situations, completely different timelines, different goals.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's very, very difficult.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually completely impossible to directly compare over um more quality measures of success and all of the variables that are personal to our lives.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: But we do we might find and I have fallen prey to this and I'll need to I always need to check myself when I'm posting online and posting on Strava my training making sure that I am not doing something that I'm trying you know training more than I need to or just for the sake of a nice Strava graph or consistency or something like that.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the thing that I like to call the Strava thought experiment and this is basically saying you know if you set everything to private for a period of time how would your training change and are you doing actually what's best for you?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you weren't able to tell anyone if you weren't able to show anyone what you've been doing if no one could comment or give you kudos or give you whatever on all the training that you're doing how would that train change the way that you're you're doing it and for for those that might struggle to get out of the out of the loop of um of posting for for others approval on even like a small a small scale it's a really good thing a really good little thought experiment to do and you might find that actually you probably take a rest day or a rest week or or something or even just you know go and chill out for a little bit or maybe on the flip side you might realize that you do get quite a lot of positive stuff from posting online and having people holding you accountable for your training so on the flip side it can reveal exactly the positives of having that sort of social approval.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there is you know there is a reason why we want to prove ourselves and as with anything that uh anything that is useful proving yourselves at some point has been beneficial to us um in society or whatever.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: So Strava thought experiment what would you do if everything was private and you couldn't post anything and no one could see what your training was and how would that change um how would that change how you approach all of your your fitness journey so that is I think I'm gonna leave it there a nice short maybe thought provoking little episode on gain don't prove so gain fitness and strength don't prove it just keep building keep investing don't withdraw all your funds and all of your efforts you've got to trust that less is more sometimes and there is no way that you can compare to anyone else in every single aspect of your life combined and so you've got to do what's best for you and what's best and not what's most as always let me know let us know if you enjoy these sort of you know maybe this type of format where I deep dive into a certain concept like this is also you know from my experience I don't I don't assume that everyone is going to agree um with what I've saying but it has proved very value valuable to me in uh in my life in the last couple of years um to really do what's do what's best for me.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: So um thank you for listening and I hope you have a lovely rest of your day