“Should I Be Worried?”

Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? —Matthew 6:27

“Should I be worried?”

I hear these words every now and again from athletes I coach. Almost always the question comes up in the context of some problem that has occurred in the athlete’s training. It might be leg cramps that ruin a third straight long run, or an untimely recurrence of knee pain, or an unexpected plateau in fitness following a period of steady progress. Whatever the problem, I can feel the question coming during my weekly check-in with the athlete, and when it does come, my answer is always the same: “No, you should not be worried.”

That’s the short answer. The longer answer is that there is simply no such thing as a situation in which any athlete should be worried. There are certainly situations in which it is natural to feel worried, and there are some situations in which it’s damn hard not worry. But I would never recommend that an athlete worry because I happen to know that worry is completely counterproductive and in many cases poses a bigger threat to the athlete’s goals than whatever it is they’re worried about. Don’t believe me? Look at the research:

A 2013 study appearing in NeuroImmunoModulation measured psychological stress levels and immune function in a group of nineteen runners training for the fifty-six-mile Comrades Marathon. Based on their findings, the authors concluded that “recreational marathon runners with higher levels of psychological stress may be more at risk for the immune alterations that are common during periods of prolonged physical training,” placing them at higher risk of getting sick or injured or becoming overtrained.

A 2015 study by Chinese researchers found that runners with higher stress levels before a marathon ran slower times.

A 2021 study led by Charles Urwin of Deaken University in Australia found that anxiety levels before an ultramarathon strongly predicted gastrointestinal distress during the ultramarathon.

And in a 2022 study that looked at the relationship between anxiety and recovery in a group of forty-one injured runners, the authors concluded, “High anxiety may identify runners who will experience a longer recovery process, health-related functional disruptions, and less optimization of gait biomechanics during rehabilitation after a lower extremity injury.”

In summary, worrying about a problem makes it worse for the athlete in every conceivable way. As normal as it may be to worry in certain types of situations, it is never helpful. Nor is it ever necessary to worry. All it takes is one athlete who doesn’t worry in a situation where everyone else does to prove that a problem can be recognized and addressed without interference from negative emotions—and we don’t have to look very far to find that one athlete.

As I write these words, I am eight days out from a 100-mile ultramarathon and I have a lower leg injury that has rendered me unable to run for the past twelve days. I’m chagrined that the injury occurred and angry with myself for mismanaging it initially, but I’m not worried about the next eight days. Instead of worrying, I’m acting, doing everything I can to recover and rehabilitate, from cross-training to following my PT’s corrective exercise protocol. Instead of allowing my circumstances to govern my emotions and hoping for a full recovery, I’m actively managing my emotions in a way that’s helpful to me by accepting that my leg will likely still hurt on race day and bracing for its potential impact on my performance.

Worry is nothing more than a weak attempt to control what cannot be controlled. You’ve planned a picnic for Saturday and the forecast calls for a fifty percent chance of rain, so you worry that it will rain and your picnic will be ruined. Irrational! It will either rain on Saturday or it won’t regardless of whether you worry. But this analogy only goes so far, because although worrying about rain does not increase the likelihood of rain, worrying about an injury or a race outcome will increase the likelihood of a longer recovery or a poor outcome.

Rejecting worry is not the same thing as denying the problem. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. The less energy athletes put into worrying about their problems, the more they put into solving them by focusing on relevant factors under their control. This was shown in a 2020 study by Sandra Llera of Towson University and Michelle Newman of Penn State, who reported that worry impaired the problem-solving process in a group of 185 psychology students.

Say what you want about me, but I always practice what I preach. I preach worry-free problem solving to my athletes and I practice worry-free problem-solving as an athlete myself. Yesterday a Dream Runner who’s been here several weeks and saw me crushing epic runs before my injury and now sees me walking with a pronounced limp told me, “You sure seem to be taking this well. I’d be freaking out.” I told her she should work on that.

Should this problem have my attention?

Yes.

Should I take active measures to fix the problem?

Yes.

Should I focus on what I can control and let go of what I can’t?

Yes.

Should I be worried?

Never.