If you want to quickly climb a flight of stairs, you could try taking two or three steps at a time. On a good day, you’ll reach the top a little faster. On a bad day, you’ll catch the edge of a step and end up sprawled across the staircase.
Taking one step at a time is less exciting, but it is reliable. Barring a catastrophe, you’ll probably reach the top.
Pursuing a big goal in endurance sport isn’t much different.
The more beginners I work with, the more convinced I become that coaching begins with accepting reality. There is always an athlete standing in front of you with a vision of where they want to go, but their current capabilities often sit a long way from that destination. The problem is pretending they are already somewhere they aren’t.
You can’t coach the athlete you hope they’ll become. You have to coach the athlete who is standing in front of you today.
There is a surprising amount of hubris in the endurance world. We celebrate how much we train, how hard we train, and how quickly we want to improve. What receives far less attention is the humility required from both coach and athlete to draw a line in the sand and say, this is where we start.
This week, we’ll explore why the next logical step is almost always the right one so that you don’t bust your teeth out taking three steps at a time.
Goals are exciting and they should be…or else you should find a new goal. But at the beginning of a training program, if the goal is a stretch, you may not look like the version of the person you are trying to become. So we force it to try to become that person without thinking about how it needs to happen.
We add distance because the goal requires distance. We add intensity because fast athletes train fast. We copy the workouts of people who are already where we want to be. From the outside, this can look like ambition and commitment. Sometimes it is. But it can also be an unwillingness to accept our present capabilities.
Have a look at this article from April on training for a result you have not built:
Training for a result you haven't built
·
Apr 27
In a previous article, The Illusion of More, I wrote about how adding volume often feels like progress even when it isn’t. You can check that out below:
Comparison makes this worse. We rarely compare ourselves to someone at the same stage of development. We compare ourselves to the finished product. We see the weekly mileage, the long workouts, and the impressive splits without seeing the years of preparation that made them tolerable.
There is also a simple psychological appeal to doing more. Hard training feels productive and restraint can feel like hesitation. Taking the next logical step may seem too small to matter, while taking three steps at once feels like evidence that we are serious.
As a coach, I have to make the hard sell that starting small does not necessarily mean thinking smaller.
Long-term goals inspire the daily work and athletes naturally want to train full steam ahead for the finish line. Coaches have to train the obstacle standing between the athlete and the finish line.
That means asking a simple question:
What is the current limitation?
Until that question is answered, writing a training plan is little more than guesswork. Today’s limitations determine today’s training. Let’s look at a timely example:
I’ve recently started working with several active-duty Marines returning from injury who need to regain the fitness required for their jobs. In many cases, they’ve spent months away from consistent training. Yet, in typical Marine fashion, the instinct is to pick up exactly where they left off at 20 years old: train hard until you can’t.
The problem is that you aren’t very useful when you can’t train.
In many ways, that mentality is what contributed to them being sidelined in the first place. Most of them still possess enough fitness to scrape by on a PT test, but “good enough” isn’t how they operate. They want to perform at a much higher level.
So instead of chasing a great three-mile run immediately, we have to identify what is actually limiting them today. More often than not, it isn’t motivation. It’s tissue capacity. It’s mechanical fitness. It’s aerobic preparation. Those qualities have to be rebuilt before they can tolerate the kind of training their goals demand.
That means a five-mile run isn’t necessarily the right workout, even if running five miles is ultimately the expectation. In many cases, we’ve started with a run-walk progression and gradually earned the right to run continuously again.
From the outside, that may look like a step backward. It isn’t. It’s the shortest path forward because it addresses the problem that’s actually in front of us rather than the performance we hope to produce months from now.
The next logical step often feels too small. It may be another week of run-walk intervals, another month of easy aerobic work, or another training block focused on basic strength instead of flashy workouts. But those “small” steps are often the very reason bigger steps become possible later.
The fastest way to reach a distant goal is almost always to first solve the problem that’s directly in front of you.
So instead of asking, “What do I need to do to reach my goal?” try asking:
“What do I need to do today to earn the next step?”
That’s not always an easy question to answer on your own. We’re often too close to our own training to objectively identify what’s actually holding us back. Sometimes the most valuable thing a coach provides isn’t motivation or accountability but perspective. They help you identify the next adaptation that matters most, so your energy is spent moving forward instead of simply working harder.
In the end, reaching the top of the staircase is about taking the right step, over and over again, until there aren’t any steps left to climb.
Need someone to help you to the top of the staircase? Elite Edge has a new application HERE for prospective athletes. Let’s get you on YOUR path.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.