Have you seen this commercial?
I love it, it's for Asics, the shoe company. The series is called "Better Your Best". It took me a couple of times watching it to realize the woman was racing herself. It is an excellent metaphor for the training process and to a great extent endurance sports in general (more on that in a moment).
After the last couple of classes (the first ones where we calibrated the trainers), I noticed everyone coming up to the front and looking at all the numbers. There is an innate human need to know "how do I stack up". Someone might want to point that out to the school board, but that is another topic for another day.
The point is the numbers, your numbers, are specific to you. In and of themselves they don't mean much. A larger rider will generally produce higher watts, they have to, they are moving a greater mass. They also have more pure muscle mass, longer leverage arms (bones).
Someone who is a strong sprinter will have higher watts, this has more to do with their innate physiology Andre Griepel (aka The Gorilla) can push 1800 watts in a sprint.
Someone who has trained longer will, likely, have higher watts, they have been training this in over a longer time.
The watts you produce today are simply an indication of where you are today. And if the only factor in race performance was watts, they would just line up a bunch of guys on trainers see who put out the biggest watts and save all the bother of cars, timing chips, race officials, travel etc and give him the Yellow Jersey and the Tour de France wouldn’t be much of a TV spectacle.
Also the average watts, in most of our workouts, mean very little as we are all over the place in terms of effort levels. So one workout is not really comparable to another and the average is truly meaningless (so don’t worry about it).
If you are, however, looking for a benchmark so you can track progress. Use one of the longer big ring sets to see where your watts are. Since these are longer, steadier efforts you can get a better sense of where you are now. Then watch, over time, to see if the numbers go up.
Also make a note of where your heart rate is relative to watts and link that to "how do I feel". This is that "inner feedback loop" we are always talking about. Generally speaking, as you become more trained the HR will not change much, but the watts you produce at the same relative HR will go up. Heart rate is a very, very personal number, there is no correlation from one athlete to another.
Try to avoid comparing your watts to someone else in the class. As mentioned before there are a whole host of reasons why your numbers are not comparable to others. Unless you are competing at an elite level and start looking at watts per kilogram can really make a meaningful comparison (and even then it gets complicated).
Better yet do like the woman in the commercial and "Better Your Best". By getting a sense of "where am I now", you can see your progress. And nothing gets you pumped to do your next session, like measurable progress.
A great example of letting go of comparing yourself to others is my younger brother. He learned years ago the fine art of benchmarking purely for himself.
Al was Canadian 800 metre champion in the late 70s. In fact he was the 1st Canadian to meet the Olympic standard for that race in many years. He would have gone to the Olympics in Moscow had we not boycotted*. He still runs, clearly not at the level he did in his 20s and not really competitively, just for fun. I often wondered how he could still enjoy an activity that he wasn't getting better at, especially given that he raced at an elite level.
Every year in the late fall he does a route that he uses as a test. That is his benchmark for the coming year. If he improves over that benchmark, whatever it is, he is satisfied with the year. I truly hope someday I gain that same mature perspective!
*(later that same summer, around the time he would have been racing at the Olympics he injured his Achilles Tendon on a training run. As a result missed his one and only chance to go to the Olympic Games, don't use sport for diplomatic pressure, you only hurt the athletes)
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Practice Makes Perfect?
We have all heard this and probably so often and for so long that we don't even question it.
But does practice make perfect? The answer is... kind of.
The more correct way of thinking is that Perfect Practice makes Perfect. The process of learning a new skill can be illustrated in a four phase process. For the purpose of this piece I am using cycling as the reference point, but the process is equally applicable to running, swimming, skiing, golf you name it.
The sequence starts with Unconscious Incompetence – We don’t know what we don’t know Then moves to phase 2
Conscious Incompetence – We know what we don’t know. We are getting feedback from the pedals telling us where we have rough spots in our pedal stroke, but we don’t quite have the skills yet to fix it. The coaches job, at this point, is to give verbal cues to help direct you to a different movement pattern, then with perfect practice you move to phase 3.
Conscious Competence – We know what we are doing, but we still have to really pay attention for the skill to work properly. The new skill is something we have to deliberately do, versus something that just flows from us. Then with more perfect practice you move to phase 4
Unconscious Competence– We know what we are doing on such a deep level we don’t even think about it, it just happens*
You will notice that I have used the term perfect practice more than once.
What does that mean? Perfect Practice is practice with a purpose. It is being mindful of what we are doing or attempting to do.
It is the polar opposite to “mindless miles”. I define “mindless miles” as the guy at the gym on the treadmill reading a book. He is not learning anything about his stride pattern. He isn’t developing his inner feedback loop. He simply has no connection to his body whatsoever. And really why are we doing any of this if not to experience the physical pleasure of movement? (but I digress).
Perfect practice does not mean that we have to be executing the new skill or movement pattern perfectly, that will come with time. Perfect practice is paying attention what the proper movement feels like, how you feel or what you are thinking about when your pedal stroke starts to smooth out. It is the active attention to the task at hand the speeds the process of getting from Phase 1 to Phase 2.
The more we actively pay attention to what we are doing the faster we move through the learning phases and the more deeply ingrained proper techniques become. The distinction between simple practice and perfect practice is important.
If you are simply practicing “what comes naturally” you may actually be reinforcing an incorrect movement pattern. In this instance your hours of practice are just making you better at a bad habit. On this note it is really important to recognize that new skills or changes in habitual movement patterns ALWAYS feel wrong and unnatural. Again this is where perfect practice (and a bit of faith) is so critical.
* A couple of interesting additional points:
The true superstars in most sports don't make great coaches. Often because they pretty much live in Phase 4. Don't get me wrong they have worked really hard and LOVE to practice. But things that they generally can't put their finger on what it is they are doing. Many years ago I saw a video with tennis great Bjorn Borg talking about tennis skills. You could see it in his eyes that he really couldn't explain what it was that he did. My guess (totally my opinion based on nothing other than a hunch) is at a fundamental level he probably has no clue why the rest of us find it so hard to strike a tennis ball correctly. This is the crux of the issue with the truly great. They don't have a frame of reference to understand most athletes struggles with something they find so basic. Look at one of the all time great coaches Phil Jackson. He was a journey man NBA player, worked crazy hard, learned the game inside out because he had to. He became one of the all time great coaches.
The other point was what happens after phase 4. In many cases a degree of complacency sets in and athletes slip back into Phase 1. Some small errors have crept into their movement patterns, that now throw everything out of whack. Think how many times Tiger Woods has rebuilt his swing. Now when you are at that level Phase 1 is still a pretty high level! But up until very recently every time when Woods went back to the drawing board he took a step back, in terms of performance only to emerge at a quantum level jump to higher performance.
But does practice make perfect? The answer is... kind of.
The more correct way of thinking is that Perfect Practice makes Perfect. The process of learning a new skill can be illustrated in a four phase process. For the purpose of this piece I am using cycling as the reference point, but the process is equally applicable to running, swimming, skiing, golf you name it.
The sequence starts with Unconscious Incompetence – We don’t know what we don’t know Then moves to phase 2
Conscious Incompetence – We know what we don’t know. We are getting feedback from the pedals telling us where we have rough spots in our pedal stroke, but we don’t quite have the skills yet to fix it. The coaches job, at this point, is to give verbal cues to help direct you to a different movement pattern, then with perfect practice you move to phase 3.
Conscious Competence – We know what we are doing, but we still have to really pay attention for the skill to work properly. The new skill is something we have to deliberately do, versus something that just flows from us. Then with more perfect practice you move to phase 4
Unconscious Competence– We know what we are doing on such a deep level we don’t even think about it, it just happens*
You will notice that I have used the term perfect practice more than once.
What does that mean? Perfect Practice is practice with a purpose. It is being mindful of what we are doing or attempting to do.
It is the polar opposite to “mindless miles”. I define “mindless miles” as the guy at the gym on the treadmill reading a book. He is not learning anything about his stride pattern. He isn’t developing his inner feedback loop. He simply has no connection to his body whatsoever. And really why are we doing any of this if not to experience the physical pleasure of movement? (but I digress).
Perfect practice does not mean that we have to be executing the new skill or movement pattern perfectly, that will come with time. Perfect practice is paying attention what the proper movement feels like, how you feel or what you are thinking about when your pedal stroke starts to smooth out. It is the active attention to the task at hand the speeds the process of getting from Phase 1 to Phase 2.
The more we actively pay attention to what we are doing the faster we move through the learning phases and the more deeply ingrained proper techniques become. The distinction between simple practice and perfect practice is important.
If you are simply practicing “what comes naturally” you may actually be reinforcing an incorrect movement pattern. In this instance your hours of practice are just making you better at a bad habit. On this note it is really important to recognize that new skills or changes in habitual movement patterns ALWAYS feel wrong and unnatural. Again this is where perfect practice (and a bit of faith) is so critical.
* A couple of interesting additional points:
The true superstars in most sports don't make great coaches. Often because they pretty much live in Phase 4. Don't get me wrong they have worked really hard and LOVE to practice. But things that they generally can't put their finger on what it is they are doing. Many years ago I saw a video with tennis great Bjorn Borg talking about tennis skills. You could see it in his eyes that he really couldn't explain what it was that he did. My guess (totally my opinion based on nothing other than a hunch) is at a fundamental level he probably has no clue why the rest of us find it so hard to strike a tennis ball correctly. This is the crux of the issue with the truly great. They don't have a frame of reference to understand most athletes struggles with something they find so basic. Look at one of the all time great coaches Phil Jackson. He was a journey man NBA player, worked crazy hard, learned the game inside out because he had to. He became one of the all time great coaches.
The other point was what happens after phase 4. In many cases a degree of complacency sets in and athletes slip back into Phase 1. Some small errors have crept into their movement patterns, that now throw everything out of whack. Think how many times Tiger Woods has rebuilt his swing. Now when you are at that level Phase 1 is still a pretty high level! But up until very recently every time when Woods went back to the drawing board he took a step back, in terms of performance only to emerge at a quantum level jump to higher performance.
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