Be proud of your work rate
We find it fascinating when we compare athletes’ views or comments about a race or a training session on social media (in public) compared with what we know goes on behind those performances through their training and personal development.
It is a very athletic approach to downplay the effort and work rate athletes have put in to reach their performance levels. Therefore, we often see athletes claiming that they had a good day considering the amount of training they had (or had not) completed. Part of this reasoning may be due to self-preservation. Regardless of the outcome, they can feel that they can do better; claiming that they didn’t have the best preparation and could have done more helps hide the reality that perhaps they achieved their best on that day, which wasn’t good enough.
Part of it may be to scare their rivals into thinking that there may be better form yet to come. Nevertheless, the image is that the athletes have perhaps not trained as hard or as effectively as they could or should have done and achieved the performances they did. Often this is specifically after an athlete did (at least externally) quite well. For example, they may have come top 5 in a race but not won it. Or maybe they had what others would call a “good time” but could have done better.
Regardless of the reason, the statement about how much they had worked is unlikely to be entirely accurate. We recall talking with athletes about their form and how they had put in a great block of consistent training only for them to post on social media that they had not had the perfect lead-up for the event.
The lesson here is twofold. Firstly, do not believe everything you read about athletes and their actions. Often the performance they are getting is based on several weeks, months, or even years’ worth of training to get them to the result they achieved on that race day.
Secondly, recognise and be proud of the amount of work that you are doing. Very few of us have the opportunity to focus solely on our sport. Therefore, we must make do with the time left to do our training. Inevitably no one is training to their absolute maximum: they have real life to get in the way of that afternoon bike ride! Life happens; we have children, work, school, social functions and everything else to disrupt our best plans of becoming full-time athletes.
Nevertheless, everybody is trying to do their best. By publicly downplaying that they are trying their best, athletes do themselves a disservice and permit negative self-talk to creep into their minds. When they come to the challenging moments in a race or training, they’ll find they already have an excuse to use instead of an opportunity to evolve and get stronger.
Therefore we urge all our athletes to be honest with themselves and be proud of their training because it is almost certainly the most they can manage. That way, they can look themselves in the eye and say they did their best on that day, and if they win, great; if they lose, then they can still hold their head high and look forward; anything else is purely a story.
Philip is the founder of Tri Training Harder LLP. He’s a British Triathlon Level 3 coach, and has been coaching for over a decade and is involved with mentoring and developing other coaches.
Philip has have coached athletes to European and World AG wins, elite racing, many Kona qualifications, IRONMAN podiums and AG wins.
Alongside the conventional development through many CPD courses, he has also been fortunate enough to work alongside experts in the fields of Physiotherapy, Strength and Conditioning, Nutrition, Psychology, Biomechanics, Sports Medicine. Putting this knowledge into practice he has worked with thousands of athletes to various degrees, from training camps in Portugal and around Europe, clinics in the UK and online coaching.
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