Only 2 Ways To Do Things: Right or Wrong

The curious go deeper, exploring time, distance and speed;

testing their lungs, legs and spirits, they delight in discovery and revel in hidden depths.

Why you're not getting better at running? Because sometimes we insist on doing things wrong.

Running is more than just a sport: it's a lifestyle, a commitment to changing how you live your life.

You wanna be better at running? Then you have to live a lifestyle that supports that goal; you want to train better, but you don't wanna listen to your coach; you want to stop getting injured, but you don't listen to your body and you don't have any interest in recovery; you want your brain to stop beating you up during races or losing motivation during training, but you don't have time to meditate, journal or perhaps go for a walk without your phone; you want to feel strong in the final stages of a race, but you don't have time for strength work or rehab at home or core stability routines... all that stuff is boring, it's time consuming and not for you; all that stuff is for the professionals; all that stuff is ridiculous and not for you; all that stuff is for the athletes who want to be better.

Are you sure you want to be better at running or do you just like the idea of being faster? Before you tell yourself you're not good enough, before you say "I don't have the right genes", before you tell yourself that fat goes straight to your hips and before you tell yourself you´re just injury prone and this sport isn't for you, ask yourself a few simple and very easy questions:

Am I the problem?

Am I helping or hindering myself?

Do I even want to be better?

Am I willing to put in the work?

Let's begin.

Whoa whoa whoa! Definitely do not get up early; getting up early is for disciplined people that want to be disciplined during the day: let them go for a run; let them start the day with good discipline because that's gonna lead to good training and then we don't want that.

Recovery training? Ha! Not today! Don't bother with any foam rolling, stretch and self-massage; never worry about any of that stuff; that's the kind of stuff that's going to keep you injury free and able to train; you don't want that... get a little injury and that's gonna stop you from training; that way you can't progress your running.

Step three: better to just eat whatever you want and don't be messing around with any good nutritional decisions; again they're going to help to aid recovery, help sleep be better and help your overall training go a little bit better. but we really don't want that... so just eat what you want, eat when you want, and hopefully when you're out running, you'll have an upset stomach and hopefully your recovery won't go very well, and that's another great way to make sure that you don't progress at running.

Step four and you're doing great: don't put any effort into your psychology; working on your psychology would only help to aid your training, which only leads to help in your running; don't be messing around with anything like meditation or thinking that, you know, journaling would be useful for you: that's only gonna aid your training; what you want to do is put zero effort into your psychology at all; in fact, everything you've done so far is absolutely fantastic to make sure that you really hate running, lose motivation towards it, and lose any consistency that you had built at all, which will make sure that you stop progressing and running. 

Step 5: keep doing what you're doing; we're all guilty of doing some of these things, myself included: I'm an Irish Olympian, a 2:09 marathon runner and I don't know how many times I walk past the foam roller, I don't bother stretching, I don't do my rehab, I run too fast, I don't eat the right foods, I don't do my pre-bed routine, I forget to gratitude journal, or I don't make a little list in the morning of what my training plan is for that day... we all do it; there's no excuses, but most of us already know the answer of what we should be doing; and so if you do want to keep going with your "how to not be better at running", keep doing what you're doing; but if you would like to see some changes and perhaps you would like to be better at running, start doing the things you know you should be doing and hold yourself accountable to doing them.

I know you can be better; you know you can be better, but you have to start trying. This has always been about you, it's not about anybody else, it's not genetics, it's not talent: you have everything it takes to be better at running... you just have to start doing the right things. 

Porque puedo