Slow is smooth, smooth is fast
Or the importance of intention in goal-setting with Peter
What do you do when you’ve achieved your goal?
It’s a question I’ve struggled with, and, sometimes, the thought of it bothered me so much I would self-sabotage before I even got to seeing it through.
Having a sense of purpose or something to work towards is a massive part of getting up every day and doing the thing, and when you no longer have the thing to work towards, it can be tough to keep on going.
If you haven’t found your vocation yet, then establishing another goal from an idea of what you would like to achieve or attain is the step I’d recommend most people take.
And for Peter, the pivot was to take him from his most athletic looking shape yet into his most athletic full stop.
In this week’s Fitness & Thinking Fridays, among other things, we discuss how Peter went from 7:00/km to well under 5:00/km, asking for help, and how to pick the right coach for you.
On your marks…
Jack: what’s something that you've noticed that’s different now than to when we started?
Peter: I think it's that transition from having to do it to wanting to do it; whenever we have a goal, there are always going to be elements of achieving that goal that we want to do and don't want to do.
Having come out of that first block, being very into the weights side of things, I wasn't expecting to have found the enjoyment and the love for running that I have now – to come out the other side of that half marathon and go, you know what, let’s just go for a casual 10, 15K run on the weekend! If you'd have said that to me at the start of this block: “yeah, the weekend after you go out and do a steady 10, 15K just to keep the legs moving, I would have said, “you're a madman”, you know, “what are you talking about?!”
And now I find it's almost like a craving to go out and do that and just enjoy doing it because I get to do it and can do it and want to do it. Not because I'm training for anything specific, not because I've got a particular goal, but because putting one foot in front of the other is just enjoyment now more than anything.
J: And the number of people that will be shouting “run, Forrest, run” at you round Nottingham, I imagine is a sizeable number!
Talk to me about struggles in this block, if you've had them, maybe versus struggles in the previous block. Did they change as the training changed?
P: In this block in particular, the real struggle and change was coming to terms with feeling like you're going to go backwards to get better: with the weightlifting and the body fat loss goals I always felt like I was moving forwards.
The scales were changing in a positive direction; the weights I was lifting in the gym were increasing, and it was all positive, right? The right numbers were always going up and the wrong numbers were always coming back down. And that was always great.
P: With the running, you know, when we first sat down and had that conversation about it and you were saying, “I need you to run in Zone 2 and that might even require you to walk”, that was just a foreign concept to me, right?
Trying to get my head around, that I've got to go slow to go fast. Like how, how does that work? Like why that? Surely I just go out there and leave it all out there on every run? And, then, as you explained to me, it's not about setting PBs [personal bests] on every run… and that's what I've really come to terms with now, but didn't four or five weeks ago.
If your goal is to increase muscle, chances are you'll be lifting similar weights session to session or, ideally, increasing it, but with something like running, it can just vary so much. You know, if you add a little bit of elevation or the weather conditions change a little bit, your times can be minutes apart and it can be quite demoralising until you realise and accept that that is very much part of the process. The 10k one weekend might not be the same as the 10k the next weekend because one's an interval session rather than an easy run to recover. And it was a real mindset change for me in terms of how I viewed the training and the intention behind the training.
When you look back at the evidence now, it's clear that it worked. It's clear that it was the right thing to do. But at the time it was a real mental hurdle. And I think it's the getting over the fact that yeah, cars might be driving past you running at the pace of a snail, but no one actually cares! You know, now I go out and do a 10K run for an easy zone two run. And I'm doing that at a sub-six minute pace now. But when we look right back to the start of that training block, you're talking seven minutes plus pace: what? a brisk walk? really a walking pace jog.
J: For sure, when you got the purpose of each session, the splits just rocketed. At first, it was: I'm going to do the distance. And then as you got into the training, it was more, no, I look forward to this session. Oh, I'm going to do this session with my mate. And you're planning things within the session to do – you were almost gamifying each session. It's not something that you have to do. It's something that you get to do. And every time I read your comments, it seemed that you found something extra to the guidelines of this speed at this perceived effort for this distance. These are guidelines. How you approach that is going to be very personal.
P: I think for me as well, a lot of it was there's no sugar coating it: if you're going out for a 20k run, it's a long way, and you're going to be out there for a long time. Got to make it interesting.
And what I started to do was, oh, I've not been to that part of the city for a little while, I wonder what's changed. I'll go run around it, or oh, you know, it's a lovely day, there'll be loads of people out in the park enjoying the sunshine. I'll go for a run and I'll sort of feed off the perceived company of all of those other people around me. Whilst you're not engaging with those people, you're surrounded by them. And there's almost a social element to it. And you're sort of looking around and you sort of just taking it all in, particularly on those slower runs where it's not as stimulating, right?
Because you're not pushing yourself as much. Boredom is the wrong word, but it's that lack of engagement. So when you make it more interesting: Oh, what wildlife can I see today? Or if I run this way, then there's more chance of seeing the woodpeckers instead of the sparrows or whatever, or run around the local deer park and see what's going on there.
Just enjoying the run around the lake and the cool breeze and whatever it is, right? Just use those moments to take it all in and be present. And there were often times where I would just take my headphones out and enjoy the moment. Being there, in that moment, and it just so happens I was going a little bit faster than I would if I was doing that as a walk.
And that's the way I started looking at it; I love going out for my walks. This is the same thing. A long, easy run is the same thing. You're just going a little bit quicker. So enjoy it in the same way. Take the headphones out, be present in life, enjoy those moments away from the workstation or whatever it is and just take it all in.
J: Love that. What were you aware of, before we started working together, that was stopping you from signing up, do you think? And what would you now say to you then?
P: I think the one, if I'm brutally honest with myself, more than anything, that held me back from signing up initially was: am I prepared to put the effort in? I know, I think I want to achieve these goals, but am I actually prepared for someone to A) demand the effort from me and B) hold me to account?
If I don't put the effort in and have someone who's really going to be the driving force behind that, because, listen, you can go on YouTube and Google and you can research and you can find a sketchy training plan on Reddit or whatever, right? The information is out there. But it's overwhelming. Also having someone who brings all of those disparate pieces of information together into something that just fundamentally works, right?
You can go to a gym and you can just lift weights week after week after week and not see progress because you can't. You're just not approaching it in the right way, whether that's not implementing progressive overloads, whether it's not understanding when to hammer it down versus take your foot off the gas for a week to let your body recover.
Understanding the combination of the nutrition with the exercise, I think, is the big one for me in particular. It's the accumulation of knowledge that you get from working with someone that you're never going to get without it. Assuming that that person is the right person for you, right? The other thing that really held me back was I didn't know the kind of coach that I needed. I kind of knew what I wanted to achieve. But I didn't really know exactly how to get there. But I also didn't know the kind of coach that I needed to get me there. I always knew what I was doing in the gym, but I was trying to lose weight, and the weight was never going down.
One of the big factors was that nutrition and understanding the importance that had in that journey, and how to do that properly. Not just like, oh, I'll cut 600 calories out of my daily diet. Like it's just unsustainable. But that is the kind of way I would have thought about it.
I think it was a lack of really understanding what a coach brings and offers, but also just not understanding who the right person to work with was more than anything, I guess, is the way that I'd summarise it.
J: Okay, would you have advice for someone looking for the who? How do you know who the who is?
P: I think it's just asking the question, right? The initial conversation we had was part of that discovery process. It was very much a two-way conversation, it was very much a let's figure out if this is going to work for both of us. And I think something I really appreciated was I came away from that session with full confidence that it was the right thing because of that conversation that we had.
But when I initially approached you about it, I think A) I was just very clear on what I was trying to do and achieve. And B) I was fully prepared for you to turn around and be like, that's not really the kind of work I do. And just having to overcome that hurdle of the only way I'm going to find out is by asking the question and being transparent about what I'm trying to, trying to achieve and understanding that not every coach out there is going to be the right coach.
Some coaches prefer to focus on powerlifting or just running or just nutrition and lifestyle, whatever it is, right? So, do your research, look at social media as, I think, that is an incredibly powerful tool now. I think most coaches, obviously including yourself, put their self out there publicly in that social media domain; that is an incredibly powerful tool for figuring out the type of coach someone is, but then just not being afraid to, to ask the question, as long as you're clear on what you want to achieve, as I say, for me, that was losing an amount of weight.
Further reading
Not sure what “Zone 2” is? Check out my 5-minute breakdown here:
There’s rarely a perfect time to start turning your ideas into realities. If you want to achieve a goal or two like Pete did but you’re not sure where to start, you can simply reply to this newsletter and we can go from there!
Otherwise, much love and I’ll see yas in the next one
Jack x