Earlier this week I had a passionate chat with good friends; Zacca Newman and Chris Armstrong, hosts of the; ‘Better with Running Podcast’ and acclaimed Run2PB running coaches.
We discuss the tendency for runners to fall prey to ‘binary bias’ or ‘black and white thinking’. We often over-simplify; running, life and the human body, for the ease of understanding. Rather than viewing things as a complex inter-related set of relationships that are ever changing. Shades of grey are hard to sit with, we get uncomfortable with not knowing and being uncertain. We are after the magic pill, that fixes/solves everything and everyone. The human body is more complex than this.
Yes, we all know the pillars to optimizing human performance are a subtle interplay of; physical exercise/ sleep/ recovery/ nutrition and mental well being… but it’s the application of all of the above to the ‘individual’ in front of you, that carries all the conjecture.
When ‘binary bias’ thinking is ‘self serving’ life is all merry. Life is easier to digest, we are improving or getting better, it all makes sense. Where it gets tricky is when your ‘black and white’ thinking about a certain training method is no longer ‘serving you.’ It is hard to be ‘open’ in these moments, to be less attached to a certain method/behaviour that has served you so well in the past.
We finish the chat by talking about a topic all three of us are particularly passionate about:…. The lost art of listening to your body? And the concept that anything that can be objectively seen in numbers is biased as a metric these days in training…Watch aside, lets get better at ‘tuning our internal dials’…’How did you feel across the ground? How was your rhythm? How was your timing? Did you feel strong? Fresh? Springy? Snappy? Sluggish? Fatigued? Tired? Heavy? Sore? Unmotivated? Raring to go? Excited?