Episode 426: Steve Magness - Win the Inside Game
Steve Magness is a world-renowned expert on performance. He is the author of the new book, Win the Inside Game, and has also authored, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and The Surprising Science of Real Toughness. He is the coauthor of Peak Performance. The Passion Paradox, and the author of The Science of Running. For this episode we dive into the topics covered in his latest book.
Endurance Training Simplified Series
Zach’s Low Carb Endurance Approach Series
LMNT: drinkLMNT.com/HPO
deltaG: deltagketones.com - IG: @deltag.ketones code: BITTER20
Maui Nui Venison: https://mauinuivenison.com
HPO Sponsors: zachbitter.com/hposponsors
Support HPO: zachbitter.com/hpo
Zach’s Coaching: zachbitter.com/coaching
Zach: zachbitter.com - IG: @zachbitter - X: @zbitter - Substack: zachbitter.substack.com - FB: @zbitterendurance - Strava: Zach Bitter - TikTok: @zachbitter - Threads: @zachbitter
Steve: stevemagness.com IG: @stevemagness Tw: @stevemagness FB: facebook.com/stephenmagness
Timestamps:
Episode Transcript:
You know, one of the funny things that I thought about while I was reading it was just the timing of it, because, I mean, it's applicable, I think, with kind of modern society in such a big way. and with you kind of having your foot strongly in like the endurance world, too, it's just kind of like this good, sort of like double community type of thing you have going on with it, where like anyone who's just in there to kind of get some value added from their own running performance, is going to get that. But then you could not be a runner at all. In fact, I think to some degree it should be like required reading for anyone who has an Ax account. Because it's just like the thought process that I think you just catch yourself going through after, just like kind of going through the book essentially is just like, oh, you know what? I'm doing this. And that's probably not productive. And this is why. So it's sort of like tying up some loose ends that I think a lot of us probably intuitively recognize with all the social media and internet access. And just like the broad worldview scope we have with online stuff, that that book really just kind of like puts into perspective. Yeah, I'm glad you caught that because that was the aim. I always see myself living in different worlds. And that's kind of what the book is about as well is like, I love running, I have that community. It's part of who I am. But like we also have this, you know, I don't want to just help runners, you know? And that's where it's like the broad applicability of it is, is aimed at. And I think I hope I hit the moment, too, with the social media and the internet of everything, where it's just kind of I feel like we're at this moment and you and I are old enough to understand this is. When the internet started taking off and you're just like, oh my gosh, what is this? Like, what's going on? Like, what are these chat rooms and things you have to explore? And it kind of changed the world. And you had to be prepared for it. And I think we're at another one of those moments, especially with AI. But, you know, social media restructuring is like, okay, we've got to adjust to this and we haven't done a good job adjusting to it. So like, let's figure it out. Yeah. And that's one thing I wanted to talk to you too about is just like what you think is the the point of the most actionable return with some of this advice, too, because I was thinking about it through that exact same lens you just described, where it's like we're both old enough where when we were in middle school, elementary school, and even high school to to a large degree, we like education. And the goal of it was quite a bit different in my opinion, or at least like what the targets were at that time should probably change, at least in my opinion, fairly dramatically because. You know, pre-Internet, there's a lot of usefulness, I think, in some of the more standard approaches in terms of navigating the world, whereas now I think we've just offloaded, and I think this is going to accelerate in the coming years. A lot of that type of skill set. So what I see now is like, there isn't like I'm trying to think about what is the what is the role of education now. And reading your book makes me think. I think the role of education now is just to instill curiosity or and to some degree, that's what it was supposed to be anyway. But I think that's just way more important now than trying to master any sort of cognitive skill set at an early age. so, yeah, I'm kind of curious because I know, like, I mean, I was a teacher for a few years before going in a different direction and seeing what has changed in those ten or so years or not. I know I think your wife's a teacher, so maybe she's got some perspectives that I've missed out on by not being in that world for the last ten years. like, is this the spot where we have to target? Do we have to kind of go into the spot of like, yeah, we can teach adults to make changes, but really, in order to set the stage properly for meaningful change, we've got to catch young people and get this instilled in their mindset and their approach at a very early age. I think it matters a lot, and I think you're spot on. And we're at this crux of, a point in education where we haven't updated, adapted and, and, you know, gotten ready for the world that we now enter and live in. And I think curiosity is a good word for it. I like to say that education should be about exploration and going broad. Why? Because if we go abroad and we allow kids to dabble and find things they're interested in and understand how to use that interest to go on deep dives on things, what it does is it makes them a more robust individual. And it fuels the underlying ingredients that we know make people successful at things. So the the persistence, the intrinsic motivation, the following your curiosity that eventually might lead into a passion and things like that is at a young age we can kind of instill that and develop that capacity so that, you know, maybe when we're I don't know when elementary school is towards learning about dogs or whales or whatever have you. And obviously most people aren't going to keep that. I'm going to be obsessed with whales. Learn about that. But the skill in the like, curiosity and exploration like that will last. So I think we we have to move from a heavy like Outcome focused of like, this is the skill that we need to teach, and you're gonna master it and we're gonna, you know, give you some tests to understand from that to one that we now understand, which is like with AI and everything else in the world is like the information overflow is there. We can literally kind of get curious about anything and go on a deep dive and understand it, but we need to understand and have the ingredients on how to do that. And I think that's where in the classroom we have to kind of shift and change a little bit. And I would argue that good schools and teachers want to do this, but they're often hamstrung because our kind of like old school mentality is like, how do you get judged as a teacher or student? How well, you know, a kid masters, you know, learning about the American Revolution or whatever, whatever the thing is. Right. And I think if we can free teachers up to expand beyond that, we're going to be in a better spot. Yeah, no doubt. I got really lucky, actually, when I first started teaching, because I graduated mid school year with a social studies certification. So I was like, I wasn't finding a job in December with that degree. And so luckily the school I student taught at had some long term positions for the second half of the year that I could jump into. And one of them was, I think I had like four units of AP psychology and one unit of IB European history. And it was like a couple days into that, I was like, okay, like these kids are either already smarter than me, or if they're not, they will be in short order. So my mindset immediately shifted from like, okay, I need to be some sort of master, like in charge of this, this classroom. And I know more than you and you should listen to me . All right, I need to be able to leverage something I probably have that you haven't learned yet, which is actually how to engage with the content. So when topics and things came up where I was essentially a day smarter than them, at best it was more about just like, yeah, how do we explore this in a way where I'm teaching you how to find this information? Because ultimately that's what you're going to end up needing to do anyway. Once you get beyond, you know, any of my expertise or the expertise that we find in the, you know, the, the curriculum that they sent us for this particular class. And kind of having that experience early was just so useful because then when I went into middle school later on in my teaching career was where it's like the incentive to try to feel like you're in charge and that environment is much higher. I had that background knowledge of like, okay, I think there's a better way to do this. And, you know, that just translated, I think, really well into what, what I hope the education system will, will embrace in the coming years with that sort of a structure. I think you're spot on. And I think what you described is also good coaching. Because like, what is good? What is good coaching? Except, you know, anybody can dictate and demand and say, these are the workouts that you need to do. Exactly. But as we know, as you've experienced, like it's the human component, the getting kids hooked up to go on that journey of like exploring or even adults exploring their potential in a way that they, they feel engaged and then have some, like, autonomy around it where they feel like, hey, I'm not just doing this because Zach or Steve wrote the training schedule, but there's more to it than that. And I think, again, this is what I tried to capture in the book, is that many of these ideas cross-pollinate right where it's like, yeah, we might be talking about running or teaching or whatever, have you, but we might as well be talking about, you know, being a boss for a major company or being a parent and navigating these things and instilling these, these ideas or, or whatever, have you or, you know, alternatively, fighting against the the education system that does kind of constrain us or fighting against in the workplace, the, you know, you are defined by how many widgets you sell kind of outcomes only which kinds of narrows us as well, where we don't kind of develop that intrinsic motivation, that path for exploration, the ability to, you know, handle challenges and navigate them. because we've been kind of siloed and narrowed for so long. Yeah. And that kind of leads me into just another topic that you discussed in the book that I thought was just spot on and worth really thinking about is just this idea of how we present and just live with failure and use it as a tool for growth versus it being something that is destructive to our self-worth. Because that's another thing with online stuff where, you know, you're just one mistake away from getting going viral for all the wrong reasons. And I just think about like, how do we kind of take some of these more like more traditional brick and mortar scenarios where we are able to localize things enough to give people like the comfort and the the low risk opportunities to actually fail without feeling like they're on pins and needles, because if they do it in the wrong place or the wrong time and it gets caught on camera and put up on the internet, they could be like living it down for the rest of their life. I mean, this is it again. I'm gonna reference our age, but like when you and I did stupid stuff in elementary school or middle school or what have you, we got to learn from that based on, like, us doing stupid stuff with our, our friends and our parents or coaches or teachers, like, made sure we realized, hey, like, that's not the right path, like here's why, etc.. It didn't ruin our lives nowadays. Like you do some dumb stuff and it could potentially, like, follow you for the rest of your career and the rest of your trajectory. And I think there's something fundamentally wrong with that, because what it does is it puts us in a place where, like, we have to be so afraid or fearing this failure, messing up, screwing up because it could literally be life defining. And that is a place. What does that do? It instills protection, avoidance and not like exploration, which is what we need to learn and grow. And I think even even if we take it out of doing dumb things, if we take it out of like performing, if I was a, you know, middle school runner or a high school runner nowadays, I think about it often is like I got hooked up on running because, like, I went to a local meet with probably, I don't know, 3 or 4 schools in my area and, you know, one in a mile, right. And in junior high, I remember running, I don't know, like 520 or something in, in eighth grade. And my first meeting won and I'm like, oh, this is pretty good. Like I'm pretty good at this thing nowadays. I could literally, you know, run that, maybe win the meet and then get curious and look up online and I'd be like, Holy crap, I'm so slow compared to not only all these boys over here, but many girls. And that might push me from, like, being like, let's try this running thing to being like, no, I, I'm not very good because we've made the comparison point so astronomically high that like, we don't have time to develop that interest. We're back in the day it was so local where it's like, hey, are you the fastest kid on the block? Are you the fastest kid in your class? That is an attainable goal, being comparing yourself to everybody on the internet or in the world or on whatever rankings is not an attainable goal. And if we know anything from motivation and psychology, it's like we need to see hope and have a future at improving it. Something to like motivates us. And often nowadays it's just too global and we don't have that local. So I think again, the theme of wrestling is okay, we have to make changes and adapt. One of them is we live in a global world and as adults, and also as kids and teens and young adults, we have to wrestle with. We were meant to develop and grow and get these curiosities and passions in a local environment. How do we still allow that to happen? So we don't lose people in a world that pushes us to global society? Yeah. And I mean this actually is another one that translates over to coaching too, because it's like I talk to people all the time where they're getting excited about doing some sort of running thing, and they're kind of early in their journey. And like a lot of the examples that they find online are going to be examples like you describe, if people are doing insane relative to what they're ready for, training protocols. And, it's having these big accomplishments and they look like, well, I want to be there. That's where that person is. And they sort of get ahead of themselves, and they want to start doing what that person's doing today versus what they were doing maybe ten years ago. So I think, like, yeah, part of it is just kind of teaching that ability to like to take that information you have access to and maybe kind of pull back where like, yeah, you see this person who's, you know, had a ton of success athletically. Well, let's pull back and look at, well, what were they doing? Because now we probably have access to this. What were they doing in sixth grade when they were the same age as you? And can we find some trend lines where we bring it back to a more reasonable approach for them, their kind of their goal setting in the short term. And, and yeah, do that zoom in kind of mentality with some of that stuff. Absolutely. And I think you see this, you know, in sport it's a great example because like especially if you're a novice, like back in the day, if you were like, hey, I'm gonna get interested in running, what did you have to do? You had to find a local running club and a coach. And they were gonna inform you and you listened to your coach. Nowadays, what happens is what do you do? You find the running influencer or the like the YouTube channel that tells you something and it might be okay. But often what happens is it's for novices and beginners. It's often like way, way too far over their head or way too much for what they can handle. And you get sold like, oh, you know, I need to go do Tabata sprints or 4x4 minutes, like all out. And this is the key workout and well, me and you are like, no, no. Like you need to walk and jog, man. Like you need, like you need to build up to this. If you do, you're not ready. You need to build a foundation and a base and stuff like that. And that's where it's really tricky when we're looking at going from a local to global. So we need to be able to, as you said, like how do we create situations where people can zoom in and like find what actually is appropriate for them. And we have more information now than ever. So we can do that but find what's actually appropriate then then then just like fall for the kind of like marketing of, you know, running or marketing of whatever you're doing of like, hey, this is trendy, I'm going to do this, but it will probably get us injured or hurt or burn out. Yeah, yeah, that's an excellent point. And it sort of also brought something to mind too, that I think of when we kind of flip it to the other side of that, where now let's think like, well, what are a lot of these influencers or these very popular online, folks that have a piece of information that they assume that you want or you do want? How are they going to best present it, in their opinion? Well, they're not likely the people that are sitting down and saying, okay, I want to find like 20 to 30 people that I'm going to coach one on one and really get into the weeds and the nuance with them at the individual level. They're thinking, all right, I'm going to push this out to 100,000 people, and I need it to be as easy for them to kind of follow and adhere to as possible. And I think like, it's one of those things where kind of like you said, I think there's some value there to some degree if it gets people into a decent starting point. But I find that stuff oftentimes doesn't have a good follow up where, where you have a scenario where it's like, I think heart rate is perfect for this example. Like, okay, we'll follow this five zone heart rate chart and then do this on this day. And then okay, they're going to probably get directionally in the right position versus knowing absolutely nothing and just running fast every day, like you and I probably did when we first got into running. but eventually they need to get to the point where they can sort of start to find someone who can teach them, like perceived effort and things that are going to actually be a more reliable guide for them in their growth process throughout and figure that out. So I do wonder, like. What is the catch for folks like that that are kind of getting their introduction from this kind of cast, a wide net with this more simplistic formula to, okay, now I need to actually sit down and figure out, like, what does it actually feel like to be in an easy category of running versus a moderate versus a hard? And how do I actually connect those dots? Because I think one of the things that I try with when I'm coaching people individually is one of my biggest goals is how do we use tools like heart rate and pace and things that we get from just communicating from one another and all some of these, these more wearable kind of things that look objective to to actually teaching them how to sense this. So when they're out there racing and doing workouts, they're actually hitting what they're supposed to be hitting. Well, it comes back to where we talked about earlier. It's the teaching and coaching aspect, right? We're not saying teaching and coaching isn't like, do this workout at this pace or this heart rate and like, that's it. What are you doing? You're providing the skills so that that athlete can expand their ability to self adjust and understand what they're trying to accomplish. And I think too often again on the social media world, what happens is like that's not the incentive. The incentive is what can, as you put it, like what bite size piece of information can I package correctly to get to the largest audience? And that's great for some. If it gets you in the door and gets you to start working out. But at some point we have to progress beyond that and learn how to listen to our body, learn to connect heart rate to feeling or pace to feeling. And I always, whenever I have helped out athletes, you can always tell those who have come up through maybe like high school, cross country versus those who got in later, because often the ones who came up through high school, cross country, like they had a coach who taught them these skills. So they developed these skills and they have them and those who came to the sport later and didn't have anyone address them often. They're really good at following prescriptions, run at this heart rate or run at this pace, but they don't have that internal skill of reading the body and listening to your body. And that's always step one with me, with those individuals is like, okay, how do I teach this? And sometimes there's some pushback. I'm like, why do I need to learn this? I've got to watch. That tells me X, Y, and Z. And you have to explain like, well, you know, sometimes that watch is going to be off or incorrect or like you need to listen to your internal signal more than that external signal. And you need that skill. And there's actually data on this that shows that elite athletes, elite runners have a better ability of what we call interception, which is the ability to read the internal signals. So it's a skill worth developing, but it's super tricky to kind of convey that because nuance and learning and understanding doesn't sell as well as, you know, doing this workout in this heart rate zone. And that's all you need to worry about. Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting because it kind of goes back to I think the third time now how old we've gotten. And it's like when we were running it was when we first learned some of that stuff. There just I mean you could get heart rate monitors, but I don't think I remember any one of my training partners actually using them in any large capacity. And, you know, GPS watches were just coming onto the market, I think, when I was like later in high school, and it took those probably five plus years to get to a point where they kind of flipped over from being a little taboo to being like, oh, everyone needs to have one of these. So we sort of had a situation where it was just a lot more obvious. That perceived effort was like a better guide in the long term, if you can learn it properly. And since that was the case, that's what we did absolutely know that that's what it was. If you didn't have any other option and it is, it kind of gave you this. And I, I think what has happened is we need to learn how to use the new tools. We have the heart rate, the GPS, all that stuff. Like I'm not anti tools. I don't think you are either, but we need to learn how to utilize that instead of it being the dictator. Because I think what often happens is when we default towards the external, I mean we let that thing guide us. It's almost like this, you and I again, I'm just going to keep dating ourselves. But, there's research on this back in the day when you didn't have, like, your phone with Google Maps or what have you to direct yourself, like your sense of direction was better. Literally data, research, neuroscience. On this, we had a better sense of direction in navigating the world as we've utilized the technology, which is great. I couldn't. I'm not saying we shouldn't have maps. It's wonderful. But that part of their brain has kind of trained a little bit. Our direction skills are not as good because we've outsourced them. Now maybe on on, you know, driving places we don't know. That's fine. Like, it's not a big deal because we're always going to have maps. But I think when it comes to like this, learning by feel, we've kind of done the same thing is we when we outsource all the time, we'd train that ability and probably somewhere in our brain, although it hasn't been studied, that ability to like, internalize and listen to those internal signals and figure out what they are is really important. And we 've kind of gone away. But I think, you know, the example I love here is, you know, is elite runner Sarah Hall, who has kind of become famous for a couple of marathons and half marathons here, is like, there is a point where she takes her watch and just, like, throws it off into the into the crowd or throws it to someone during the race and you're like, why would she be doing that? She's running like 220. Lopez like, doesn't she want to know her splits so she can stay on it? And it's like, no. Sarah realizes in that moment the splits are no longer helping. Like, I need to focus on the feeling and internally. And that allows me to be a better competitor over these last ten miles or whatever it is of the marathon. Then looking at every mile and checking my splits and then feeling either like, okay, I'm still on pace, or getting a shot of like, oh my God, I'm five seconds too slow. And letting that spiral into disaster. She ditches the watch so she can stay in the present moment of like, splits don't matter. It's it's competition time. I've gotten to the point where I need to complete time. And I think the only way she's able to do that is it's not that she's anti splits or technology, but she knows when to utilize the tech and then when to throw it out the door. And just like listen to her body and go by feeling. And I think all of us need to develop that skill as well. Yeah, I love that example because it also kind of highlights we think of these things through, like what can it provide for us in a positive way. And we don't always think about what is that information doing in a negative way to where like it can present a self-fulfilling prophecy. You don't want there to where like you mentioned, like let's say she comes through mile 18 and it's a 522 instead of a 520, and all of a sudden that gets her head into a negative spiral and a bunch of cognitive load she didn't need to deal with versus feeling like it was right. Because it was. And it was just two seconds slower because there was a little bit of a hill on that mile, and then the next one's going to be a 518, and it'll wash out over the course of two miles anyway. It is sort of like, where is that balance between enough information to keep us keep the bumpers there, I guess, and but not so much that it kind of introduces way too much cognitive load and extra thoughts that could end up being negative. Yeah, that's exactly it. And I experienced this as a runner. Like, you know, I famously ran a 4 or 1 mile in high school and never got better. And part of it, I'm convinced, is that after I ran that for one, like every mile race I entered. I was looking at the clock every 200m, and if I came through halfway at like, you know, 2O1 instead of two flats, my brain would go like, it's over, you're done. Was it over? No, of course not. Like there are plenty of people who most of the time it happens. You run faster the last lap, right? But when your brain is essentially using that feedback as like, oh, like looking for that up, it's over. Like stopping the negative spiral. Like often that thing can get in the way. And in fact I saw this I experienced this famously or as a coach once where at an indoor track meet, for whatever reason, the timer screwed up for a mile and they started the clock. It was something like two seconds too late, right? So the clock as they were coming around for every lap was essentially showing them that they were running faster than they thought. And you would think like, oh, this might hurt them, but no, these guys are so hyped that nearly the entire field like PR because they thought they were coming through and like two of, you know, two to a one or something, and it was really 203, but they got so excited by 201 that they ran the last like several laps, way faster than they probably should have. And they are all PR and that is just a reminder. And I talk about this in the book of how our brain is like predictive and it takes in the information. And then essentially judges like is this good or bad for us? And then dictates, you know, how we're supposed to feel and our response based on that? Well, you know, to a degree, we control the information that we're consuming, or at least we can decide what we're focusing on and what we're kind of letting go. And the watch example is a great one because it tells us like, hey, if we give it power, it can sometimes help us, but it can also hinder us. And we need to be aware of when that is and when it's not, so that we can utilize it correctly. Yeah. That's perfect. I think of it this way. It's like I like to look at intensity as constant and then pace as the moving target that that obviously we want to have had in the right direction. And I have yet to find something more motivating in a workout or a race where you take in that access to information and that pace is faster than it felt it should have been. Like you're moving faster. You look down and you're like, oh, I'm moving quicker than I should be. Like the sensation suggests, I should be running five seconds per mile slower. And it's just like, yeah, it's such a motivating thing because it's like, yeah, it's that maybe sign in our endurance trainer training minds of like, all right, we finally got to that point in training where we've seen some progress show up in the data versus feeling like we're just kind of, you know, chomping away at the same thing for weeks and at a time sometimes before we see some of the results. Yeah. That's it. That's one of my favorite tactics is like, let's say I'm doing a threshold or a tempo run. I'll be like, don't just go by feel. Don't look at your watch till you know, whatever the first mile, second mile or what have you. And often what happens is you get this nice boost because you're like, okay, I'm not going to look, I'm not going to look and you look down and it's like, oh, I thought I was running, you know, 510 paces. And that was A505 like, let's, let's go. And that's an instance where you're again using that data to kind of enhance your ability instead. And it also speaks to the importance of and I talk about this in the book as well, it is like an expectation setting like our brain is predictive. How we set that expectation will dictate again, somewhat how we're going to respond. Right. So if if we think that, for instance, if we convince ourselves that 520 should feel easy and the easiest thing ever, well, if we get out there and 520 feels a little bit harder, brain's going to default towards like, oh, this sucks, you're not ready, blah blah blah. Like, just shut it down because we set the expectation that it was going to feel easy. And then our brain goes like, what the heck? This didn't feel easy, right? This is all often what happens. I call it like the taper worries, right? You do that last workout before your big race or what have you. And because you're tapering and because it's not that hard of a workout, you think like, ah, this is going to be a piece of cake. But you forget that, like even running somewhat fast is always a little bit of a challenge. So too often, like athletes say, oh my God, that was way harder than it should have been. I'm not ready to go. What happened? And what happened was they just simply expected it to come as a piece of cake and easy because it wasn't a crazy hard workout. And again, it just shows how our expectation setting influences, you know, how we feel and experience things and also our mindset going forward. Yeah. One thing I've been doing more recently, because I had a little bit of a longer layoff than normal from speed work, so I started bringing it back at the start of the year, and I started just kind of during the warm up just to reminding myself, like, what is this workout actually supposed to feel like? Like, what is the level of discomfort I'm supposed to experience with this? Because otherwise I would find myself getting into the interval session and then getting like maybe a third of the way in and start thinking, man, this is too hard. I probably should do fewer reps. Or maybe I'm not ready. Maybe I need to wait till tomorrow and you start getting that like, you know, the seed of doubt that's always going to be there in those types of sessions. And just kind of reminding myself going in is like, when it starts feeling like that, that's what it's supposed to feel like. That's what you're doing. You're just trying to acquire a few reps at that, just like an undesirable sensation, and then stop and then wait till you recover and do it again. And that's really what I'm looking for. So it's like some of it too, I think is just like accepting the discomfort where it's supposed to be versus feeling like it should always feel perfect or should always feel smooth. Well, that's the trap that you often see endurance athletes get into, right? What happens? I hated this as a coach, but it always occurred. It occurred to me as an athlete after that really good race where everything, for whatever reason, the world aligns and it feels great. And then afterwards, the athlete or yourself feels so easy I can easily go faster. What happens in the next race? You expect it to feel the same way where it all clicks and it inevitably doesn't. And you often crater and you're like, I don't understand. Like, I didn't race as fast as last week and like, this was so much harder. What's happening is my training is out, blah, blah blah. It's like, no, you are you for whatever reason, because you had this experience, expect it all to click on the same day and it feels easy. But that's rare. Those, those, those are the races or the moments where you're like, cherish and say, go for it. But there are few and far between. And sometimes they set us up where we start chasing that feeling instead of, like you said, accepting that, hey, if that feeling comes, great. But most of the time, like whether we're racing or training, we have to accept that there's some level of discomfort that we're trying to get to, that we're going to experience that we cannot avoid. And that's just the reality of the sport that we're in. And if we frame that correctly, it's going to help us navigate that better versus if we line up and think, okay, I'm going to feel great at halfway and and feel like I'm in flow. Well, nine times out of ten, that's not going to happen. And that seed of doubt is going to expand because of that, because we set the wrong expectation. Yeah. And that sort of brings us back to what we were talking about in the beginning to where you hop online and you have just an endless list of people who are showcasing that one of ten scenarios. So you start thinking that everyone is getting that every time, and you're the only one who's missing. And I think that leads us into this topic that you talked about in the book, too, around kind of like self-sabotage and coping around things like that, where you sort of get some of that early success or you get that experience and it's like, that's cool. That's who I am now. And then all of a sudden it doesn't happen and you can get into this really bad cycle of just expecting it to end when it doesn't. Now you start doing things actively to sabotage your own performance so that you have sort of an excuse as to why it's happening to you versus trying to actually understand what's going on. Yeah, self-sabotage is normal. It's a protective mechanism. Right? We get good at something. Maybe we're a little bit known for it, or we get some self-esteem from it. And what happens is now it's scary to go into the arena or run that race because it's a little bit like, okay, am I going to be able to, you know, hold up my end of the bargain and be able to do that again or succeed or whatever, have you? So what happens is our brain essentially goes like. No, no, we're going to give you an out. Right. I used this example in the book, but it's a great one. It's the cool kid who doesn't try in school or class. Why don't they try? They try and make not try and cool because they're afraid deep down that like, hey, if I try at this basketball game or during the mile at P.E. or even in class, I'm going to be embarrassed by like the nerdy looking kid who's better than me. And then my self-esteem is going to drop. So what do you do? You convince people or tell people you know outwardly that no, no, no, it's cool. It's cool not to try. All that is, is you're self-sabotaging to give yourself an out and running. We do this all the time. How many times have you lined up for a race or had someone line up for a race, and they sit there and they tell you incessantly, I haven't started speed work yet. I'm good. Like I haven't started speed work and all that is, is, is creating that out. Then it gives you permission to not explore what you're capable of right now. And when we do that over and over again, our brain gets, you know, regularly ready to default towards self-protection, whether that's excuse or justifying or even not even doing the work, saying, yeah, if I would have trained, I would have been able to run X, Y and Z, but I didn't train as much as I should have. I didn't follow all the plan. All that is, is, is protecting your ego and protecting your sense of self. And if we want to explore our potential, if we want to see how good we can be, we've got to get let go of that. Which bringing it back to something we talked about earlier, is like giving ourselves the permission to potentially fail, potentially fail big time, and be okay and realize that that's not going to destroy us, that it's just part of that process and journey that we can learn and grow from and understand, you know, where, where we're doing. And often, you know, as a coach, this is one of the biggest things I had to deal with, with, especially with high school kids, but also college kids, where sometimes I would reframe races, especially in cross-country. I'd be like, look. Your goal is at at halfway. I want you to be with the leaders. I don't care what happens in the last half. As long as you are with the leaders. The first half, like that's all we care about. Why? Because I was trying to get them used to being in sometimes a little bit over their head so that, hey, we could see how long they last and how much they blew up so we could understand, like a what we can train to, to get you ready and be psychologically get them adapted and ready so that instead of like being the athlete who holds back, holds back, hold back and then has that like killer last lap and they say, look at my last sprint. I sprinted so fast and I'm like, yeah, because you didn't risk anything in the first half. So you didn't put yourself in, you know, in potential to do something that you're capable of. You just had a great last lap because you were protected. So it's all about figuring out, okay, how can we help people free ourselves up to actually explore their potential? Yeah. And that brings up another thing that I was thinking about while reading the book, too, which was just this sort of balance between competition and sort of the, I guess, the spoils that come with winning and the motivating factor of that versus using that or pulling that lever so frequently that you put young up and comers and learners in a position where they start leaning into some of those coping and avoidance type mechanisms to where like I think like when you get let's say we get like a dozen runners who are already and we put them on a track and have them race. We're probably going to see faster times than if we had each one of them do it individually. But if we take that same person and throw them into some sort of a like game when they're in middle school, and now all of a sudden we're keeping score and we're tracking stats and stuff, and they're not producing up to where their peers are. They may quickly decide, hey, that's not worth it, even though they just weren't at a point where they were ready to kind of well, they were maybe doing what they were supposed to be doing, but getting a negative, negative report from what the data was showing them. So it's like, how do we sort of balance this drive from competition that can ultimately kind of sharpen the spear versus implying it so early that it just destroys the majority of people from ever getting to the point where they're in a position to leverage that properly. And this is the balance and nuance, right? I think often what happens is nowadays you get this, these mindsets of like the extremes of like competition is to be all and all. We need it at all times. And then the other side is like, yeah, never keep score. Competition doesn't, doesn't matter. And what we're looking for and what the psychology research tells us is no, it's like there's a middle ground. The middle path is the way where competition can raise our game, and it also can make us miserable. We want to be able to use it to raise our game. Sometimes we don't need to keep score, and we need to play exploration because that allows us to cultivate, you know, some of that intrinsic motivation, that joy, that playfulness around it. But if we have no competition, then, like, we're never preparing for anything. So I think it's that balance of it. And I think you hit the nail on the head because it especially matters early. And there's some crazy stats on this. I think it's something like in the US, 70% of kids who try a sport quit by the age of 13. And one of the major contributors of that is fear of failure, which is instilled from either a parent or a coach, essentially being too wired for competition, where all of a sudden that kid thinks that you know, this stupid. The U12 soccer game is the most important thing in their life. And if they don't win. Like dad or mom or coach are going to rip into them. And what that does is that creates this idea of like, no, it shifts our motivation from like, hey, I like playing soccer or like I like trying, playing or running track to like, this is like do or die. And at 12. Like, we're not ready to handle, do or die. Or if we do like it's going to instill some negative views of competition and put us on a path to burnout over the long haul. So it's about balancing that. And to me, it's like when we're young we need to sway more towards exploration interests that play right with some dabbling of competition that often occurs naturally. Because again, if you're like you or I, old enough, you probably had, you know, races down the block or games where you played at at recess or PE or in the sandlot, and you cared about winning, but it was it was not the adults telling you that winning was mattered. It was this internal drive of like, hey, I want to beat. I want to beat, you know, Joe, my neighbor down the street. And when it comes from, you know, the individuals themselves, it doesn't it's not doesn't all often have these external expectations and pressure and instills that fear from us so often I think of, like lit competition developed naturally when we're young. Right. With it mostly being kid driven and play exploration. And then as we get older and develop some competencies, then I think it comes down to is like, how do we put people in a position where they can compete? And like, taste some sort of success. Now that success doesn't have to mean winning the race, but it could mean improving, getting better, seeing progress. And this is the whole fundamental notion why we have divisions in sport. Right. That's the reason we have freshman JV varsity in high school. There's a reason we go from varsity or from high school to college. And in college we often have kids who compete locally at local meets and then those who get flown to the big, you know, national meets or what have you, because we know we have to essentially scaffold people up the ranks to be able to handle competing versus just throwing them in the deep end and saying like, you know, go race. Grant Fisher and good luck. Yeah, yeah, that's that's perfect. I think it's also something where when I think about some of this stuff, I think like when, when you're working with younger people or new people in general with something, it's like exposing them to enough variety so they can start to unpack that. Like there's just going to be different strengths and weaknesses too. And because I'm not as fast as my friend in this discipline, doesn't mean I might not be better at throwing the shot put than they are. And I think this is where track and field actually is pretty unique as a sport where it does have such a wide range of different, like kind of skill sets that optimize for the event where if you had like a group of kids just doing like all the events in like track and field day, a good percentage of them are probably going to figure out through that that experience of just like, oh, you know what? Just because I can't beat it. James at 100 meter dash doesn't mean I can't beat him at the 1600 or vice versa and things like that. And you start I remember that's I mean, that was my exposure point. I remember distinctly thinking like, oh, you're either good at sports or you're not. And like, if you're good at this, you're probably as good. And there's like this hierarchy there. And then we did the presidential physical fitness challenge. And then I started realizing, oh, no, you can be way better than someone at one thing and way worse than him is something else. And, you know, you kind of get that sort of exposure point to just like where maybe your, your own like, skills lie and where they maybe don't. And what's worth working on or, or playing around with in the short term. Exactly. It's that exploration piece and that diversifying piece where you get to see what you kind of get at. And we do this. It's not only sport, but it's also in life, right? How did you find out what you were interested in academically or intellectually? You explored a lot of different things, and sometimes that came through school where you're like, no math class sucks, but science class or social studies like this is kind of interesting. Like something catches your attention. If we don't have that exploration, we don't have those interesting moments. And I talked to this with adult runners, even more so at least in, you know, kids, sometimes you get a natural explanation for this. And adult runners, they're all almost always like, okay, I'm going to run this five K and then I'm going to do the 10-K and then I'm going to do the half marathon, and then I'm going to do the marathon. And then once I do that I'm going to check the box and be done. And you're just like no, we can explore your ability at these different race distances and don't have to just point to this thing. Maybe the marathon you're calling, maybe further, a 50 K or 100 K is ultimately where you want to go. Or maybe you should go run the local Masters Mile race because like that's where your skill set is. And I think too often we get narrowed into again externally when you come into running as an adult. What does everyone talk about the marathon? And you think this is the only target? Let's go. Where maybe you should spend a couple of years running the five K, because like that fits your interest and training ability. And like it's intriguing to you when you enjoy it versus going to run the marathon or vice versa. Yeah, it's one of the questions all the time. I'll. I'll get asked from time to time. Someone will be like, we'll start. I'll start working with them on coaching and we'll be looking at the races they want to do. And they'll often have like a list of races that they like or they're thinking about doing. So I always just ask them like, well, which one of these motivates you? Like which one stands out to you as the one that looks the most exciting? Because that might be the place to start. because you already have this, like, curiosity about it. And then the next step is kind of like, well, let's look at what it's going to take to prepare for that event. And does the preparation process excite you? Because sometimes there's a disconnect there where it's like maybe the race that didn't finish on the top of their excitement list entails the type of training that they're excited about. In which case I look at it through like, well, what's the bigger exposure point there? And it's the training. So maybe we lean towards the one that you're going to be excited about, just the growth development process of that particular event. And I find that just to be such an interesting way to kind of leverage that kind of let's get curious first. And then once we kind of get into the rigors of it all, we can start getting to that part where we look at trying to thrive within the specific areas that we're trying to get you best prepared for. Yeah, that's a, that's a brilliant explanation of what I think applies not just to running but to life instead of saying, like, we're going to do this outcome because. You know, this is what you know everybody's doing or this is what I'm dictated to do. We combine the approaches by saying, okay, let's let our interest and curiosity drive it, and then we're going to let reality and the reality of that, the outcome or the objective like, contribute as well. And then we're going to have this happy medium of what's best for you today. You, the individual sitting across from me and I think again, or we kind of neglect and and negate that ability in all aspects of life. And I talk about it a little bit in the book as well, where we talk about, you know, playing and exploring your interests. Right. And there's some researchers who have, you know, tied the mental health epidemic of our youth to a lack of play and exploration. What is that that's creating that interest in seeing what you're interested in and letting that contribute, as well as chasing whatever accolades and outcomes that we have to. And I think the same is true for adults as well, as we get too focused on, I need to do this because it's going to get me X, Y, and Z. And instead we have to say essentially like what excites me, I mean, that's that's the driver of my running right now, right? I'm like, what interests me, what excites me? And then similar to you, I look at, okay, how much time do I have to actually train and can I, can I meet that demand? You know, if I can't I've got a I've got a under two year old and a one month old at, at home. I'm not going to be training for an ultramarathon because I don't have that time or sleep. so that might be off the book, but I can find something where the interest and the reality align and, you know, go for that. Yeah. It's perfect. I think it also kind of highlights to some degree something that you mentioned last time you were on the podcast that I've been using pretty consistently since then, because I just think it just describes it perfectly. To someone who's just curious about sort of why I'm programming the way I am or why they should be doing something specific. And I think this actually is a good lead into just kind of what we see online sometimes, where we start to gravitate towards a specific training model or a very specific type of workout, whether it be like VO2 max, threshold zone two and all these things that we kind of see kind of ebb and flow and popularity, which is like what you describe as as just where is your global fitness at? And like where are your differentiations within the components of that? And when I'm working with someone, I tell them, well, we want you to be a good global runner. First, we want you to not have like a bunch of glaring weak spots and spots that are, like, overly, represented. Before we start getting really specific into what we want you to ultimately perform at. So then it kind of highlights what you wrote in this book . Now we've got this opportunity to explore and get curious. Well, let's explore where you're at when you're running low for a longer period of time. Let's explore what happens when we send you out for a really hard session. Let's see what happens when we try to get you to sustain some moderate intensity in like a long interval fashion and things like that, and just get kind of a plot of where those different points are and how they are. How they differ from one another, and then start poking at the ones that we look at. That looks like they have the biggest opportunity to improve. And I think that. Kind of adds that element of just like, okay, yeah, there's a process here, but there's also a lot of interesting kind of uniqueness that I'm going to kind of learn and find out. It's not just like, all right, here's the formula. Rinse, repeat. And then that because that kind of loses its sparkle after a while, I think when you just keep doing it that way, I mean, you just you just explain coaching or at least my coaching philosophy as well. Right. That's that's what it is. It's not like I'm gonna find this perfect program and do this. It's essentially build that global fitness, and then we are fit enough to explore where our strengths are weaknesses, what were what like excites us, what doesn't, what we fear, etc. and like poke and prod at those of figuring out how to how to essentially shift the kink in the pipe so that we can perform at the highest level. And I remember this, this early on in my coaching career. I was fortunate to at the time, I was thinking, I think I was coaching like three, you know, pretty dang good, elite female runners who were all running the five K and lo 15 minutes, like 15, ten, 15, 20. So pretty dang good. Especially back in the non super true day. And it just struck me one day when I was looking at it, I think it was like their tempo or threshold runs. And I'm like, these three women all run within, like 10s of each other on the track for the event they're trading for. And I'm like, one can do like ten miles at 530 pace, you know. The other only can handle like four miles at 530 pace. And it and I was just like, if I was just writing a program like this wouldn't work. You know, because, like, they're so different and bring things to the different table. And I just need to understand, like, okay, that's part of that exploration poker prod for that, for that lady who can only run for miles at 530 pace, I'm like, okay, we have some room for growth here for the one at ten. At 530 I'm like, you are fit enough aerobically to handle the five K. Like we got to get some faster stuff and you just, you realize this poking and prodding because there's different ways to get to the same point and everyone's going to bring a different both physiological physiology and psychology to the picture. And it's our job as a coach, as a, to help figure that out where they are and then be like, understand? Okay, what levers am I going to pull? What workouts am I going to try to, like, shift this so that they can reach their goal based on the information I'm seeing? Yeah. Yeah. The first time I ever was exposed to that, I remember, is when I got to college, cross country, and our coach was telling us about, like, two guys on the team before they had graduated. And they were like, you know, mirror images of one another as a result standpoint, for the most part, like one was slightly better, but not enough to, like, really stand out as like, okay, he's definitely like the better runner by a long shot. And one of them came in where it would run like 40 miles a week, but it was all at like six flats or under, like not a single mile slower than that. And the other, the other one was like 100 mile, 90 mile training weeks, a lot of like seven, 30 minute miles and then a couple of quality sessions. So like two very different approaches. And they were all arriving at the same kind of end result. So then yeah, it became okay. Like I didn't realize at the time, but now when I look back at it, I was like, man, I wonder what I would have done with it. Well, I kind of know what I would do with either of them in that scenario, but it's like you kind of have these like very different inputs where they probably have strengths that are a little polarizing then from one another. So how do we leverage those strengths but also help them improve by maybe working on some of their weaknesses or things that none of that could potentially benefit them. On a higher degree, percentage wise, than the others. And, I mean, you see those sorts of things around like endurance running all the time, and it's just kind of and it's what makes it kind of fun for me and makes me keep being curious about everything. Yeah. It's a puzzle. And that's what makes it interesting is you're trying to figure out how to unlock the puzzle that is in front of you. And again, circling back all the way to what we talked about at the beginning is this is why, like, there is no one best workout or one best training zone or one best program because we have such differentiation on physiology, psychology, training, background and training history. And it's on us as coaches to kind of unravel that, that puzzle. And of course we come with principles that help us do that, but we don't have like, hey, this is the 12 week training program you're going to you're going to follow because it's going to inevitably fail for someone who, you know, didn't fit that mold. And if we just stick to that as a coach, we're not doing our athletes a service. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it sort of kind of brings us to just what I, what I gathered was sort of a main point from the book to which is this sort of like going from survival mindset to thrive, where when I think of survival, I think of just kind of the like, all right, I've got this, very structured, like premade plan that I'm just going to hit, hit, hit and then show up to the race and hope for the best. Or if we want to apply that to a non running example, it's like, all right, I've got these things I need to do at work. I just got to do those and get to that versus where I think you're going with the book, which is like, how do we get to where we're thriving, where we're actually like spending some time, like actually getting curious about certain components within that and seeing what they actually yield as a result and then kind of moving on from there. Yeah. What it is, is we've all been there. It's when we want to do the thing and want to explore and, and have fun with it, or we feel like we have to. Meaning you show up to the race and you're like, oh, do I really want to be here? Do I really want to do this? And you're just in survival mode at that point. Maybe you go through the race and it's okay and what have you, but your brain is in that. When we get in that space of feeling like we have to, we're just doing the bare minimum to get by and to essentially protect our ego and protect ourselves. Right. We're on the flip side. If we're thriving, what we're doing is we've got ourselves in the mental and physical space where it's like. Let's see what we're capable of. Like, I'm not afraid of failing. Let's see what kind of training we can do in exploring things. I'm not afraid of, you know, going away from the 12 week program that the guy or gal on the internet told me was the best ever. Right. I get to see and bring my own self to that training and modify it. And it's not the end of the world. And I think too often, and this is the whole point of the book, I think, whether running or not, is that because we have all these external things from social media to the global world, we discuss. It kind of pushes us to survive. Right. Just do the program. Dictate it. Show up. Check the box. Like, even if you don't want to. Instead, we need to fight back and get some of that curiosity, that play, that exploration, that. How do we show up on race day? Yeah, a little bit nervous, but excited to like, you know, see the fruits of our labor and put ourselves in position to do something. And sometimes we might do something great, sometimes we might fall short. But the point is like we went on that journey of exploration to see. And if we do, we can often look back and be like, man, that was a lot of fun. And that's the whole freaking point. Yeah. Absolutely awesome. Steve. Well, I want to give you a chance to. We can talk about other things if you have stuff you want to chat about, but I want to make sure people are aware of where you're at and where they can get the book and dive into some of the stuff we chatted about today, too. Absolutely. Thanks. This is always a blast to talk to you, Zach. You can get the book when the Inside Game. It's out now. you can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever books are sold. you can check me out at Steve Magnus on basically every social media. and, you know, I'm here to nerd out on running psychology life, whatever it is. So this is a lot of fun. Awesome. Well, it's great to have you, Steve. And I'll put one more plug into for people specifically to check out your YouTube channel. I think you've had some really good videos on there recently that I just really kind of get into, kind of the core of the hows and whys of some of the stuff that we chatted about today, which is always kind of a fun way to see it. Oh, thanks. I'm, I'm, I'm in the YouTube game trying to spread some good information, so hopefully people enjoyed it. That gives me that gives me some confidence that you're enjoying it Zach. So I guess I'll keep at it.