the morning shakeout | issue 498
Life lesson #43, the importance of leaving a couple reps in reserve, developing a better relationship with your wearable devices, and a lot more.
Good morning! I turned 43 this past Saturday, and, as I’ve done every year since 2020, I’ve updated this collection of life lessons with a new one that I’ve been taught or learned myself (oftentimes the hard way). It was inspired by Kevin Kelly’s “68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice” and this annually updated post from my friend Chris Corbin.
This year’s addition has to do with the problem of more: You probably don't need as much as you think you do. Whether we're talking running miles, working hours, money, friends, or even the amount of toothpaste you put on your toothbrush, I've found this to hold true. When we're adding more of something because we think it will make us better off in some way, it often distracts us from appreciating the fact that we probably already have everything we need. I've learned (again, oftentimes the hard way, which is a theme with many of these lessons) that achieving clarity, finding peace, and even improving performance tends to happen when I focus on what’s essential and stop myself from giving into the temptation to do or add more—which often happens out of insecurity, if I'm being honest. This lesson keeps showing up in a variety of ways—stopping a rep or two short in an interval workout rather than grinding it out, keeping my daily to-do list to 3-5 things and not adding to it once I get through everything, keeping inessential apps off my phone that only serve to distract me, using a 2-gallon can to water our garden and not drowning everything in the planter box with the hose, etc.—and reminding me that restraint can be a form of wisdom. A little less really can be a lot more, in so many ways.
While I wrote this list for me, it’s my hope that there’s a nugget or two that you can take away and apply to your own life. Please feel free to share it if anything in here speaks to you. I’d also encourage you to spend some time compiling your own list of life lessons that you can refer back to when necessary. It’s a good exercise in reflection, whether it’s your birthday or not.
Note: Some of these have to do with running, others not so much. I’ve included attribution/inspiration when I was able to remember the source.
Quick Splits
— This recent episode of the Rich Roll podcast with top sprint coach Stu McMillan is a two-hour masterclass in coaching, sprinting, and movement expression that has something in it for coaches, athletes, or anyone that’s interested in exploring their potential. Stu, who I sat down with for my own podcast a couple years ago to talk about his career trajectory, systems thinking, the role of creativity in coaching, and more, has few peers when it comes to being able to distill complex topics and methodologies into easy-to-understand insights and actions without watering anything down. “We want to be high-quality movers,” he explains. “We want to move in a high-quality way. You don’t want to move crappily...So what is high-quality movement? Think about it from a quantitative perspective and a qualitative perspective. The quantity we kind of do OK on—mileage, weight on a bar, all these different things—but quality we don’t. Just think about the quality of your movement and try to be a little more generally aware of what that is and how I can do this thing—whatever that thing is: hiking, jogging, running, sprinting, lifting weights, yoga—just think about, ‘How can I do this with more quality?’ And sometimes that’s enough. You don’t need somebody saying, ‘The quality of this isn’t good enough, I want you to do it better.’ You can feel that yourself—I’m going to do this with a little bit more quality, slow it down, be a little bit more aware of what my body is doing in space and time. Take the time to pay attention to how you’re moving, in anything, that is really important.” Or as I like to say: Learn how to move well first, then move more often. As distance runners, especially those of us who come into the sport later in life, we often get this backward (and it almost always leads to trouble).
— A big thank you to HOKA Northern Arizona Elite coach Jack Mullaney for sending this article by Irish basketball coach Ciarán O'Sullivan my way. His writing is kind of all over the place but O’Sullivan shares some lessons he’s learned from greats like Mick O'Dwyer and Gregg Popovich about the importance of creating space, leaning into creativity, building trust, and being willing to reinvent yourself that transcend sport and apply to leadership in nearly any realm. It pairs well with many of the topics Stu McMillan covers in the podcasts I just shared above, and there’s quite a few interesting and relevant musical tie-ins as well. “Coaching is a paradox: the more you control, the less magic you create,” he writes. “The challenge? Trust. Surrender. Let players and artists find their way within the game’s choreography. When a player sees the invisible pass, a musician hits the perfect note, or a game unfolds like a symphony, you hear the music. Miles Davis said, ‘It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.’ The greatest moments are found, not forced. For coaches, it might be the instruction you don’t give, the space you leave for players to self-organise. As we reflect on the legacies of visionaries like O’Dwyer and witness Popovich’s continued evolution, their lessons endure: create space, adapt, and let the game sing.”
— In line with my life lesson for this year, Alex Hutchinson’s latest column on why we don’t need to lift to failure has wider applicability beyond the gym. Hutchinson looks at a new study in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise showing that stopping a rep or two short of failure (i.e. leaving some “reps in reserve”) “can be a time-efficient strategy for promoting muscular adaptations in resistance-trained individuals, even when transitioning from higher-volume programs.” I touched on this idea last year, writing, “Finish most of your workouts feeling like you could do another rep or two or go a couple more miles at a given pace. Once every great while turn yourself inside-out (ideally in a race but every so often in practice).” This “B+ workouts” philosophy (hat tip, Mark Coogan) is something I’ve tried to extend out to the rest of my life: consistent, sustainable efforts over and over and over again. Yes, it’s important to know where the limit is, but whether it’s training, work, or relationships, it’s easy to trick yourself into believing that continually upping the intensity or maxing out all the time will lead to a better outcome. The truth is it’s about showing up every day with intention—knowing when to push, but also knowing when to hold back—that allows you to go all-out when it matters most.
— “Is All of This Self-Monitoring Making Us Paranoid?” The short answer to this question posed by Madison Malone Kircher of The New York Times, in my own observation and experience, is: yes (surprising exactly no one). Kircher’s article, which is not about runners at all but can certainly be extrapolated out to our population, explores the effects that wearable technology and an overload of data has had on users’ mental health. I think this has become a major problem that is only going to get worse.
Let me stick to the lane that I know best: Many runners, heck, endurance athletes in general, are a little bit obsessive by nature. These devices capitalize on that and turn the dial up to 12. Many wearables take the emotion and subjectivity out of activities (including running!) for a lot of folks. People start tracking everything and judging themselves by the numbers, they don’t learn to listen to their bodies very well, and, from what I’ve seen in regard to running and training, they fail (or forget) to have FUN. [Anyone remember that meme where the triathlete is telling his wife about all his training data after a workout and at the end she just looks at him and says, “But was it fun?” It’s funny because it’s true!] Everything has become quantifiable and takeaways are increasingly more binary: pass/fail, good/bad, optimized/compromised, etc.
“I just felt like I couldn’t do anything right to make the ring happy,” Abi Caswell, a bakery owner who lives in New Orleans, told The Times. I hear some version of this all the time, just substitute GPS watch or Strava or some other fitness or nutrition or recovery app for “the ring” in this quote, as if the goal of training (or living our lives!) is to make our devices happy. Just as a reminder: I am not anti-tech or anti-data. Yes, wearing some sort of a fitness tracker and monitoring a few key metrics over longer periods of time is necessary and instructive as an athlete. The problem in this day and age is that we’re overwhelmed by data, much of it useless if not altogether bad, and I think it’s doing more harm than good. These devices and apps are designed to be frictionless in terms of gathering and interpreting data but I think that’s a net negative when it comes down to it. Friction forces us to slow down, tune in, ask questions, and generally be more considerate in our approach.
“They’re like, ‘The device said …’ or ‘The monitor said …,’” explains Jacqueline D. Wernimont, an associate professor at Dartmouth College in the film and media studies department who specializes in histories of quantification. “And I’m like, ‘But what did your body say?’” This resonates in a major way. The most common question I ask my athletes is, “But how did you feel?” The answer often tells me more than just about any data point.
— Here’s the incomparable Tracy Chapman covering my birthday buddy Bob Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” sometime in 2005. No idea how I hadn’t heard this until just a few days ago but it’s a near 8-minute masterpiece (5 minutes of her singing followed by an almost 3-minute ovation) that is worth your time this week.
— From the archives (Issue 132, 7 years ago this week): One thing I’ve been struggling with of late is allowing myself to be bored. To let my mind wander off into space. To make the time to contemplate, free-associate and come up with new ideas. I don’t know where this newfound compulsion to fill every free second comes from but it’s definitely there and it’s been eating at me. I have a relatively recent bad habit of flipping on a podcast whenever there’s silence around the house: e.g., taking a shower, brushing my teeth, getting dressed, doing dishes, vacuuming, whatever passive task it may be. Not that there’s anything wrong with doing that from time to time—I love listening to podcasts—but when it’s all the time, it’s just bad for your brain. This blog post from Shane Parrish at Farnam Street was a good reminder to give myself permission to be bored more often. (Update, 5.27.25: I’ve gotten a lot better at this, mostly by leaving my phone out of the bedroom/bathroom and scheduling time for boredom.)
— I’ve been using Final Surge to run my coaching business since 2017 and I can’t say enough good things about the platform. They recently released the Workout Builder into their mobile app, which allows you to create and edit structured workouts directly in the app (versus just on desktop) and then sync it to your preferred device. Pretty nifty! (Also, fellow coaches: Head over to finalsurge.com and take advantage of a free 14-day coaching trial today. Use the code MORNINGSHAKEOUT when you check out to take 10% off your first purchase. Any questions? Just reply to this email and send ’em my way!)
It’s not available for purchase just yet, but I am super excited about the upcoming launch of the New Balance FuelCell Rebel v5. I’ve run in every previous iteration of this shoe and it’s my go-to for faster workouts on both the track and the roads. As fast and fun as carbon-plated shoes can be, it’s important not to be overly reliant on them for all your track sessions, fartleks, hills, and tempo runs. The Rebel allows your feet to do what they want to do while providing plenty of protection underfoot when you’re putting a lot of extra force into the ground. The new blend of PEBA and EVA foams in the midsole should provide a snappy ride underfoot, helping make the miles go by quickly. I’m excited to take ’em for a ride soon! (Click here to get notified when the FuelCell Rebel v5 is available.)
Workout of the Week: The 4-2
This time and effort-based workout is a great early to mid-season session when you’re still fortifying your fitness foundation and neither pace nor specificity are key concerns. It’s a great late spring/early summer session if you’re planning on training for a fall marathon. Here are the details.
The bottom line.
“I'm just, you know, kind of happy in the doing of things. Even just having a great cup of coffee is happiness. Getting an idea, or realizing an idea. Working on a painting or working on a piece of sculpture. Working on a film. One thing I noticed is that many of us, we do what we call work for a goal. For a result. And in the doing, it's not that much happiness. And yet that's our life going by. If you're transcending every day, building up that happiness, it eventually comes to: it doesn't matter what your work is. You just get happy in the work. You get happy in the little things and the big things. And if the result isn't what you dreamed of, it doesn't kill you, if you enjoyed the doing of it. It's important that we enjoy the doing of our life."
— David Lynch, the famed filmmaker who passed away earlier this year, in this 2020 conversation with GQ (bold emphasis mine)
That’s it for Issue 498. If you enjoyed it, please forward this email to a friend (or five!) and encourage them to subscribe at this link so that it lands in their inbox next Tuesday.
Thanks for reading,
Mario
“Don’t try to be consistently great. Whatever the pursuit, you’ll get a lot further by getting great at being consistent.” It holds true for so many things! Steadiness over status, always. Happy belated, by the way.
So many folks are afraid of not having an A workout, they don't have the confidence nor experience to know that B/B+ workouts will get them the fitness. Proving yourself (to yourself) in training is a surefire way to burn out.