The Mental Game
Why we are bad at predicting our own behavior and what that means in coaching.
I’m a science junkie. I admit it and while when I was a teenager I might have downplayed that side of me, now it’s something I wear quite openly on my sleeve. This couldn’t have been displayed more openly when at the post-USA’s Run Gum party, I was sitting at a table with coach Daniel…
Read More“People remember the last interval”-Why you should go out on a high note
Human psychology is a strange thing. We’re full of bias, fallacies, and weird quirks. Philosophers, scientists, and all around intelligent people have been trying to make sense of the world for centuries with varying degrees of success. It’s a side interest of mine because, in the end, we are coaching people, not hunks of muscle…
Read MoreThe Plight of the Ego Coach
Renowned Neuroscientist V S Ramachandran is known for working with strange cases. He lives on the edges of his field, attacking the cases that everyone else puts off as anomalies. One such case, as discussed in the book Thinking, is the problem of synesthesia. In patients with this issue, their senses merge so when they…
Read MoreResetting your set point- Changing perspectives to get to the next level
That ‘barely keeping it together’ feeling that we normally expect to come and go as our life becomes a little chaotic, doesn’t really go away in life. At first this was a bit concerning, as I think we have this idealized image in our head of having everything go according to plan and for us…
Read MoreWhy strength coaches don’t know endurance training- Domain Expertise, Chronic Cardio, and Confirmation Bias
Why do smart people believe dumb things? No, I’m not talking about some intelligent person believing in some crazy conspiracy theory or seemingly irrational belief, I’m talking about really smart people talking about things that are just a side step away from their area of expertise. I listen to a decent number of podcasts, try…
Read MoreThe Calm Conversation-How to deal with pain
My brother had called and texted, telling me to find a place to stay in Pennsylvania. Like any mid 20’s know it all, listening to my older brother wasn’t something that came naturally. It wasn’t even snowing at that point in the 4-hour drive from Penn State back home to the Washington DC suburbs of…
Read MoreUncertainty, Randomness, and Over-control in Training
Control the Contrallables It’s what we preach in coaching and in life. Don’t sweat the small things that don’t have an actual impact on our well being or life. It’s one of the simplest and most profound lessons one needs to learn. And it makes perfect sense. But like most things, can we take this…
Read MoreYour Brain on Altitude- How altitude can cause or prevent depression?
Altitude has this great mystique and allure in the world of distance running. The mystique has grown over the years. It started when we saw the impact altitude had on performance at the Mexico City Olympics. But it really took off when the East African onslaught of records occured, where we saw the impact training…
Read MoreWhat’s your bias?
What’s your bias? There’s an interesting phenomenon that occurs when we start discussing what is important to a particular outcome, which is very much a result of our innate psychological need to value our knowledge and our selves. As someone who has his hat in many different areas of sports performance and who recently has…
Read MoreWhat happens when we take a break from running?…Depression?
In high school, my coach would often laugh at the duration of my post-season breaks. It normally would constitute a day or two and then back to the mileage grind. In college, things didn’t change much as I became notorious for taking maybe 4-5 days off after the season and then being at a 100…
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