Ain't nothing going to break my stride...maybe

Momentum, that sense of movement, of continuity of movement (sometimes when we’re stationary but that’s another story), and for a lot of us, the feeling that is missing this year.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a go at a couple of truck pulls, scratching child itches that formed from an early age (Geoff Capes and Daley Thompson were childhood heroes) and reflecting on that and some of my other sporting endeavours helps draw out a couple of things which might be helpful in these times.

The British readers of this will know the part of the Festive season ritual of sitting down with turkey leftovers or tin of sweets and watching World’s Strongest Man. With the growing popularity of strongman in recent years, others of you may have come across it in different ways. 

The vehicle pull (mine are not even close to being in that league by the way) is a staple. It starts with a colossal effort, with every fibre of your being straining to overcome inertia, the “desire” of the object to remain stationary, in line with Newton’s first law (remember that from secondary school science?), until enough force is applied to get it moving. With heart pounding and the sound of blood pumping in your ears, the task is simple, but not easy, keep moving (like Dory in Finding Nemo but heavier!). Perhaps a couple of big, double leg drives to get the darned thing on the move, but it’s then in to little steps. Little steps, little steps. Head down, spine in line, keep driving, keep driving. Occasional glimpses up to see if you’re still on track (or use the judge, or spotters), but your focus is narrow, close, absorbed entirely in the task, the burning feeling within you, the handling the inner monologue, your monkey mind simultaneously barking at you like a drill instructor while whispering the siren song that it could all be over if you just drop the rope. 

In an event with a relatively short cut off, momentum is everything. And in the vehicle pull, the individual is redlining from early in the event, any rest is not going to be long enough to muster the energy to overcome the inertia once again. You can see the heartbreaking decline in the energy levels when the individual slows to a halt, either because they’ve hit the wall, or because of a change in incline or grip (the car park in my event had a looser patch of tarmac about two thirds in). 

Like trekking or running, those changes in surface, or incline are challenging. Tussocks, divots, ramps, kerbs, gusts of wind and so on all make you change your stride length, and prevent you settling into a groove. That’s one of the many reasons why treadmill running doesn’t translate precisely to running outside. 

The upside of trekking or longer duration events (like life) is that you can take breaks to regroup, physically and mentally. Planning those rests enables you to make the best of them with your end goal in mind. Know that feeling when you’ve had a hard day, having hardly stopped, and you collapse into a chair and then it takes a hydraulic lift to prise you out and get moving again? 

Human beings have an incredible ability to endure. And the potential to do it repeatedly too. But we need to rest. The higher the intensity of the effort, the longer the rest required, relative to the duration of the effort. At lower intensities, our ability to go on and on extends. Intensity is a somewhat subjective, there is always somebody bigger, stronger, faster out there and it is entirely possible to find that somebody is warming up at our PB level (I attended an indoor rowing course with an ex GB Olympic rower, he demonstrated a 2km piece, talking us through positioning; technique; pace and rate steps; talking the whole time… and finished comfortably past my PB). So, frantically looking around the exam-hall of life to see what other people are doing helps you very little (although you may gain some solace from seeing me in the corner scratching my head and looking for the real exam paper not this spoof one that some joker has slipped me). 

With another strongman reference, a few years back I remember seeing Mark Felix doing a deadlift for maximum repetitions in a time limit. He smashed it, as he continues to do well into his 50s, set a brutal pace, went about two thirds through and rested, managing singles after that. While he said afterwards that he was pleased, he said that he could have got more and should have rested earlier. 

Which brings me, finally, to the point. 2020 has very much been an endurance effort. The ebb and flow of domestic and global circumstances; the hokey cokey of social interactions; the emotional energy demands of dealing with all of our preconceived ideas of the world changing; friends; family; politics and social events; and some of the rest strategies we’d normally take for granted being unavailable to us. All of this has crashed on our mental shores like waves. Some of us have more coastal protection than others but we still feel the impact. The second instalment in the latter half of the year is hitting some of us even harder. Perhaps because we were clinging on to the idea that we just needed to get through and everything would revert to “normal”. Trouble is, time changes us and/or our environments. As unsettling as it is, there is never really any going back to how it was, we’re not the same man and it isn’t the same river (Heraclitus). 

What can we do? 

1. Start with reflection - what is my fuel mix? What are the debits and credits in my energy accounts - physical and emotional?

2. What’s my current level? What’s in my gift to control? How can I influence or control it? Focus on positive steps that you can do.

3. Where’s my focus? Right now, is it tunnel vision or wide horizons? How’s that working for me? How might I usefully change that? What single step can I take next?

4. List my wins - every time I come through something ropey, note it so you can refer back. These don’t have to be big things. Keep doing it, this has a real compound interest effect. Building the evidence that you can do this. That way, when the voice inside you inevitably starts to whisper “you can’t”; you can confidently reply “Au contraire Blackadder!”

5. Looping back to suggestion 1 - keep working on your awareness. You can call it mindfulness if you like, but whatever the label, start to tune in to radio you. Open up to the stories you tell yourself. Then you can become your own editor, challenging the narrative, realigning the actors to the script. 

6. Finally, practice relaxation. This will improve your ability to recover, to go again, and put yourself in a position to recognise what you’ve come through and celebrate that. 

Ultimately, one of things that comes across from strongman and other sports and translates into life - there are no perfect records. Ultimately the champions are very, very seldom the best at everything, but they are consistently in the game. And that comes back to managing the resources they have available to them. 

So, how will you look at your momentum?