I’m at the end of week three of a “Couch to Half Marathon” program I’ve cobbled together from a variety of free running schedules. I finally pushed myself to have a race goal on the calendar again to force me out the door, and shin splints are back for the first time in more than a decade. This is the part where I pay back the debt accrued by light workouts and a long backward slide from Ironman-finisher fitness. I don’t have any lofty goals related to the race: it’s just a target to aim at finishing.
I was a runner for years before I started my triathlon journey. I picked triathlon because it meant I could be more rounded in my physical training. The old adage in triathlon is “Why be bad at one sport when you could be bad at three?”, but part of me knew that I wanted to be more than just running strong. Of course most of that journey came with ongoing race goals that were truly motivating. But the post-race let down is real and when I didn’t follow it up with more races I slid backwards. Waaaayyyyy backwards. Always having race goals on the calendar is a valid way to ensure you maintain a given fitness level but it is vastly different from holding yourself to a fitness standard.
Goals vs. Standards
I am fascinated by this idea from a recent Dr. Andrew Huberman podcast with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon: work on fitness and nutrition standards for yourself instead of goals:
It’s a way to say “I am this” instead of saying “I will achieve this”. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, says that one of the most powerful things we can do for habit change is to make the desired change part of our identity. When we can say things like “I am a fit, healthy person” and then back that up with concordant behavior and choices, we let our brain know that we mean business.
The key here is extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation. When we set a goal for ourselves - maybe a wee lowercase goal, maybe a Big Hairy Audacious Goal - we have a thing to look to in the future, a state where at the moment of completion we will have achieved The Thing. This future end state motivates us to get out of bed and work towards it. When we set a personal standard however, we get out of bed and do The Thing because it’s who we are.
Bull riders, Special forces, Rock climbers, and Farmers
A recent reddit post went down the rabbit hole about wiry guys who are people you don’t mess with. The consensus was that bull riders, special forces operators, rock climbers, and farmers all fall into this group of people with “Farmer strength”. Certainly a lot of people in the construction industry fall into the that group as well. It’s the repetitive use of their whole bodies to do strenuous, dangerous work, often outside, that hardens them. They don’t build up a ton of muscle, rather their bones, tendons, cartilage, and muscles become like braided steel rope. Their skin is toughened by the sun and continuous little abrasions. Their balance and proprioceptive abilities are honed by physical activities that need constant adjustments.
Athletics notwithstanding, these people might be the closest to the pinnacle of overall human physical ability. They don’t set fitness and nutrition goals, rather their chosen disciplines have standards built in and they are defined by them. A counterpoint to achieving this level of fitness is that it can often break a person’s body down faster than most: it is hard to maintain for long periods of time without injury.
Be a Streaker
Runners use the term “streaker” to label someone who never misses a day of running … ever. It’s much like Jerry Seinfeld’s “don’t break the chain” system of getting things done where the chain of successes becomes a reward in and of itself. Currently the longest active running streak is over 55 years, held by a Jon Sutherland, a 73 year old writer from Utah. I think this is the essence of a personal fitness standard, where something has become integral to a person’s being. To have a streak like that means that the daily run was not interrupted by weather, a cold, a poor sleep, or a Bad Day (it’s actually quite a bit more than that, including running with a broken pelvis - don’t do that). It continues to be a standard that he lives by.
Self-imposed fitness standards
In Built To Move, the authors present a protocol to help us reach and maintain a baseline level of mobility. If we accept their premise, then their protocol is a great example of a personal fitness standard: “I will always be able to perform this movement”. When we look at our VO2 max as a predictor of overall longevity, then we can see how maintaining a healthy VO2 max might become an important personal fitness standard. We might also hold ourselves to simple standards like “my wedding ring will always fit easily”, “the number on the scale will never start with a two”, “I will never have to use those holes in my belt”, or “I will always be able to fit into these jeans without having to add elastic gussets and a corset lacing cord”.
Standards are things we can periodically check ourselves against and take action when we aren’t meeting them. The streaker and the farmer check those things every day without fail. We’re not trying to run every day for 55 years, free climb Yosemite, or wrassle an ornery steer with these standards, we’re just trying to draw a line in the sand about how healthy we want to remain for the rest of our lives. What do we want to say about our fitness every day, definitively? Surely it’s not “I’m able to remain on the couch for 4 hours every day”. As we age it is easier and easier for our bodies to lose fitness: muscle strength and mass, bone density, cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, and so on. Having standards for our personal fitness can help us maintain a baseline as we age, keeping some of the decline at bay and allowing us to have both longer lifespans and longer healthspans.