“A destination and route provided to your RP (responsible person). Stick with it.” This is the advice provided on Backcountry Skiing Canada. I thought that advice was stupid when I read it over a decade a go (an acquaintance of mine runs the site) and my thought has not changed to this day. I certainly agree with Benjamin Franklin that “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail,” but, in uncontrolled outdoor environments conditions are not necessarily what you anticipated when forging your plan from the comfort of your home. Snow and avalanche conditions may be wildly different than anticipated and even the other members of your group, who looked strong and fit on paper, may not turn out to be quite as you expected. So plans should always be amenable to change.
Knowing when to change plans can be difficult. Seth Godin has written an entire book about this. When I first started climbing, I changed plans a lot. I backed off leads and mountains, generally because I was scared. Being a bit scared is normal, and keeps us alive in potentially dangerous situations, but there are times, much more often than we think, when the plan ahead of us is challenging but we are equal to it. That is when we should stick to the plan.
The other time we should stick to plan is when training. Like anyone who wants to succeed, I have a training plan which I lay out a week in advance (I am currently experimenting with a ten day training plan). Anyone who trains hard or mixes training with performance (almost all performance based athletes like rock climbers) knows that there are days when you get up and feel stiff, sore and a bit weary. It can be tempting, particularly before the first black coffee of the morning, to think about changing your training plan. Resist the urge. If you have a reasonable level of experience and knowledge writing training plans, you should have confidence that over-reaching is an essential part of improving performance; some days you will train with a bit – or even a lot - of residual fatigue.
Sunday was another blustery, grey day on the coast; but, I had planned a surf training session with the same group who paddled on the day before. It's fair to say we were all a bit weary, gear was still wet from the previous day, and a few showers were rolling over. Off we went, however, and, once we got warmed up, it was a great day out on the water. We hit three different surf locations and ended up catching some good waves and getting some solid training done.
Monday (yesterday) my training was a bit different, tidy up one of the local trails, and clean up a couple of bouldering areas. Does not sound like much, but by the time I carried a heavy pack of gear in, and worked away for six hours straight hauling heavy things around, that too felt like a solid session. And, as a rock climber, every day is core day, so there is always that.
Like most other things in life, succeeding in training (which translates directly to performance) is separating the thinking from the doing. Put a decent amount of thought into planning your training and then stop thinking, just do.
The youth in my life fall into the trap of always rethinking things. When it comes time to train, they start waffling and making excuses. The easy way to stop this is exactly what I have outlined above. Plan your training and train your plan. Rethinking the plan as you put on your shoes to head out the door because you feel tired or there is a good show on Netflix is a colossal waste of energy. There IS a time for everything, and if you have a solid training plan, put your head down, stop thinking and get on with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment