Consistency
Consistency is the absolute king, forget whatever you’ve read, this is your first priority. Over days, weeks, months, years, it builds upon its own platform. Never do something today if it means you can’t maintain the consistency.
Adaptability
I’m consistent so I’m adaptable right? Not necessarily. Adaptability means you are paying attention to your process.
Where focus goes energy flows
Adaptability means you feel the impulse to react to problems, pain, weather conditions, etc. Instead you stay with the impulse and work with what is.
Resilience
You’ll go nowhere without this one. The ability to take the hit, overcome that bad session, or that bad race.
Why? Because they are your best teachers. Use them towards your resilience means that you stay out of kicking your own butt and learn the lessons that the setbacks and the small fails are trying to teach you.
Miss the lesson and you are bound to repeat it. Ego is an empty promise.
Go Slow to Go Fast
This sounds counter intuitive right? It isn’t. Let’s make this as simple as possible.
If you can’t do something slow and with good technique then you have no chance of holding form at speed.
Put your ego on ice, listen to your body, give it the space to intuitively learn the movement patterns and it will pay you back tenfold when it matters most.
In 25 years of coaching elite pros and age groupers, this is one of my key pieces of advice.
Simplicity
The KISS Principle (keep it simple stupid).
The noise out there is making a complexity of the in here.
So let me short cut this for you, there is nothing out there. You will learn far more by paying attention to your own process than by focusing on all the bright shiny objects that this sport has attached to it.
Always look for the path of least resistance.
The Screen
Data is incoming, not outgoing.
In other words friend, don’t let you data measuring devices run the show. If you are at the mercy of your Garmin or your power meter, you are on the back foot before you start.
Make sure your data is measured as outcome analysis and remember you are primary in this process.
Aerobic Strength
Let’s get this one straight. Aerobic strength and aerobic speed are the physical measurement of your ability to thrive.
Its simple math. The faster you can go for the lowest possible oxygen cost, the better you will race and the faster you will develop.
I don’t think this, I know it. So this is developing your aerobic threshold speed and strength. Physically, everything else is icing.
Fit it to you, don’t fit yourself to it
We read endlessly about other peoples training, programming, the structures, and strategies. You are an individual, your talent is dependant on your ability to make the best of yourself, not to try to transplant someone else’s path onto yourself.
Be realistic about where you are right now and keep the thing in homeostasis, make it fit you, don’t try to stuff yourself into it.
You can get it, if you let it
Many people set goals and then come out with a plethora of reasons for why they are not talented enough to achieve it, this is an idea, not a reality. The outcome is the sum parts of your attention. Think about what you can do, not about what you can’t do.
Relax into it
This is another of my key pillars. Can you relax into discomfort, challenge, and even pain? You bet you can, and you bet you should, practise because that is exactly what you are training for.