robeakin.com Triathlete

Why We Do It

Some great comments by former hockey player Jim Peplinski (Joel Otto's  accomplice in the kick in goal that cost the Canucks the '89 series against the Flames...not that I hold grudges) about the real benefits of sport courtesy of Sport At Its Best:

What is the purpose of sport?

Sport can make people great athletes…

Or

Sport can make athletes great people.

Many people participate in a sport or get their children to participate in sport, invest countless hours and thousands of dollars with a view to becoming a great athlete or raising a great athlete.

This can work.

Is there another objective? A better objective? An objective that can cause you to play longer? An objective that increases your chances of reaching your athletic potential while improving personally through the lessons of sport?

Should we change our thinking on how we coach and approach sport?

If you approached sport with a goal to enjoy what ever sport you chose to participate in, to do your best and enjoy it, would you play longer? Would you be better rounded? Would you get more out of sport? Would you be a better person? And maybe become a great athlete too?

I believe so.

To me sport teaches character. Character is doing what you said you would do when it costs you!

To me sport teaches discipline. Get discipline. Get better. At anything !

To me sport teaches the value of fundamentals. Get great at skating, shooting, passing and you reach a high level in hockey. Get educated, you reach a high level in life.

To me sport teaches the value of health. Look after your body it looks after you.

To me sport teaches commitment.  It is rarely the most talented who succeed. It is regularly the person who does the work and hangs in longest who is rewarded.

To me sport teaches empathy. Know how you teammate feels, instead of only thinking about how you feel.

To me sport teaches performance. Keep score. Measure yourself. Get better.

To me sport teaches mental toughness. Fall down. Get up. Push yourself through discomfort.

To me sport teaches responsibility. Take responsibility for your actions. Entitlement doesn’t win in sport. Entitlement doesn’t win in life.

So, get involved in sports. Stick with it.

Get good at a sport. Be a better athlete. You bet.

Get good at what makes you good at a sport, be a better person. You win both ways.

Best athlete, best person. Absolutely.

The Way I See It

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours."

- Ayn Rand

Best Music of 2009

Out for drinks with an old friend the other night I was asked what music I have been listening to lately (a common theme when we get together). I was able to come up with a couple of examples but it got me to thinking what has really caught my ear this year.

So since the year is coming to an end and thanks to Grooveshark I have been able to put together my favourite 12 songs that I came across this year (not necessarily released this year) along with my favourite lyric from them. Some are not of the greatest quality but that just means you'll have to go out there and buy them if you like them right?

Enjoy (especially the cameo by Stephen Colbert).

1. Dan Mangan - Road Regrets

It's all business in the left hand lane

2. Junior Boys - Parallel Lines

If you found the words would you really say them?

3. Joel Plaskett - Through & Through & Through

You be Israel and I'll be Palestine

4. The National - Apartment Story

Tired and wired we ruin too easy

5. Lisa Hannigan - I Don't Know

I don't know...if you eat what you've been given or push it round your plate. I'd like to cook for you all the same. If you want to, I am game.

6. Ben Harper - Fly One Time

Now I'm caught in between what I can't leave behind and what I may never find. So fly one time.

7. K-OS - I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman

My shadow weighs a ton, call it baggage but I use it all to advantage

8. Alicia Keys feat. Stephen Colbert - Empire of the State (Part 2)

My community is gated, my shorties are all private school educated

9. Wintersleep - Weighty Ghost

Where would my body go? Africa or Mexico

10. Dan Mangan - Robots

Sing your stupid head off to the ones who are not listening

11. You Say Party! We Say Die! - Laura Palmer's Prom

My heart needs a love dance

12. Matthew Good - True Love Will Find You In The End

This is a promise with a catch cause only if you're looking will it find you

What Matters Now

I can't remember how I came across this last week but I found this great free ebook full of wisdom by Seth Godin called What Matters Now. Each page is a small piece about things like adventure, meaning, and tough-mindedness by various authors from around this maze of interconnecting tubes we call the Internet.

The one that really caught my eye was a piece on excellence called the 19 E's of Excellence by Tom Peters. While it may be somewhat directed towards a business crowd, it no doubt applies to anything you try your hand at, especially triathlon.

The page in the book is much more eye-catching but here's the content of the page from his website:

If Not Excellence, What?
If Not Excellence Now, When?
The "19 Es" of Excellence:

Enthusiasm. (Be an irresistible force of nature!)
Energy. (Be fire! Light fires!)
Exuberance. (Vibrate—cause earthquakes!)
Execution. (Do it! Now! Get it done! Barriers are baloney! Excuses are for wimps! Accountability is gospel! Adhere to the Bill Parcells doctrine: "Blame nobody! Expect nothing! Do something!")
Empowerment. (Respect and appreciation rule! Always ask, "What do you think?" Then listen! Then let go and liberate! Then celebrate!)
Edginess. (Perpetually dancing at the frontier, and a little or a lot beyond.)
Enraged. (Determined to challenge & change the status quo!)
Engaged. (Addicted to MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around. In touch. Always.)
Electronic. (Partners with the world 60/60/24/7 via electronic community building and entanglement of every sort. Crowdsourcing rules!)
Encompassing. (Relentlessly pursue diverse opinions—the more diversity the merrier! Diversity per se "works"!)
Emotion. (The alpha. The omega. The essence of leadership. The essence of sales. The essence of marketing. The essence. Period. Acknowledge it.)
Empathy. (Connect, connect, connect with others' reality and aspirations! "Walk in the other person’s shoes"—until the soles have holes!)
Experience. (Life is theater! Make every activity-contact memorable! Standard: "Insanely Great"/Steve Jobs; "Radically Thrilling"/BMW.)
Eliminate. (Keep it simple!)
Errorprone. (Ready! Fire! Aim! Try a lot of stuff and make a lot of booboos and then try some more stuff and make some more booboos—all of it at the speed of light!)
Evenhanded. (Straight as an arrow! Fair to a fault! Honest as Abe!)
Expectations. (Michelangelo: "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." Amen!)
Eudaimonia. (Pursue the highest of human moral purpose—the core of Aristotle's philosophy. Be of service. Always.)
Excellence. (The only standard! Never an exception! Start now! No excuses! If not Excellence, what? If not Excellence now, when?)

There is so much there I wouldn't even know where to start with my commentary. There are certainly pieces there that stand out as things I'm good at and others which I'm not.

But I think it all gets summed up in the end with "If not Excellence, what? If not Excellence now, when?".

Winning Gold

A great couple of posts from an old friend and Olympic champion Ben Rutledge about what it takes to win gold.

Part 1

Part 2

I was glad to hear that he's gone back to rowing after dabbling in triathlon this summer. It was only a matter of time before he'd be on my heels in a race with his athletic pedigree.

In other news, it's a recovery week in training. It's also the last week of school which means crazy kids and loads of baking and chocolate. Yesterday my homeroom had our Christmas and Secret Santa party. Love the new glasses. And yes, I've had a Christmas tree in the middle of my classroom for the last week.

Positive Rivalry

An interesting post about that relates well to the motivation stuff I've been writing about.

Sport At Its Best - Teamwork and Positive Rivalry

My favourite quote from Cal Botterill:

Most of all, people with perspective have enough vision, gratitude and security to be open to positive rivalries and other people’s needs. Positive rivalries are reflected in the sentiment “I hope you are great, because that brings out the best in me, and that’s better for all of us”. Top competitors seem to embrace positive rivalries and share this attitude. It is clearly a much higher level of functioning than negative rivalries and the “eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth” mentality that often creeps into highly competitive activity when people lose perspective.

Positive rivalries bring out the best in us and promote a win-win possibility. They promote an approach-success versus avoid-failure outlook, which is much healthier and facilitates, much higher levels of performance and functioning. Negative images, fears and tension are reduced and enhanced focus, connection and flow become possible.

Can't say enough about how much I love the “I hope you are great, because that brings out the best in me, and that’s better for all of us” attitude. As extrinisically motivated as I can be, I always want to be the best because of what I did, not someone else's failure. And someone else improving raises the bar of my expectations which is never bad.

Motivation – Part 3

So we want to be extrinsically motivated and we're ok with that. The problem is if you're extrinsic all the time, and you're open with it, you end up being obnoxious and arrogant. So we need to find a way to be, as I'm calling it, internally extrinsic and externally intrinsic.

Every athlete who has ever been great has been extrinsic. No matter who you think of, it was their desire and passion to be better than everyone else, their desire for victory and the glory that comes with it, that made them as great as they were. It's just that some are better at concealing it than others. Which is why I also like to call this "Be Steve Nash not Terrell Owens".

Steve Nash is praised not only for being a great basketball player but a great ambassador for the game and all around good guy. He has the typical "Canadian niceness" about him that endears him to everyone. But I guarantee that underneath there is a fire that drives him to be better than everyone else and that wants that NBA championship. You don't spend hour after hour practicing foul shots in your driveway like he did when he was young simply because it makes you feel good about yourself.

On the other side there are guys like Terrel Owen who will take every opportunity to tell you how great they are and how they are going to beat everyone they face. They are the external extrinsics that no one can stand.

In my rashness, I've made the mistake of letting my extrinsic personality out of the bag. In the heat of some playful trash talking I once claimed that I would be faster than a close friend of mine right to their face. To be honest, I didn't even think twice about it at the time and it wasn't until much later, when they let me know how arrogant it was, did I realize I had even done it.

Even the some of the greats have missteps sometimes. The likes of Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Roger Federer have, at one time or another, all come across as cocky when their desire and belief in being the best comes out in an interview. It's a constant battle to be internally extrinsic and externally intrinsic.

So I'll let Larry sum it up:

Keep the persona and attributes of an intrinsic person, because invariably they are nicer people, but when training and preparing for an event flip your mindset to extrinsic.  When you throw your leg over that bike you must become extrinsically motivated.  Learn the difference and learn to switch.  You cannot begin to imagine how much difference it will make to your training, preparation and success.  Extrinsics don't "go for a ride" they train!

So find that switch inside you. When you hit the water or the road, find that something that drives you and use it. If it's that race you want to win or that opponent (or even teammate) that you want to be faster than, so be it. If it's that person who doesn't think you can do it, great. Grab on to it, and let it stoke your fire.

And then put it away when you're done. Go back to being a "nice Canadian" (or other nationality) and be driven intrinsically. And whatever you do, don't tell someone you're going to be better than them. Just don't.

Motivation – Part 2

Back to talk a little more about motivation. (Motivation - Part 1)

So if I'm being honest with myself, I'm mostly an extrinsically motivated (wanting the prize) athlete. It was something that I wasn't willing to admit at first. And it took me a while to figure out why.

We're told over and over that to be good people we need to be intrinsically motivated. We need to do things because they make us feel good, is the right things to do, or simply for the good of someone else. If you need an extrinsic reward you aren't of strong character. And until I read the piece from Larry Zimich, I always felt a little guilty about knowing I wasn't always intrinsically motivated.

Now fair enough, in day to day life, being intrinsically motivated is important and valuable. It makes you a much better and more bearable person to deal with. But being intrinsically motivated only takes you so far. If any of us are completely honest with ourselves, most of our best efforts, our best work, our best accomplishments have come when we were extrinsically motivated.

When it comes to training, I know that many of my best workouts came when I was trying to keep up with someone else to prove myself or beat someone else to prove I was faster. And I get up for 5:30 am swims not because it makes me feel good but because it will make me faster than those who don't.

So as Larry says...

For intrinsics, the prize was never the ultimate aim anyway; it was there as the icing on the cake.  If it's won, it's won, if not at least they tried their best.  Trying your best isn't in a pro's vocabulary.  To reach your full potential it can't be in yours.

Being amateur doesn't mean we have to be amateurish in our approach.  Motivation is powerful because it directly influences our actions and reactions.  Choose to adopt and more importantly, maintain, a professional, motivational, extrinsic work ethic and half your job is done. Never take your eye off the prize.

So I've come to terms with being extrinsically motivated. I think it brings out the best of me (in athletic terms) and have starting searching and taking advantage of every bit of external motivation I can find.

But being extrinsically motivated can have its downfalls. That's why Part 3 will be about what I call, "be internally extrinsic and externally intrinsic" (or "be Steve Nash not Terrell Owens").

Motivation – Part 1

It's November in Vancouver and that means rain, rain, and then just when you think it can't possibly, it rains some more. Add to that short days of sunlight and temperatures in the single digits and getting out the door for workouts can be a challenge.

So motivation becomes key. This motivation thing is something that I've been mulling over all fall. Where does it come from? Where does it go sometimes? How can I use it? I'm hoping that actually writing about it here might help clarify things for me and perhaps have you the reader learn a little in the process.

Part of the piece from Larry Zimich that got me thinking about all this:

Intrinsically motivated athletes, compete because they want to and because they enjoy the competitive element of pushing their body to its limits.  Extrinsically motivated athletes compete because they have to and because they enjoy the external rewards of trophies and fame.  Intrinsic athletes are capable of self-motivation, extrinsic athletes require external stimulus (the reward) to gain motivation.

So are you intrinsically motivated? Do you do that run because it makes you feel better about yourself? Because you get a sense of accomplishment?

Or are you extriniscally motivated? Do you do that run because it makes you faster than someone else? Because it takes you one step closer to the glory of victory?

After a lot of thought I discovered I'm more one than the other, even if it isn't always the more popular one. And the more I think about it, the more I'm ok with it.

I'll tell you why in my next post.